Brought to you by the EveryDollar app, start budgeting for free today. So, you know, the holidays are right around the corner. And my wife and her family have quite a few traditions for Christmas time. And they are starting to get rather expensive.
For example, we each get a book from Santa, like a children's Christmas book from Santa, and there's about 12 of us. And we have stockings, which averages about $1,000 to $1,200 total. And then we have gifts for everyone. There's about, again, 12 of us for that.
So my question is- I'm sorry, 12 children's books for 12 adults? Adults, yes. And- Her family, is this her brothers and sisters? So it's her sister, her father, and her sisters' children.
And now, one of her children, her sister's children, has their own child. So now there's a baby. OK, so this isn't your old children or your grandchildren? No.
OK. And so my wife was really big on her grandparents. She has fond memories of Christmas. Her grandparents' house, they did the same traditions.
She just wants to continue those traditions. How long have you all been married? It'll be 15 years. So you've done this for 15 years?
Yes. OK, and are you buying books? Is everyone buying 12 books or is it one book per person? So it's one book per person.
But it's usually my wife and I and her sister that are kind of responsible for all the books. What do I mean? It's 12 children's books. It's not all money.
What's the big deal? Well, there's about $30 a piece. So I mean, yes, it's not a lot like $360. But the books are not a very big traditional.
So they're kind of, I don't want to say a waste, but I am. They're kind of a waste because we look at them for like 20 seconds and then they just go away. And then we go on to the next thing. OK, so the purpose of the books, I'm just curious, because I don't understand why all these adults are getting children's books for 20 seconds.
What is the purpose of the book? It's just the tradition they've had. I know, but I mean, when there were children maybe, but I don't know, once you're 40, you don't really need a children's book. Right.
That's my question is. Well, I mean, if she was on the phone, why would she tell me that they're still doing it? It's just what they've always done. No, but I mean, why no?
But it's just that's the tradition is everyone gets a new book for Christmas. It's a Christmas book tradition. OK, all right. And it has like a little note from Santa in it.
Well, those are hard to get, but OK. And so that's one thing. And then we have stockings where people can spend $200 to $300. And it's most, again, my wife and I and sister for all the stockings.
So they put like $200 and $200. So what is your alternate worth? Not enough for $200. No, what's your network?
No, really, what's your network? You mean like total? Yeah. How much do you have in your retirement account?
Your house paid for all that kind of stuff. So the house of that pay for is about $100,000 left. And what's it worth? It's worth $200.
OK. And what's in your retirement account? So retirement, we work with a pension. So you don't have any retirement savings?
Well, I do. I have $100,000 saved up. And what's your household income? Roughly about $210,000 a year.
OK. And this whole thing is like three grand we're talking about, right? Well, yeah. Well, three grand for like the stockings.
Well, the books are $300. So you don't have to pay for that. I mean, it's like three grand for the whole thing to ever take. Yeah.
And then there's gifts also that we also do, which could also be another three or four thousand. Y'all have children? No. OK.
So this is the whole Christmas thing. Right. The problem is that we don't really put aside for this, even though we know it's coming. Make $200,000.
It's $300,000. It's one and a half percent of your income. Yes, I know that. But my wife and I, I, I'm not going to throw it all on her.
My wife and I like to, when I got budgeters, I would say. And so my, my question is. The best thing is this, I, I, I do think just from a marriage communication standpoint that, you know, this thing has continued to go on. And some of it's frankly doesn't make sense.
But at least you need to understand from her why this is $3,000 worth of important. Yeah. Because it's no longer $3,000 worth of important to you. Probably never has been actually in the whole 15 years.
Yeah. You've been going along with it. The stockings is, that is crazy though. The amount of money you're talking about is like you can get some great stocking stuffers and some reasonable small things.
And it doesn't have to add up to $1,000. Honey, you know, I understand this is important to you. And I'm willing to do it simply because it's important to you. But you also need to hear it's important to me that we use a little touch of common sense on this.
Well, I think the biggest problem deals you guys aren't, you have no planning with your income. You guys aren't good budgeters. You already said, so it feels like you're flapping in the wind. And it's like this here and it's kind of freaking you out because you all don't have control in general.
And I really think if you guys lived on a written plan, if you guys, we'll get you the every dollar app, but you both, if you both lived on a budget and you knew exactly where your income was going and you both stuck to it. This is not that big. I don't think it would feel as out of control. I think it feels out of control as a picture of your entire financial picture.
So genuinely I would get that. You're choosing to pick on the one thing that you can pick on while the whole thing's out of control. Rachel's right. So let's get the whole thing in control.
And then make a difference. This is a jumping off point for the discussion for that. But I think it's also individually on the budget. It's okay to talk it through.
I mean, we've done that inside of our family and even with our extended family because I have three kids who are married and have eight grandkids. And so there's 16 of us and eight adults and every adult buying every adult something got out of hand. And it just was dumb. We all have the money.
We all have the money. But everybody we just said we're gonna draw money. It's just more fun for us to not have to go through all that. And let's kind of figure out what Bill wants or what Winston wants.
It's just a lot. And how do you buy something from me? Because anything I want to just go get it. So how do you buy something from me?
It's so hard. It's impossible. So that whole thing is just we need to just so we just dumped it way down and we're gonna concentrate on the kiddos and the adults. We draw names as adults.
We have one thing. Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's okay.
It's just calm the thing down. And I'll throw this out there. They don't have kids. So this is their family.
It is her family Christmas. And it's her family Christmas. So there is a level of. He's over it.
Her family Christmas. He's done with children's books for adults. That's my question is how you know how you don't run out of books. I guess they don't have to be Christmas themed.
Rachel, we could help them. We could probably make them a discount if they want to buy a batch of great children's books. Yeah, but I don't know if they're Christmas themed children's books. I'm just curious how they get so many.
I don't know. I know Santa. I know Santa. If they bought a whole box of your books, you could probably do that.
I bet we could get the old guy to help us out. We will save Dale's Christmas this year with that. Oh man. That is hard though.
Hey, it's the holidays. It's a good time to talk about it. Not December 2nd. Yeah, we're in October.
It's great. By the way, all of you need to speak to Santa, he says to make a list and check it twice. So you need a Christmas budget. You need to make a list of who you're going to buy for and put a dollar amount beside each name and total that number and set that dollar amount aside.
We used to do that in cash and on the envelope and on the outside of the envelope was the list of people and what we were going to spend on each person. And then that cash runs out of that envelope. Christmas be over, baby. That's it.
This is what we're spending on Christmas. That's it. Ding ding. We're done.
It's a never ending merry go round otherwise. You just keep hitting the submit button on your cart. That's not that. Create your free every dollar budget today, the simplest way to budget for your life.