A (Mostly) Stay-at-Home-Mom

Save Your Money (and Sanity!) This Christmas

• Charmaine • Season 1 • Episode 13

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In this special wintertime episode, Charmaine gets behind the mic once again to share actionable tips for a sustainable holiday season as a busy mom. She shares creative ways to celebrate loved ones on a budget and ensure that holiday season schedules aren't head-spinningly packed.

Join the (Mostly) Stay-at-Home-Mom for this exciting final episode of 2024, and make a plan for how this holiday season can be a meaningful and memorable one with your family.

P.S. Charmaine and her mom wrote a children's book together! Find this thrilling tale of an adventuring Amish boy on Amazon. Thanks for checking "Amos Takes the Skyway" out!

Questions or feedback for the podcast? Contact Charmaine at mostlyhomemom@gmail.com. See you in the next season!

Speaker 1:

Hi there and welcome back to the Mostly Stay-at-Home Mom podcast, a home base for discussing mom life, especially for those of us who might need to be creative in pursuing some income streams while focusing on our families and households. If you take a look at my previous episodes, you can find a lot of true stories and advice on supplementing family income as a mom, so be sure to check those out. I actually closed out my first recording season after 12 episodes with the promise of returning for season two sometime in the spring, which is still true, but I miss talking to you all, just talking into the ether. But then I look at the stats coming back and find out that I have listeners from all over the world so incredible. So I thought, before season two, I'd come on for a single one-off episode, a holiday special if you will, and I have a very exciting surprise at the very end, so stick around for that. So that's what today's episode will be, and I'm excited for you to join me. I know the holiday season can get overwhelming for a lot of us, so I thought I'd give my best tips for keeping things sane and saving money this season. I'm glad you're here. Let's get it started.

Speaker 1:

Christmas and other winter holidays are just around the corner. In fact, I would consider the season already started. So here are my three main suggestions for keeping your sanity and saving money this holiday season. Number one is to create a budget specifically for holiday spending. Number two is create a calendar for not only your regular activities but for holiday activities. And number three is to reframe some beliefs for healthier outcomes. So I'll go into each one.

Speaker 1:

Let's start with the budget. You're going to make a list of everyone you intend to get a gift for and the approximate amount that you'll spend on each person. If you already have a specific gift idea, put that amount next to their name. Or if you don't know what you're getting them, you can always decide an amount to shoe for. Here's where you'll also plan for extra holiday expenses, like special activities or foods, etc. Be sure to also include any spending on charities or organizations you'd like to support.

Speaker 1:

Maybe, if you're like me and the holiday season is when, especially, you remember to give back to those organizations that you want to support, throw that in the budget as well, because it's all part of this holiday spending. Total this up and this will be an approximate budget for your season. I'd suggest holding this loosely, of course, in case little surprises come up, but at least with this number you're not going to be totally shocked. You can prepare and if you need to bring in some extra money to make it happen, start to plan to do so. Take up extra shifts, maybe extend working hours, you or your husband or a family member, whatever you can think of to accommodate this number while you're still caring for your family. Obviously, it's not like dropping all of your household responsibilities. You have to weigh the importance of these things, and please don't go into debt for Christmas gifts, I beg of you. So, again, you might need to sit down and evaluate what's important to you and make sure those things make it into the budget. And other things may not, and that's okay, there's always next year If you need to get the ball rolling.

Speaker 1:

Here are some fun, budget-friendly ideas to celebrate your loved ones this season or just to create memories with your family during the holidays. So, number one if you have on your mind some traditional recipes that you always like to make during Christmas or the holidays, keep those ingredients in mind so that when sales at the supermarket come up, you can grab those items and, unless they're incredibly like short-term fresh items, most of the ingredients can be kept for at least a few weeks. Let's say, I usually make a Christmas cheesecake and that requires a ton of cream cheese. Make a Christmas cheesecake and that requires a ton of cream cheese, which isn't the cheapest ingredient to get these days. But I think you know several weeks, even five or six weeks, I'm going to say before the holidays, if I see cream cheese go on sale, I'm going to stock up on it then and keep it. You know it keeps a while in the fridge. Keep it for those special recipes that I know I'll be making. So if you have recipes like that that you want to try to make each season, just keep in mind the ingredients and if they go on sale, you can take advantage of that sale.

