The theme this week on the Retirement Quick Tips Podcast is: How To Minimize Financial Stress During The Holidays

Today, I’m talking about starting early and finishing early when it comes to shopping, prepping, and planning for Christmas. 

I’m usually the type of person who hates seeing the Christmas stuff in stores before Halloween, I refuse to listen to the Christmas music station on the radio until after Thanksgiving, and I’m silently judging you when I drive by your house at night and your Christmas lights are already up and on in the month of November. 

In short, one holiday at a time for me, please! 

But this year, I’m doing something a little different - I’m starting early - by the time you listen to this podcast, I’ll have crossed a lot of to dos off my list this year. 

Advent is a big deal in our house. We’re Catholic and so the advent calendar is more than just a piece of chocolate that you open from a flimsy cardboard box for my children. We celebrate St. Nicholas and other saint’s feast days, do craft projects, make cookies, and have family game nights to mark off the days until Christmas.

Many days are also low key, but it requires some advance planning to make sure we’re hitting all the major feast days while not overloading the weeknights with too many activities that are just going to stress us out and defeat the purpose of the season. 

So something different that I’ve done for the first time this year is use the month of November to plan everything out, buy what I need for Advent and Christmas, so that when December hits, I’ve done nearly all of my shopping and crossed a lot of my list, so I can spend more time relaxing and less time running around doing errands or shopping. 

Some other things I’ve added to my list to complete by the end of November:

• Finish all shopping for everyone on my list
• Order advent wreath and candles
• Plan Advent calendar and purchase treats and other items needed
• Order Christmas cards

Now I realize that November is pretty much over, but the idea of starting early and finishing early still applies. If you can get most of your shopping and Christmas preparations done in the next week or 2, you’ll be less frazzled, less stressed, and you’ll save money too because you won’t be making any last minute impulse buys and you won’t have to pay for upgraded rush shipping to make sure the gift you ordered will arrive by Christmas. 

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening! My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the Retirement Quick Tips podcast.  

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Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance