Stop the Holiday Burnout: Budget Your Time and Money So You Don't Go Broke or Crazy This Christmas

0:00Anna Dearmon Kornick:Hey guys, I'm so excited to chat with y 'all today for this bonus episode. How's it going? It's going so good. We're so excited to be here. We love coming to chat with you and girl today we just keep bringing it. It's going to be fun conversation back and forth about time and money. Yes, yes. And I have to point out if you're listening to this and not watching it, Vanessa has this amazing budget besties hat on with budget besties earrings and I am obsessed with them. They are so festive, which is exactly what we're chatting about today. The fact that festive season is literally right around the corner.

0:37So this episode is going live in October and it's still very, it's still very fall vibes. I'm in fall. I don't care that I live in Florida and it's 90 degrees. I am manifesting the fall.

0:49Anna Dearmon Kornick:Look at us wearing our hoodies, even though it's 80 degrees outside. It's fine. Yeah, same. I feel you in South Louisiana. Although this morning when I woke up and I looked out the window to the back door, there are actual fall leaves in our backyard. It's a start. I know. I know. It's crazy. And it's enough to make you want to just sit and sink into that fall feeling, especially because with us in the South, we just, we don't get a lot of fall. Summer light. Yeah. Yeah. Summer light. I'll tell you how you really know it's getting to the point where this conversation is needed is that we went to try to buy Halloween decorations this weekend and they had this much Halloween, even though it's October, and this much Christmas.

1:30Anna Dearmon Kornick:And I was like, oh, okay. I'm supposed to be moving on already. Yeah. Sorry. We're late. We're late. Exactly. You should have got that in July, Chena. That's the way we have to do it. It was the end of September and I went ahead and bought all of the Halloween treats for my daughter's class because if we wait until the week of nothing's gonna be left yeah and like you said all of the Christmas decorations are already out everything is just it just feels like it moves so fast yeah they're forcing us to go to plan ahead which is perfect because you're gonna tell them how it goes with the theme and you're gonna tell us how which you know one of the biggest reasons why the take back your time challenge stress-free holiday edition longest name ever but I love it is happening is because year after year, me included, part of this challenge is for me too, because it forces me to make plans in advance.

2:22But it's that we get into, we get to the other side of Halloween and then it's Thanksgiving. It's all of the fall stuff. And then boom, December just feels like a mad dash. And it's not just the events and the activities, it's that every time you turn around, you're pulling out your wallet for something. And it adds to the stress of not just managing your time around the holidays, but it's like, how am I going to create the most magical Christmas for my kids when groceries are expensive? Like, how do we do the normal life on top of the holidays? So I would love to know. For somebody like me, it's October.

3:07I don't even want to think about all of the upcoming spending that's happening in December. Like how do I get my mind right? How do I wrap my head around all of the spending that's up around the corner? I think it's just, it's a whole mindset shift because we can get stuck in this. Oh my gosh, all of this is coming. I'm so stressed out. I'm not prepared. I can't believe it's so fast. It's December 25th every year. I always forget. There's so much that we can go down a tunnel or we can say, I'm so excited to get to do this. It's going to be different than this year. And this is why, and it's not like, it doesn't have to be life-changing as far as the, what the work that goes into it.

3:52It doesn't have to be so hard that you feel like it's going to take everything from you. It's literally just small little things that you can implement into your life to make this change so that way you can go into this season with gratitude.

4:06Anna Dearmon Kornick:Yeah, I love that. Gratitude and generosity. That's the mindset shift that we want you to have because the honest truth is no one's making you spend any of this money. All of it is going to be your choice. And it should be like, I'm excited. Yes, please take my money. I love doing this or don't do it. And nobody's making you do that. So let's just say I'm excited about the spending I'm going to do because I've got a plan. I think for me, the other thing, Anna, was like actually having a budget. So I think the problem is it's this unlimited thing and that starts to make you feel overwhelmed in your brain.

