The Better Budgeting Podcast

Mindful Holiday Spending: Finding Joy Beyond Black Friday Deals

• Danielle Reese • Season 3 • Episode 18

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Have you ever wondered how the transition from bustling Black Friday crowds to the ease of online shopping has altered our holiday traditions? Join me, Danielle Reese, as I take you on a journey through my personal experiences with Black Friday shopping and the evolution of our buying habits. From the thrill of snagging in-person deals to the comfort of shopping from home, I share stories that highlight how our purchasing behaviors—especially the tendency to buy gifts for ourselves—impact not just our wallets, but also our holiday spirits. With insights from my journey out of debt to becoming a money coach, you'll find inspiration to be more mindful with your spending this holiday season.

Let’s shift the focus from material gifts to the heartwarming essence of the holidays—love and connection. In this episode, we explore the emotional pull of reunion videos, especially those featuring service members reuniting with their families, and how these moments capture the true spirit of the season. Together, we'll discuss creative and budget-friendly ways to celebrate with your loved ones, making the holidays about cherished moments and meaningful interactions rather than what's under the tree. Join the conversation and discover how to infuse your celebrations with joy and warmth, without the financial stress.

Danielle is a money coach helping women and couples who have been trying to figure out their finances FINALLY create a clear plan so they don’t have to worry about waiting to refill their bank account the next payday.

She is the founder of The Financial Freedom Society on Facebook and her signature money coaching program, The Better Budgeting Playbook. You can sign up for her newsletter by clicking here.

Take the first step towards financial freedom and sign up for a complimentary assessment call with me, Danielle Reese.


Grab your copy of "Let's Talk Groceries" Your Guide to Reducing Your Grocery Bill" This is an ebook with over 30 pages of tips, tricks, and guidance to help you save hundreds on your grocery bill!

Sign up for the early release of The Better Budgeting Blueprint for $99 with a $50 refund once completed. The release is scheduled for April 1st 2025.

You can connect with her on Facebook or Instagram.

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to the Better Budgeting Podcast. I'm your host, danielle Reese. I'm a money coach and the founder of the Better Budgeting Playbook, and this is my one-on-one coaching program for women and couples who have been trying to figure out their finances, finally create a clear plan so they don't have to worry about waiting on payday anymore. I became a money coach in 2020 after paying off over $60,000 in debt, rekindling my marriage, becoming financially free and wanting others to experience the same. If you'd like to work with me, you can check out the link in the show notes there. Also, we have the Financial Freedom Society on Facebook. It's a free Facebook community focusing on debt payoff, saving strategies, budgeting and money mindset. You can find the link to that community in the show notes as well. Oh my gosh guys. So this is absolutely bananas. I'm actually speaking into the microphone of my phone because for some reason, my laptop just decided not to connect to my microphone anymore and it drives me bananas. So we're going to see how this goes. And maybe it's my computer that's killing off these microphones, because it's the second microphone that I've ever had. And maybe it's the Apple products. Everybody tells me Apple products they like. Kill off any additional products that aren't Apple. So maybe that's what it is, I don't know. But hey, it's December 13th, we are so close to Christmas the holiday and I just wanted to pop in here and talk to you about being mindful for the rest of this holiday season. First off, if you didn't know, I have a newsletter going out. Currently, today is the first day that it's actually sending out, so if you all want to get on that newsletter, it comes out every week on Fridays. If you want to get on that newsletter, all you do is go to the show notes, check in on the little form there, click the button thing in it. It'll send you over to sign up for the newsletter. Really awesome stuff is planned in that newsletter. Over the next coming weeks. I'm actually going to be putting an offer in for coaching, like a one-time offer that is going to be pristine. All right, you're going to want to jump on this. So if you have been thinking about coaching and you don't want to wait till that newsletter, but you want to grab that deal, Okay, go ahead. Send about coaching. And you don't want to wait till that newsletter but you want to grab that deal, okay, go ahead. Send me a message. I would love to chat with you a little bit more about your finances and seeing if it's a good fit for you it probably is. Coaching is probably a good fit for you.

