The Personal Finance Hour, Episode 29: The Christmas Show
Published on - December 14th, 2009 (by J.D. Roth) 
Ho ho ho. Christmas is coming, and the goose is getting fat.
On today’s episode of The Personal Finance Hour, I’ll join Jim from Bargaineering to discuss the highs and lows of the holiday season. What are your favorite Christmas traditions? To whom do you give gifts? How do you set a shopping budget? Do you buy year-round — or have you not even begun to shop? And which is your favorite reindeer? (I’ve always been partial to Comet.)
This show will air live at 3pm Pacific (6pm Eastern). It’s much more entertaining for everyone when you call in to participate. We’d love to hear your tips for a happy (and frugal) holiday season. Call us at 1-347-327-9144 to share (or join the rowdy crew in the chat room).
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Cool shows. As for spending for Christmas gifts we’ve changed a few things. Now after setting up ING last year, we have a gift fund. We automatically transfer money every month to go towards the gift fund that that is what we use. I think its great for keeping us on track. We also try to veer away from monetary or expensive gifts and try to find things more personal (like baking etc).
~ James
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Responding to your (presumably facetious!) question about favorite reindeer … I love ‘em all except Cupid and Donder. The one is unreliable and the other is a klutz.
Favorite Christmas tradition = not traveling!
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I’m not buying any christmas gifts this year. I just bought my wife a kitchenaid mixer and ordered myself a new surfboard. That seems sufficient. We don’t have any kids to disappoint, and we’d rather not have to go shopping at this time of year.
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I really like Blitzen!
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chacha1, that’s my favoite tradition too.
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Our family stopped exchanging gifts to extended family years ago and it was the best thing we ever did. Christmas focuses on getting together and having good food, drink and plenty of laughs. NO STRESS! For our children we have a Christmas account where a dollar amount is added each week.
My favorite Christmas tradition is having the youngest in the family watch for the first star of the evening so Holy Supper could be served on Christmas Eve.(Russian Orthodox tradition)
My daughter’s favorite tradition is Cookie Hookie day. All the female cousins get together one day, everyone plays hookie from their normal day to make cookies from early AM to late PM. They get together weeks in advance to plan what cookies, nominate new ones or eliminate those that didn’t get well received the year before. They love it and come from far and wide for that day.
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The wife and I are pooling our money to do some small renovations to the house, instead of buying each other stuff we don’t need.
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Jim,
On April 5, 1933, Presidential Executive Order 6102 made it illegal to have gold not needed for business or personal use. The act cites one limit of $100 in gold (about $1392.31 in today’s dollars). Here is an excerpt:
“I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do declare that said national emergency still continues to exist and pursuant to said section to do hereby prohibit the hoarding gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States by individuals, partnerships, associations and corporations and hereby prescribe the following regulations for carrying out the purposes of the order…”
It goes on:
“All persons are hereby required to deliver on or before May 1, 1933, to a Federal Reserve bank or a branch or agency thereof or to any member bank of the Federal Reserve System all gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates now owned by them or coming into their ownership on or before April 28, 1933, except the following…”
I personally don’t invest in gold, although I do believe gold may have it’s place in investing. This is probably the incident cited in the book.
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Enjoyed listening to this broadcast very refreshing.
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