The holiday season is intended to be a time of spending time with family and friends, eating delicious food and participating in traditional activities.  Unfortunately, depending on your current financial situation, it can be a time of great stress, as you try to maintain spending levels of previous years.

Just as social expectations can create stress, so can financial ones:  you may have suffered a job loss in the last year; you may feel you need to compete with family and friends in terms of gifts or entertaining; you may have let the holiday season sneak up on you and you may not have created a financial plan for spending. Read More→

Confession – I am a bitter Christmas baby.  My birthday isn’t on Christmas Day but close enough to receive birthday gifts in Christmas wrapping paper.

Not sure if that’s the reason but I’ve have never been much of a Christmas person and with all the ridiculous commercialization of the season (really, who buys anyone a car for Christmas?) and the fact that in some stores the decorations come out in the summer, I could take it or leave it.

But in recent years, I’ve warmed up to the festive season a bit more.  I think it’s because I’ve created some coping mechanisms to make the holidays more fun for me.   Read More→