4:40Anna Dearmon Kornick:But if I say, hey, let's be honest, I spend$4 ,000 every Christmas season. And that's just the, when I look at everything, that's what it is. And then if I figure out how to budget for that and not go, not resort to credit cards, I don't have to be stressed or any of that. I have it set aside and I budget for it and I'm doing it on purpose because just like what you're going to talk about with your calendar, I've chosen all the things that I'm going to spend money on. Nobody's making me do any of it. It's all things I want to do. And that brings it back to what Vanessa said. It's about gratitude and generosity.

5:09And we talk about being bougie on a budget. That's our tagline. That's what we want you. That's the life we want for you. But being bougie is different for everyone. That meaning is different for everyone. So it's like, what's your bougie? Is it$50 a budget or a person for Christmas? Is it a hundred? Is it 25? Because that's just where you're at. And you're like, is it, Hey, every kid we're spending 200 bucks. Each kid gets a budget of$200 and that's what we're doing. And I think we get in this mindset of Shana alluded to it of what are we, what am I supposed to be doing for Christmas? What the generosity part of it, other people make it look like this, but in your mind, you want it to be something else and that's okay.

5:48It can be whatever you want it to be. But the idea is that we want you to be able to say yes to whatever that is. Wow. Okay. So one of the biggest, I don't know if it's necessarily a light bulb moment, because it should be like, duh, but having a choice in the matter, it is up to us how much and what we spend our money on during the holiday season. And yet, sometimes it feels like we don't have a choice because of the obligations and expectations that are placed on us, whether it's by family or keeping up with the Joneses or seeing what's on social media or having so many opportunities come our way.

6:35Anna Dearmon Kornick:So many opportunities to pull out your wallet, like you said. Exactly. Like this party and that party and this event and that event. And do you get a new outfit for everyone? Do you bring a hostess gift and a secret Santa for everyone? But we have a choice in the matter. So how can we just make better choices that we feel good about, like the gratitude and the generosity? How can we incorporate that into the choices that we make about when we spend and when we don't? I think it's going to be in alignment with how you teach them to set up their schedule and set their boundaries and do the things that make you feel joyful.

7:08Anna Dearmon Kornick:Do not do the things that don't. But to your point, almost all of those cost money. So then we've got a budget for it. And I do think knowing that you have the money, that you've planned to have the money, removes a lot of the stress or the anxiety or the feeling because I planned. I know I go to this party every year. I know we do this teacher gift every year. I have set the side of money. I'm very happy to do that. And it's just a fun experiment to buy gifts and go and do. But I'm not prioritizing going to every party. I'm not. No, we're not. We're going to get one holiday dress. We're doing teacher gifts, but we're not doing friend gifts for every friend in the class or whatever, you just have to set the vision for what makes your holiday season feel good and then set the budget to match it.

7:50Well, and we'd like to call them guardrail. Okay. So it's not our restriction. Every person who became a millionaire got there very strategically planned. Okay. And so when you think about spending your money, you can't just blow it all. You have to be generous and be excited about what you're spending. But also you've got to put some guardrails around it. Everything in your bank is going to be gone when you look at it at the end of the month before your next paycheck gets there. And we don't want that to happen because you don't want to get to the point where you've blown all your money. And then you're like, oh, I still have seven people, the main people of my family to buy for.

8:22And now I have no money. And now I have to go use credit cards. So you just want to set some guardrails. It's not about saying, throwing an arbitrary number out there and say, okay, this year, I'm going to spend$2 ,000 on Christmas. That's my budget. How did you come up with that number? Did you really sit down and strategically plan that? Or are you just throwing that out there? Because if you just pick a number out of your head, it's going to be wrong. because it's not, you're going to blow it. So we really want to just plan out what the holiday season looks like for you. So that way you can in the moment, say yes to your kids.