Speaker 1:

Let's start off with talking about Black Friday. Love me a Black Friday. When I was a kid, we used to make Black Friday a huge event, huge event. Okay, we would get up super duper early, we would go out shopping and we would have breakfast and lunch and do all the things and I'm talking more of like when I was a teenager, because that wasn't happening when I was a young child. But we did all the things and then, you know, it switched to okay, we're going to open the stores at midnight. Awesome, out at midnight, doing the dang thing, out until two o'clock, three o'clock in the morning, going shopping, fan-freaking-tastic, love it. And then they're like no, let's open stores at 6 pm. Thanksgiving Great, shove your turkey down your throat, get out the door, get in line by 4, 30, 5 o'clock to get into the store that opens at 6. Yeah, it was a whole thing. So much fun for me. I loved it. There was a whole experience to this event and I remember my husband and I going Black Friday shopping for the first time ever and it was insane.

Speaker 1:

Like he was buying things for himself and I said that's a little funky. Like, no, you're supposed to go and buy stuff for other people. He's like, no, you go Christmas shopping for yourself on Black Friday. And I kid you not. This past week I had a coaching call with a client that the client was with me for over a year and a half now and she's like I just stopped Black Friday shopping because I will go and I would just buy things for myself. And I noticed that pattern over a couple of years. She said I just don't go Black Friday shopping anymore and I said, oh my gosh, isn't that the truth? Because my husband would do that, my mother-in-law, and then eventually I started doing it and you're like, oh, I go Black Friday shopping for myself and that's probably never really the intention.

Speaker 1:

So we get done with Thanksgiving dinner and I'm like I really want to see what's online. I have my list and I know who I'm shopping for, I know my budget, I know you know if I'm really on my game, I know exactly what I'm getting for these people and I just go and start shopping online for the Black Friday deals, because now online you can get them a week prior, basically. And I went shopping. I got all my Christmas shopping, I think, except for like two people done, and I'm feeling good about myself Like I got all my Christmas shopping, I think, except for like two people done, and I'm feeling good about myself, like I'm feeling this is awesome, right.

Speaker 1:

And then Friday rolls around and I'm on social media. I see all these people shopping, having a good time, eating their lunch, their breakfast, being with friends, doing the dang thing, and I had this feeling inside of I'm missing out on Black Friday, like Black Friday is back, baby, people are doing the dang thing again, and I really wanted to experience this too. So I said to my husband I was like I really just want to go out and look, which is always code for I'm going to spend money that I shouldn't spend, right? And I said I really just kind of want to go out and look and to see what's out there. So me, him and the two kids, we pack up and we head out Jack needs some new baseball pants and some cleats.

Speaker 1:

And I was like let's just go over to the sporting goods store, see what they have, if anything and we get in there and y'all these dang things. I just first off, when you got a growing kid like you hate buying shoes. Am I, anybody else out there Like feel the same thing? I hate buying shoes for my kids, especially really expensive shoes, cause in six months we're going to have to buy another pair and it just drives me bananas. But we have to do what we have to do. So they have like a 25% off a deal on cleats like nothing worth buying them on Black Friday, let me tell you. And baseball pants didn't even have a size or the style that he needed, so it nixed that. So we ended up going to another place downtown. They had a lot of small business vendors. So we went there, got a few things.

Speaker 1:

And it's so funny because my husband has his spend money, I have my spend money and he was like what do you like? Do you like anything? And I was like, oh, I really love this journal, I want this journal. He's like, great, I'll get it for you. And the next day I'm like going through my budget and things and I see that he charged the journal to my account and not his and I literally said to him well, if I would have known that I was buying it, I probably would have said nah, no, thanks. So let me wrap this up.