Speaker 1:

Another idea I like that I've heard for people with large extended families. You know, maybe several of their siblings are married and have their kids and so now you have several nieces and nephews that you would like to give gifts to. But it just gets overwhelming or complicated or expensive when there's so many people. I have heard that these extended families will travel together so they'll pick a destination to go to a little trip to take, and that way everyone is building memories together and feeling appreciated too, and you don't have to complicate things by making sure you get every single person a gift. That's not to say you have to do this every time, every year, but maybe some years it will lighten the load.

Speaker 1:

My next suggestion is to buy or make things in bulk, and what I mean by this is sometimes you can buy ingredients and make several different things out of it. For instance, I usually like to make a big batch of vanilla extract and this might be a too late of a tip because it does take several months of infusion but basically I'll get my vanilla beans and split them and put them in the alcohol of my choice that year, and then I will just let it sit. And then, when it comes Christmas time, however many people I want to gift that to, I will divide it into bottles. But another way you could do this I don't know if you make candles you could make several candles at once, or buy a bulk of flowers and make different flower arrangements for people's holiday tables. Anything like that, where you can have one time of making something but make several gifts out of it, is really going to be helpful to your wallet and to your schedule.

Speaker 1:

And then also, you could focus this year if you don't have much money but you might have more time, you could focus on giving quality time, gifts, fixing things for people, anything that uses your skills that people are in need of. So, instead of buying something, maybe you could bake something for people and I've done that before and people usually love it and it's a personal, heartfelt gift. Right, you could sew something or mend something for someone. I'm thinking of my brother, who is skilled in things that I would never be skilled at, like detailing the inside and outside of a car or pressure washing, like I. Honestly, he doesn't have to spend money on me, he can just do some of these chores at my house and I would be up for the moon. Yeah, and I talk about in one of my previous episodes, if you give it a listen on just the importance and cultivation of skills. We've sort of lost a lot of these practical skills in our modern Western society, and if you can learn or pick up some, it's not only useful for trades but during the holiday season as a gift to someone that you really want to bless as well and then overall, I'd say, just focusing on the quality of items over quantity or over some sort of feeling of obligation to get the person a thing. I think if you focus on the quality of the item, then you will feel like your dollar is going somewhere meaningful, all right.

Speaker 1:

So the second main point is to create your seasonal calendar. So I would suggest sitting down and writing your plans on a physical calendar. If you don't have one, that's okay, but I do find physical, something you can look at and write on, to be better, more advantageous. But either way, as you are filling up your calendar, you'll be able to get a good overall bird's eye view of your month and how busy you've planned to make it. The goal is not to completely fill your calendar. In fact, you want to intentionally leave unfilled space for rest, for recuperation, for peace, for you and your family. If your brain craves seeing things filled in, you can color in your empty days with like a solid color.

Speaker 1:

But again, in order to stay sane, to stay healthy, to have like a sustainable, workable plan this season and not burn out, I highly suggest not filling your calendar completely. Think of it as your time budget. No matter how ambitious you are, time is still a limited resource. Every yes you say is a no to something else. So consider that. I think it's more than fine to incorporate special once a year events and traditions into this time, but don't forget to plan your rest too.

Speaker 1:

Busy doesn't equate to happy. So plan your calendar so you have a frame of reference for the next month or so. You have a visual. And, of course, hold that lightly too to accommodate the surprises of life. But at least now you'll know how the majority of your time will be spent. So it won't be a big shock. You won't drift into default mode if you have some sort of plan. I find this very helpful in maintaining sanity during a busy holiday season that can sometimes just escape us. So make a plan. And third, finally, it's time to reframe or completely overhaul some beliefs to maximize your chances of being content this season.

Speaker 1:

One important belief that I think I need to work on perhaps others is that we don't have to stuff our calendars or stockings chock full to be happy. A lot of us are familiar with this lesson, of course, that more stuff doesn't mean more happiness. If you've seen the Grinch who Stole Christmas and read all of the more famous Christmas books. You are familiar with the lesson here. But especially, keep in mind that you will be bombarded with advertising and, thanks to modern technology, content that you consume will be injected with tailor-made ads and marketing campaigns meant to evoke certain emotions inside you, to get you to go and buy. So ask yourself, instead of unloading passive stuff on myself, my kids, my loved ones, could we try to make memories together instead? But I think we need to even be careful with the pursuit of memory making and experiences too. See my last point about planning out your calendar to include times for rest. It's possible you could overschedule your family and wind up worse than before.

