This week, I’m talking about cutting back on Christmas. Today, I’m talking about how I’ve spent the last 10 years or so systematically slashing my Christmas spending and gift-giving and how it’s benefitted me and my wallet. It’s still a work in progress, but I’m happy with the direction we’re moving and I feel like we’ve found a good balance between lower stress and lower spending, without my young kids being deprived in any way. 

When I had my first child in 2014, I saw it as an excellent opportunity to cut back on Christmas traditions and gatherings. It was the perfect excuse to stop waking up early on Christmas morning, loading up the car and driving up to my parents house for opening presents and breakfast. 

Since that first family Christmas at home in 2014, I have systematically deleted holiday traditions that I don’t enjoy, and most especially I have cut down on gift giving. 

One of the best things I’ve done for my own sanity is cut gifts down to the bare minimum. My children only get one gift each from Santa, and one gift each from Mom and dad. They are free to make gifts for each other, and they each are only allowed one gift from grandparents and aunts and uncles. My husband and I both come from small families, so when you do the math, my kids each have 6 presents under the tree on Christmas. They love it and my husband and I love it because Christmas morning in our house is calm and relaxed, and we end up keeping our Christmas spending to under $500 for everyone on our gift lists by cutting out the excessive gifts for our kids. For reference, the average American spent nearly $1000 on Christmas gifts last year. So our spending is about a quarter of that and we haven’t lost any of the joy.

Another thing we do is only buy one or two gifts for each other, and Christmas isn’t a reason to buy expensive jewelry or a new car, despite what the commercials would have you believe. 

As for other family, we’ve moved toward the secret santa concept which allows us to just buy one gift and I buy almost no gifts for people outside of my family.

If you’re broke in January, I encourage you to set limits on how many gifts and cut back on who you buy for. You should never buy a gift for anyone because you feel obligated. You can always do other things to show you care. A coffee date, invite a friend over for a meal, or write a nice Christmas letter. 

I have almost zero gift-giving related stress during the holidays, and it’s because I’ve cut out all but the essentials. 

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening. My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

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