Speaker 1:

We ended up going to another store and all the shelves are empty, like boxes upon boxes empty down the aisles, and it's just not magical. It's not the thing that I was looking for anymore. And that was the nostalgia, the feeling and we do this with our finances sometimes where we're like I need to create that memory for my own family. I need them to have better than what I had. Like we go on vacation every single year because that's what my family did, and like maybe you can't afford to go on vacation every single year, or you can't even afford to go on that type of vacation, maybe it needs to be a smaller type of vacation. When I was a kid, every summer we went for a week to the Outer Banks and I'm sorry, but that ain't happening here in the Reese household. I don't value a whole week away and paying like three times my mortgage for a vacation for that. Uh-uh, that's not happening here and my kids are perfectly fine with three, four, even a five-day. We took a five-day vacation last year and that was a lot.

Speaker 1:

But we start looking at our finances as experiences, and then our finances are a afterthought of these things, and we really need to look at our finances first and then plan around these things, which was my mistake on Black Friday. Right, I had already done all my shopping. I had already done anything and, honestly, other than the journal, I think I bought a hot chocolate and I really didn't buy anything else for myself, and the kids got each other their gifts, which is something that we needed to do anyway, but it was unplanned to do it that day, and how much, and things like that. So we want to make sure that we are creating memories, not debt. We are creating memories, not debt, for the holiday season.

Speaker 1:

So if you are, because it's December 13th, if you are already on top of it, you've got everything taken care of. Stay out of the stores, stay offline. You don't need to be up in there spending extra dollars. You just don't, because what's going to happen? Window shopping is easily going to turn into real shopping, and then we've got a problem. We've got too many things. How many times have you found a Christmas gift at Easter time and you're like, oh, I forgot about that thing, right? So I'm going to give you a couple of tips here to go through this week and to help kind of hopefully ease and bring some mindfulness into this holiday season.

Speaker 1:

And that's one is taking inventory. Please, if you haven't already, go look at all the things that you have and who they're for, so that you're not just mindlessly going through some store and you're like, oh, I think Susie would like that and you've already gotten Susie three things. What you really need to do is get Jeff something. That's why you're here. You're here to get Jeff something, but here you keep looking at Susie. No, stop it. Okay. So inventory everything that you have. Next would be make a list of what you want to get and if you hear my dogs, I'm sorry, that's just real life over here. So make a list of what you want to get, right, like, not need, want, because all holiday shopping, all of it is a want, not a need. So make a list of the things that you want to get for people. And now what I want you to do is decide what you're going to get these people before you even go online, before you even go out to those stores. That will save you a ton of money.

Speaker 1:

Next is to evaluate your budget. All right, I want you to know how much have you already spent? How much do you want to spend? If those numbers are too close together and we still have a lot of people that we need to buy for, we got to return some items and get some less expensive items, or maybe not items at all. There is no shame in hitting the return button or cancel order button online. It's so easy to get out of control. It is so easy to just overspend at the holidays. Make a list, figure out who you want to get for still and then evaluate the budget. If you have gone over budget and you still have three people to get, like we got to return some things and get them some less expensive things, or you just they're just not getting anything, that's. That could be an answer to no judgment whatsoever here.

Speaker 1:

And that kind of brings me into my last point is like, ultimately, gifts are not defining who you are. They do not define how awesome of a parent you are, or a sibling, a daughter, a son, like they do not define you at all. When you think about christmas, I bet you think more about memories than the things that you actually got for Christmas, am I right? I remember one time my mom made mashed potatoes and she accidentally bought white sweet potatoes and we had whipped mashed sweet potatoes for Christmas one year. There are some gifts that I remember absolutely, but it's not the gift that I remember, it's the feeling associated with it. So if we can get that feeling associated with it outside of getting more things, awesome.

Speaker 1:

You ever see these homecoming videos online where someone from the service comes home for the holidays oh gosh, just go ahead and stab hope right. And that is the feeling that we want to create on the holidays. That doesn't associate to gifts. It all comes back to being with people loving with people having a great time with people, and gifts are an addition to that. Try to create an ambiance that doesn't have to go around with a huge budget for the holidays. All right, I will talk to you all next week and see you later. Bye-bye.