Best Results Organizing

Shhhh. Listen. Can you hear the crunch, crunch, crunch of the mail carrier walking up the snow-lined walk to your mailbox? Squeak (the box opens), THUD (the mail drops in) and CRASH (the mailbox has fallen off the house or the poll from the weight of the post-holiday bills)!

Where does all the money go? Forgetting the recession for a moment, and just focusing on typical planned (and unplanned, but non-emergency) holiday-related costs between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, it’s no surprise that the last five weeks of the year can be budget-blowingly expensive.

This is where your paper piles come in. Receipts, bank statements and credit card bills all provide clues as to how much you spent, on what items, and where, during this past holiday season. 

If you’ve been following Paper Doll for a while, you know what I recommend regarding holding onto receipts, especially about keeping receipts until you can reconcile them with statements. In the best case scenario, receipts are stacked neatly, awaiting the arrival of billing statements. If that’s not the case, take a few moments to dig through your wallet or purse, sort through the paper piles, and empty out all those shopping bags to find your receipts. Then pull up your credit card statements online for those whose bills won’t arrive for another week or two.

If this seems like too much work, especially if you’re weighed down by multiple fruitcakes (the baked goods, not kooky relatives who haven’t yet departed), think of this as an insurance policy for your holiday finances for next year.  If you know what you spent this year, it’s much easier to predict and budget for next year’s expenses (the global economy notwithstanding) and maybe even find a way to save throughout the year to keep credit card usage to a minimum.

It doesn’t matter whether you scribble on a pad of paper or make a tidy spreadsheet (though the latter would be a huge help for future seasons). Just take out those receipts and statements, and figure out what you spent this year on:

Food

Dining Out–Some holiday dining is planned; maybe you always get together with old friends who are only in town the week before Thanksgiving. Other times, you’re too pooped from schlepping through the malls to make a grocery run, let alone cook, so you plop down with your packages at the nearest appealing eatery. Calories aside, what was the damage this season? Check off the items and list the expenses.

Entertaining–Have your food receipts gained weight over the last month? Take a measure of what you spent on ingredients and/or catering costs, beverages, cups, napkins, plates, serving implements, paper tablecloths, etc. Perhaps once you see how much you spent, you’ll want to trade those sit-down bashes for an open house with just heavy appetizers and desserts.

Baking/Cooking supplies–Don’t forget to count costs for ingredients and food storage items (extra foil, Rubbermaid food storage, etc.) for potlucks, open-houses, gifts of cookies…We tend to lump all our grocery receipts together, not noticing (until the money runs short) that we’ve spent two to three times as much as in any other month.

Decorations

Whether you’re the family with 8 inflatable reindeer on the lawn or you just like one menorah or an old-fashioned tree with popcorn strings, holiday dcor can be expensive. Evaluate what you spent on ornaments, lights (for indoor and outdoor decorations), Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa-specific decorations and even those antlers to make your beagle look like Blitzen, to get a sense of your prospective 2010 budget.

Entertainment

Entertaining Others–In addition to food and decorations, make a list (and check it twice) to factor in any typical entertainment costs for your family (or business) for parties or open houses, including invitations and postage (unless you’re 100% digital).

If you tend to be long on guest lists and short on time, you might balance the cost of your time (and stress) vs. the cost of having a few teenagers act as waitstaff (circulating trays) or kitchen help (for setting up or post-party clean-up), or a job-searching college grad play bartender. The key isn’t always to cut expenses, but to place a value on your time and effort (and chance to enjoy your own party) so you can budget accordingly.

Entertaining Yourselves–Whether it means tickets to holiday performances (because someone wants to see The Nutcracker, for the 370th time, interpreted by seven-year-olds, on the coldest night of the year), movie tickets on Christmas day (to keep you occupied until it’s time to eat Chinese food), or On-Demanding downloads of every holiday movie ever made, take note of what you spent this season to keep yourself in a holiday mood. (And take a moment to note that it really is OK–Paper Doll says so–to not be, or even feel, festive all season long.)

Gifts

Actual Presents–Presents for family and friends, for gift exchanges at work or clubs/organization holiday events, for teachers (including tutors, music teachers, coaches, etc.), plus “surprise” gifts (like bookstore gift cards) to have on hand when you’ve unexpectedly received a token of someone’s esteem…they all add up. Indeed, when people think about their holiday budgets, they tend to only (or mainly) think of gifts.