Speaker 1:

A good rule of thumb for me is that the addition of any item or experience is an addition of maintenance. For example, items, new gifts, they need a storage spot, they need to be put away after use, cleaned, kept track of, etc. Likewise, there's maintenance that goes along with experiences Hosting a party, going out somewhere, all of the work before, during and after to make that activity happen. This isn't to deter you from adding in new things this season, but knowing this has made me at least judicious about what I can reasonably handle, and I think it's helpful to view things that way, so that's why I share.

Speaker 1:

I also get the sense that a lot of us in Western culture are chasing this elusive concept of Christmas magic. Think of all the Christmas movies that tell us to believe Believe in what they never said and so there's a searching, a yearning for some ungraspable thing, or just this feeling of completeness that we experienced Christmas To this end. I believe this reflects our larger search for meaning, like the meaning of life in general. I mean, I practice Christianity, so I have an answer and a framework to life's meaning. My theory is that when a society removes religion as an explanation for meaning, governments and corporations are all too willing to step in and try to fill the void. We buy stuff and book experiences to make us feel good, to try to catch that holiday magic and ultimately give ourselves a sense of meaning. Our propensity for nostalgia doesn't help. Some of us have wonderful holiday memories and that is so great, but I wonder if we tend to look at the past as more rosy than it was simply because it happened long ago.

Speaker 1:

This hunt for Christmas magic, this seeking of the perfect combination of experiences that make us sigh a contented sigh, come January that we truly experienced the whole Christmas can largely be driven by nostalgia, sometimes an inaccurate recounting of memories. For example, I was recently feeling nostalgic about childhood Christmas seasons in which we had a tradition for years where my mom would take me and my sisters to the mall and she would give each of us five dollars for each sister to shop for each sister. So we would wait outside of, like Claire's usually, while one sister did her gift shopping and then take turns doing ours. It was so simple, but it turned out to be a great memory. Maybe I'm nostalgic for malls of that nature you know we don't really have malls like that anymore where we could just walk in and buy something of value for $5. Maybe I'm nostalgic for how far $5 used to stretch in that day, but anyways, it was simple and turned out to be a great memory. But I doubt my mom was stressing about creating the perfect Christmas for us kids. I mean she didn't have a wide influence of the internet to make her feel bad for not doing something like we do today, and we still had wonderful memories from that.

Speaker 1:

I guess my conviction here is that we tend to overcomplicate it. We want Christmas magic. We want our kids to experience it. So we can run ourselves ragged chasing the elusive Christmas magic or, worse, unintentionally or intentionally validating ourselves by posting all about it on social media. You know the popular sentiment that kids are usually more interested in the box than the gift that came in it. Kids can be happy with simplicity. We don't have to acquire and chase the excess just to feel like we're good moms. I hope that makes sense and helps you to have a wonderfully happy, healthy, memorable holiday season with your families. I think it helps to be aware of the pitfalls of chasing things for meaning and the different ways we can be distracted in our day and age. I hope it helps to focus on what is actually important to you this holiday season.

Speaker 1:

Now, before I close this Christmas special episode, I want to reveal the surprise, as promised, to give you some context, my mom was an art teacher before she had me, and I consider her an artist, and I personally have spent a lifetime practicing the craft of writing. So naturally we dreamed of one day creating a children's book as a mother-daughter team, my mom drawing the illustrations and my job to write the text, and I'm so happy to say that the dream has been realized. Finally, right now I'm holding a glossy, beautifully. The dream has been realized. Finally, right now I'm holding a glossy, beautifully illustrated copy of our children's book Amos Takes the Skyway. It's sort of a silly story, a whimsical story of an adventure-seeking Amish boy determined to pedal his way over the towering Skyway Bridge. The story is a way we sought to give insight into our area of Florida and the Amish way of life. Though it's totally fictional, it's based on actually a lot of factual info and there's even an informational guide at the end to give some history on the bridge, the Amish and this area of the world.

Speaker 1:

This story can be enjoyed by all ages as a read aloud, but you could also probably expect readers ages seven and up to be able to read the text independently. My mom and I would be so thrilled if you checked out the book. I'll leave a link in the podcast description or you can head over to Amazon and search Amos Takes the Skyway. That's A-M-O-S Takes the Skyway. The cover shows an Amish boy riding his bike with the Skyway Bridge in the background. This project has been our heart and soul and has been an unforgettable mother-daughter experience. We'd be tickled if you took a look and gave us feedback. And that concludes this episode of the Mostly Stay-at-Home Mom podcast. Feel free to reach out with questions or future episode ideas. Look out for season two coming in the spring. It also means the world to me if you share the show with friends or leave a review Until next time. Thank you so much for joining us and have a great holiday season.