8:53And you know what? We talk about this too. A lot of what goes on in the holiday season has to do with our kids, their kids, friends, gifts, their teacher gifts. They have holiday parties. There's a lot going on. And so bringing them in on the conversation to say, Hey, this is your budget for all of your things that you have going on for the Christmas season and they get to decide how it's spent. So it relieves some of the pressure off of you as well. Oh, I love that. And setting the vision for your holiday season enables you to set a better budget, which that's exactly what we're doing on the first day of the challenge, literally right off the bat for setting the vision.

9:33So that's perfect. I love that that aligns for both your time and your finances. So you just and credit cards. And this holiday season, we are projected to see lower spending than we've seen in years. And I'm not trying to sound like some type of financial analyst. I read this in an article. Budgets are tight. We're spending less, it seems. And we're projected to spend less on the holidays. But we all probably still have the same people on our list from last year and the same expectations that we're carrying into this season how do we navigate even staying within budget so we've set a vision we've set a budget how do we even navigate staying within that when I'm trying to figure out the best way to ask the math isn't mathing is what you're basically saying like we still have the same amount of people to to buy for but yet we're expected to spend less The expectation is that we're spending less.

10:39How is that going to work? And then if you know that you're going into the season and that you're going to have to rely on credit cards, how do you not go overboard?

10:47Anna Dearmon Kornick:Again, I have a really good answer to that, Anna. You say no. So let's weigh this decision right now. First of all, we don't, we're not going to speak over that you're going to use credit cards because you don't have to use credit cards. You could choose to just say no to some stuff. We don't want, like we, the status, 28 % of people haven't even paid off their credit card debt from last year. Christmas. Christmas specific. And so you don't want to be one of those people. A credit card is not a budget, right? No. If you do feel like you have less to spend, then let's put that into action. Be creative.

11:21Anna Dearmon Kornick:Maybe you do different types of gifts, like maybe just something the same for everybody, but it's a lower budget. Or you make stuff. Or you say, hey, this year, what if we all did Secret Santa instead of everybody gets a gift? Or a lot of people go to doing the kids only if you really feel like you have to tighten it then you need to actually go in and tighten it don't rely on your credit cards to to because when you're going to get some magical more money next year like in january or february where you can pay them off and all of a sudden it's okay no don't put a future burden on yourself to make other people happy that probably don't care vanessa says it all the time do you think your mother-in-law wants you to go into debt to buy her a gift do you think your cousin karen wants you to go into debt to get her something for Christmas?

12:02Anna Dearmon Kornick:Probably not. So you don't need to put that burden on yourself. You can say no, you can be more selective if you have to be for what you're buying and what you're doing for Christmas. I just think that there's a lot of people like Shana said that you buy gifts for that they may not even want like a physical gift. They probably just want something very small. My parents tell me every year, why do you guys buy us gifts? Because I want to buy you a gift. We don't need anything. I know you don't need anything. But so I think every year I try to get more and more strategic on the thing that I buy them to make sure it's 100 % going to be useful.

12:32And I'm a girl, I'm a gift card girl. I love gift cards, especially I'm not just going to buy them a random gift card that I know they're never going to go to, but I make sure I buy them something that they're going to use because it's not clutter. It doesn't clutter their house. Love my mom. She doesn't need one more thing in her home. She comes from that generation of trinkets now, but it's, but I know that they're going to enjoy a night out at sushi, right? And they're going to know when they go to give that gift card, when they go to pay for dinner, they know that's on us. So there's just small things.

13:00And I just, I think that there's this expectation that we have to spend a lot of money to show that we love somebody or appreciation or that we're thinking of them. But like some people are not gift people. Something very small, very meaningful can be something that's appreciated and you don't have to go and be broke. Spend all your money to be broke. Oh my gosh, that is so true. And I got to say, Shana, I feel like what you just dropped is the tough love that so many of us need to hear. Like when it comes to credit cards, like, no, you don't have to. It's almost like there are these bougie on a budget boundaries that we need to define.

