I’m off for the Thanksgiving holiday — my favorite time of year. I’ll be hanging out with family and friends, and hope that you do the same. There’ll be some fine guest posts from readers like you during my absence. In the meantime:
- If you haven’t already, now is the time to set ground rules for your family’s holiday gift exchange. Will you be drawing names? Setting price limits? Giving gifts only to children? Be sure everyone’s on the same page for the Christmas season.
- The day after Thanksgiving is “Black Friday” in the U.S. — a sort of ritualized shopping experience during which people can grab great deals. If you plan to take part, spend wisely. Shop with a list. Avoid debt. Don’t buy on impulse. As I’ve done for nearly a decade, I intend to observe Friday as Buy Nothing Day.
- Holiday bonuses will soon be appearing in paychecks everywhere. I recommend spending a few minutes to decide what to do with the money. You don’t need to set a budget — though it couldn’t hurt — but at least make a plan for spending and saving. This year, part of my Christmas bonus will be used to pay off the last of my consumer debt (yay!), and the rest will be routed to my Roth IRA. I’m being smarter than in years past. (In 2005, all of my bonus went to comic books. Dumb dumb dumb.)
Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving. I’ll be back next Monday.
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16 Responses to “Taking a Break”
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I agree to your comment about Black Friday and I gotta say I have experienced it for the past 3-4 years. People tend to buy A LOT of stuff because it is very cheap, but I have noticed that a lot of the items purchased are USELESS!!
Anyways, Have a good one!
-Mike
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Ahh Thanks Giving…a wonderful time of the year. For the first time in ages I have black Friday off. I wish I could say it will be a buy nothing day for me, but I saw the gift I wanted to get for my girlfriend drop by about 30 percent so Ill be in with the herd… blech.
Have a good break!
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Nice! Enjoy your time off.
Oh, and sign me up for Buy Nothing Day. I’ve never even considered shopping on Black Friday and I never will! I do enjoy watching video of the crazy people on the Today Show from the comfort of my home though.
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I’ve given up trying to compete with other hardcore shoppers for Black Friday Deals. The best early bird specials are always taken right away!
-Raymond
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Have a very Happy Thanksgiving!
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To your first point of “gift exchange”: I’ve always found this term a bit odd.
Shouldn’t a gift be given with no expectations on the part of the giver and no obligations on the part of the receiver? Otherwise it is more of a barter or something we do just because we “have” to. I think many of us are very poor receivers of gifts. When we are given one we feel some kind of debt to the giver when in fact the giver (a true giver, not one that expects something in return) is simply expressing his/her thoughts about the receiver.
How about you try this: don’t have a plan. Give gifts to those you want to say something to and insist that there is no obligation for you to receive anything in return. This could reveal the true natures of both you and the members of your family …
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A gift might be given with no concrete expectations, but let’s be honest, in practice at Christmas it’s a gift exchange.
Not everyone wants to reveal the true natures of themselves or their family members.
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I wish we got bonuses.
Christmas bonus, spot bonus, performance bonus, “holiday” bonus – ANY type of bonus. We get nada.
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I can’t partake in buy nothing day. I won’t be doing the typical black friday shopping, but since it’s finally cooled down, I’ve started working on my yard, and getting it ready for the spring (my wife and I purchased the house this summer). I need some things for the yard, and since I have friday off, I will be going to the hardware store to get what I need. So I’m not really doing “black friday” shopping, but I am going shopping on black friday. here’s hoping there’s not a mob of crazy people at the hardware store
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Sometimes I interpret Black Friday as Support Small Local Merchants Day — used bookstore, bakery, stationers, indie record shop, even a garage sale — so if I need to buy anything, it’s not feeding an increasingly hostile global maw.
JD, enjoy the time off, you’ve more than earned it.
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Giving gifts to only children sounds good in theory but kids now a days have way more “things” than they know what to do with. My parents this year (their grandparents) are going to spend a special day sometime this year with each grandchild as their present this year. That would mean so much more to the kids than more things and I love the idea. It makes my house seem bigger.
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The various “let’s make rules for gift giving” seem to me to underline the “exchange” aspect of gift giving, and that seems the opposite of what I want to be involved in. We have been in a different income space than lots of the people we give gifts to (first we had a lot less, now we have more), and I’m very happy that we’ve never been asked to limit our gifts to a certain price (which can become a floor not an upper limit, it seems to me) or to only buy a gift for a certain person… Not that we spend all that much–we never buy the “in” gifts of the season (one of the reasons I’m not tempted by Black Friday and can happily participate in Buy Nothing Day). Instead, and really partially for our own amusement, we choose a theme every year and enjoy the hunt for items to put together to make a group of gifts for each family — we give family gifts not individual ones, but that’s our choice, not a family decision, and others in the family do other things. We also almost always include at least one person who isn’t expecting a gift from us, and from whom we aren’t expecting a gift, which is always fun. One year, the theme was “water” and we got everyone umbrellas, water toys, picture puzzles with water falls or bodies of water, water themed perfume, candles supposedly rain scented, novels about the sea, and so on. Another year, we did salads–spinners for everyone and tongs, dressings, Nora Ephron’s essay collection Crazy Salad, etc etc. This year, it’s honey and bees — but to keep it interesting we’re avoiding anything to do with the Bee movie and all Burt’s bees products.
And, we used to love participating in the Salvation Army Angels gift program, but not so much any more. They used to really describe the recipients, and the gifts they were hoping for, and you felt like you could get something that would make a particular child happy. It’s not quite as inspiring to get a “12 yr old boy” gift.
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I am going to spend my bonus on paying off student loans.
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happy thanksgivin’ jd..
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Have a great holiday.
If you are looking for a utility to draw names for Christmas, try my website, NameDrawing.net.
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