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Holiday budget
CNN's Gerri Willis offers tips on how to manage your holiday budget
Almost 3 in 5 people won’t plan a holiday budget this year don’t fall into this trap. First you will need to figure out how much you should spend on gifts. You wanna make sure you can pay off your bills in one to two months. Since some financial planner recommend that you not spend more than 1.5% of your annual income on gifts, figure out all your expenses like those decorations or holiday meals and check out the website called christmasorganizer.com. On this site you can download holiday planner forms, gifts lists and calendars. Catherine?
Yeah, those eating out bills can really add up, can’t they? Thinking outside the box too, a good idea when giving gifts.
Well, you know, who needs another sweater or crockpot right? You don’t know where's the need to spend a ton of dough on gifts.you can curb all these last-minute-give impulses by giving a donation to charity in the name of a friend or relative, check out charitynavigator.org. So you are gonna valuate and choose a legit charity. But you may also wanna give your friends and family the gift of experience, maybe you wanna send your in-laws up in a hot air balloon, and you can even send your brother to cooking class, check out xperiencedays.com and signaturedays.com. You can even have a day as James Bond, Catherine.
That is a good idea. Alright, now another idea is to compare prices and really it’s easier to do that these days, isn’t it?
Absolutely, you know you can save time and money by shopping online plus you don’t get tempted by those impulse purchases. Do some Comparison shopping, go to shopping.com and bizrate.com. These sites let you compare products and deals plus if you do decide to shop online you can often get free shipping, yes, free shipping.
And speaking of comparing prices, you just should also shop around for some good cards out there.
Well, you know, if you don’t carry a credit card balance from month to month and you have good credit score, getting a rewards card is a great idea, but get the details you may only be able to use your card as specific merchants, plus some cards are tier. This means the more you spend the more you earn. Here are some favorites from creditcardratings.com discovers more card and blue cash from American express. You can check out the terms of these cards and many others at creditcardratings.com. And of course if you have a question, send it to us at toptips @CNN.com. We'd love hearing from you.
Catherine?
Alright, Gerri, thank you very much.
Notes:
Crockpot: A famous brand of electric pot in the US.
Dough: (Slang) Money