13:35Keep in mind as we're moving through the season and almost make it a challenge to yourself to stick to your bougie on a budget boundaries through the end of the season.

13:46Anna Dearmon Kornick:Yeah. Yeah. And for the training, we're going to talk about that very specifically when we come on the VIP bonus section, we're going to talk about how to balance that and balance your life because we want you to be bougie on a budget, which means something different for everybody, but it means maybe I'm not bougie in every area. And I just have to pick if I want to be bougie and I want to go all out on Christmas, maybe we're not traveling as much, or maybe, you know, our restaurant budget comes down a little bit because that's more important or whatever, but you just have to be intentional about it.

14:12Anna Dearmon Kornick:And you have, and that's really the key here is be intentional. do not just spend or use credit cards because they're there and just go off the deep and that is what creates anxiety that's what's going to create that holiday hangover afterwards where you're going to feel not only bad about your waistline but your debt limit was reached or so well when we make budgets with our clients some of the things that they will tell us like look i'm not budging on my restaurant budget we're like fine love it you guys want to go out every night get that we're for it but then you can't have 17 subscriptions to online streaming services that you never are home to use.

14:45It's just part of that whole pick your bougie, decide what's important to you, decide what you want to do, decide what brings you joy and that way you love and do that. It may not mean that you get everything. It's probably because you're not using everything. You just want to, like Shana said, be intentional.

14:59Anna Dearmon Kornick:Now here, I have a question though, Anna, because truly selfishly, this is fine. We understand all the budget and we're happy to tell you people, but we, you know what? We are super smart and we have between us, We have three December babies. Okay. Wow. Wow. Okay. Yeah. So let's add that into this whole mix. And plus all of our kids have holiday, as most people have holiday recitals and events. And then like you said, the Christmas parties, like so much. So every year personally, I'm just getting hives. I'm just getting hives every year. I'm like, it's going to be different this year. I'm not going to like flash and the whole month is gone.

15:32Anna Dearmon Kornick:So give us, tell us what's our first step to like, get this, get our lives together as we're thinking about planning our holiday season. I love it. So after you take a couple deep breaths and remind yourself, hey, it's going to be okay. I'm going to remind you that just like you're in control of what you spend, you're in control of your choices. You're also in control of how you spend your time. And during the holidays, a lot of times it doesn't feel that way because we have so many things that we do have to, we tend to say do and include and be a part of. And so what I would encourage you to do right now, as in now, October, not November, not December, is to sit down and almost have a holiday planning session.

16:18And we're going to do something really similar to this in the Take Back Your Time Challenge coming up. But to really identify, okay, what are the things that I must do this holiday season? And I don't mean the things that you really want to do. Like I must go to the nutcracker. But no, what are the things that you must do? Because yeah, exactly. And getting really clear about what must do means. Okay. Because a lot of things that we put pressure on ourselves to do that we treat as must do's are not. They're should do's or they're want to's or they're could do's. And so get really clear on what you must do and go ahead and plot all of that out on your calendar, wherever you keep your schedule, your Google calendar, your planner, because just like the parable of the pickle jar, okay, where imagine a pickle jar, just a big old jar.

17:14And when you start by filling it with little bitty pebbles, all of the little bitty things that take up our time, and then you add in all of the things that need to tackle that's on a short timeframe. These are things like going to this party, going to that party, buying gifts. And then by the time you add in all the little things and all the medium sized things, you don't have any space on top for the things that truly matter to you. Like having a slow holiday Sunday morning to sip hot cocoa by the fire and read a holiday romance novel or whatever that thing is. When you let everything else crowd in first, all of those things that you want to do that aren't urgent, that might not be on your list because there's someone else's expectation, they're your expectation, you don't have room for those things.

