The ads pop into my inbox. Fifty-percent off. Lowest prices of the season. Best deals of the year. Buy-one-get-one-free. Temptation is the worst part of the holiday season for me. Those deeply discounted promotions lure me to spend money on items we really don’t need, so now I delete each new email and immediately unsubscribe […]
Holiday
Tricks to Spending Less on Christmas Gifts
I managed to limit Christmas spending this year through a variety of techniques. First, I took advantage of Kohl’s Veteran’s Day sale. The store offered $10 off a $50 toy purchase plus $10 off a $25 purchase and an additional 20% off. I bought $54 worth of toys for roughly $29. If you aren’t aware […]
Black Friday and Cyber Monday: I Own Too Much Already
I typically spend Black Friday cleaning out my house. The goal is simple: to find better homes for all of my unwanted items and to make room for any new gifts that might appear between now and Christmas. Five or six years ago I spent the day after Thanksgiving decluttering and ever since that day […]
Generosity
A few days before Halloween my husband looked into the massive bowl of candy and said “you did not buy enough.” “You don’t think that’s enough,” I asked, “It’s ten bags of candy!” I really didn’t want to run to the store to buy more, but I had a sinking feeling he was right. A […]
A Mother’s Day Gift to Myself
My husband came home this week and told me his coworkers seemed stressed and annoyed with the expectations of Mother’s Day and the gifts they need to buy their wives. I’m not a fan of all the fluff and stuff associated with major holidays. A few years back a male coworker said “I don’t want […]