Tag Archives: holiday season

How to Survive the Holidays Without Going Broke (or Insane!)

Demanding in-laws, children, spouses and siblings. Any or all of these can cause you to pull your hair out during the holiday season. Add this to the financial pressures exerted on your wallet at this time of year and you have a recipe for potential disaster. With not enough time for everyone and everything, it [...]

The Guilt of Christmas Present

The Christmas season is trying to be festive and thoughts of the upcoming holidays are filling our heads, or at least our eyes and ears. But it is especially difficult with escalating financial responsibilities, disappearing work hours and eliminated jobs. How can we make it all balance? Each year the Christmas time of year is [...]

Gift Cards, The Gift That Can Stop Giving

Gift cards have been a great tool to give people for rewards and presents. And not that we are creeping towards that holy and special gift giving time of year and gift cards will line the racks and fall first into our consideration of things to give, WATCH OUT! With the danger of so many [...]

Expect Tidal Wave Of Limit Reductions and Credit Card Closures to Hit Before Christmas

Yesterday I wrote about a little old hardware store that had noticed an increase in card purchases over cash. That’s not a good sign if people are using plastic more for routine things and especially in this environment of credit card issuers reducing credit limits, raising interest rates and closing cards. You see, the credit [...]

Bankruptcy Rates To Significantly Increase Next Spring From Ho-Ho-Ho Hangover

I just did an interview with the Christian Science Monitor and we were talking about holiday shopping. The question was if I thought people were going to significantly cut back on holiday shopping to live within their budgets. Sadly, I don’t think they will. Gift giving and shopping at this time of year are ingrained [...]