18:08So we have to start with those big things that we absolutely want to take to do that we want to have time for. And so that really starts by sitting down and getting a bird's eye view of the next two months. So maybe that looks like printing out calendars and plotting in, when are you going to celebrate this birthday? When are you going to celebrate this birthday? I don't have three December birthdays, but I have a January birthday. And I know that I need to have my January birthday planned by the end of November. Yeah. Because I'll tell you, it's like an afterthought almost. Right. And I don't buy that.

18:47If you wait until after Christmas to start planning the January 24th birthday, all the birthday places are gone and you don't have enough time to send out invitations and it just ends up being all sad things just really putting together that list like you said what are the things that we want to spend our money on what are the things that I want to spend my time on and then finding the space and locking them in as soon as you can I love how you said that everyone else's expectations of what you should do or could do get put in your calendar before you make that decision for yourself or what you want because I absolutely believe especially if you have children because their school, their events, their friends, they're planning so many things ahead of time.

19:26I remember last year we got, I always send my son's invitation out for his birthday, like two weeks out. And then last year there was a girl in his class that sent hers out a month out, which was the same day that I was going to have my son's was like, Oh, we have to do this like a month out. It was just one of those realizations in my brain that no, it's no longer two weeks is enough time to go to plant. Now you need to plan like a month out for something because everything just gets so booked so fast. Yeah, during this holiday season. Yeah, yeah. Especially if you're trying to coordinate with a group of friends who also have kids.

20:00Yeah. If you don't have like your girlfriend Christmas party on the calendar by the end of October. So everyone can see it, yeah.

20:08Anna Dearmon Kornick:I remember when things were simpler back in the day and we would have little ornament parties and I love the first step, which is what I've been starting to do is to get all the things that are gonna happen. And our school, the kids' school, really dictates a lot of that for us. It's really wonderful how many things we get to do before they go on break that are automatically on our calendar. And then I also have added gymnastics meet. So the weekend of your son's birthday, my daughter's birthday, and my, what is he, my son's girlfriend's birthday. Your future daughter and life. We have a gymnastics meet in Alabama.

20:40Anna Dearmon Kornick:So let's go over and do that. Let's add that. Why not? So anyway, and then we're going and doing college visits and stuff. So it's just really good, like you said, to put everything that's already happened. Because that's what I find. I'm like, sometimes, and maybe you can help me, Anna, sometimes I feel like I do that. And then as the weeks get here, so many more things just add. And I'm like, wait, what happened? I had a plan. I had a plan. Yeah. That is so great. Because how do we pivot from week to week when new things pop up? Because they always do. So this is where you start with that one big holiday sit down and map it all out.

21:14But then we've still got to check in on about a weekly basis. This is where I am such an advocate of having a weekly planning session for yourself to get a bird's eye view of the week ahead. And when life gets busy, that's a lot of times where we say, oh, I don't have time for a weekly planning session. I'm just going to jump in and wing it. But it's even more important during the holidays. And during the holiday season, I'd say from October through the end of the year is when your weekly planning session is even more important because that's your opportunity to not only check in with, okay, what's happening in the week ahead, but how does my holiday budget look?

21:55What gifts have I purchased and what have I not yet purchased? What planning needs to be done this week so that we will have everything locked and loaded for future weeks? And so when it, if you are already doing some type of a weekly planning session, heck yeah, kudos to you. Keep it up. Consider adding a couple agenda items that have to do with checking in with your holiday budget or checking in with holiday related scheduling and gift giving. And if you're not doing a weekly planning session right now, oh, this is the time to start because that's when you have that big picture overview to pivot and to spot the last minute, oh, I need to have cookies sent to school for the party on Thursday.

22:46That's when you spot it ahead of time instead of Wednesday night at 6 p.m. when one of your kids lets you know, oh, hey, mom, are the cookies ready for the party tomorrow? By the way, at 8 a.m. tomorrow, I have to bring guests. What I love about this is if you can crush it during the holiday season, you're going to crush it starting January when you don't have. So this is your practice. Get into routine, get all this done. I think that's so good. Yeah.