Having a gift budget doesn’t mean you are unduly parsimonious (that’s “stingy” for those of you who didn’t get a thesaurus for the holidays when you were 12). It also doesn’t mean that there’s a limit on how much you love or care about others. And if you got gifts that weren’t expensive, it doesn’t have any reflection on how much others care about you. There’s really no relationship (and shouldn’t be) between the dollar value of a present and the inherent sentimental value or the value givers places on their relationships with you. Gifts are tokens of esteem, not actual esteem.

Know what you spent this year, use it to help you decide how much you might want to spend (and therefore budget), and wrap price tag resentments in sparkly paper and keep far from the activity at hand.

Wrapping paper–Last year, we talked about recyclable wrapping inspired by Japanese art, frugality and a sense of the goofy. Paper Doll isn’t usually demonstrably green, but I do love the idea of saving the planet easily with multi-use wrapping implements. I also completely lack the ability to wrap anything that isn’t perfectly square or rectangle–there’s a 17-year-old son of a friend who, 15 years ago, received an incredibly poorly wrapped stuffed lion, to prove my point. However, if wrapping paper is a big part of your holiday joy, be aware of how much you spent to help you budget for next year. Better yet, take advantage of post-holiday deep-discounts and purchase next year’s wrapping now.

Greeting cards–You know how Paper Doll feels about holiday cards. That aside, look at your recipient list, the receipts for the cards you bought this year, and figure out what kind of card expense you want to budget next year. And consider, as with the wrapping paper, taking advantage of those post-holiday sales, and tucking the cards away. (Just make a note on your November ’10 calendar page of where you stashed them!) Unlike holiday cookies, cards don’t spoil, and nobody will know (or care) that you bought your 2010 cards at the close of 2009!

Postage stamps–Yes, it’s hard to budget when you don’t know what the U.S. Postal Service has planned for pricing next year. Still, checking those receipts for what you spent on mailing holiday cards and Thank You notes (you did send notes of gratitude, didn’t you?) will give you an baseline figure.

Mailing/shipping costs–Again, these are the little things we tend to forget when we’re planning for a holiday season. Food and gifts are at the forefront of our minds; finding the right size cardboard boxes and ample (but biodegradable) packing materials and standing in line to get packages across the country (or the world) by your holiday of choice tends to yield a “Wow, I coulda had a V-8!” epiphany.

Travel

Travel expenses can be outrageous, even if you planned ahead and booked your passage for Thanksgiving weekend on a sweltering afternoon in July. And, of course, travel costs are unpredictable. But if you travel during the holidays, identify what you spent this year and create an additional 15% buffer to help you plan for 2010. Consider:

Gasoline, or ticket costs to go plain or train, if not automobile

Extra costs associated with flying, like baggage charges and in-flight meals

Hotel expenses (which may include parking costs, if after you’ve gone over the river and through the woods, Grandma’s got no room for you in her condo), along with the associated charges for housekeeping and vending machines

Emergency Travel Goodies–Food and entertainment extras to keep your blood sugar up and your blood pressure down when your flight has been canceled or delayed 12 hours due to freak storms, freakish flyers or bad planning on the part of your airline are the most likely expenses. But if your luggage is already in the bowels of the airport and the heat takes a dip in your undermanned terminal, you might need to purchase an overpriced city-themed sweatshirt just to stave off hypothermia.

These small but insidious unplanned expenses are the true holiday travel budget-busters. If your travels manage to go according to plan, try to funnel that money back into an “emergency travel kitty” account, accessible the next time you’re unexpectedly you’re stranded.

Charitable Donations

You read this Paper Doll post, right? As with gifts, remember that budgeting for charitable giving doesn’t make you a Scrooge. It actually makes it easier for you to bless others with your largesse without doing yourself (and therefore future non-profits) any long-term harm.

Tips

Don’t be caught at the last minute, realizing you forgot those whom you were supposed to remember–delivery people, doormen, hair stylists, paper boys/girls (not to be confused with Paper Doll, who needs no tips to feel appreciated by her beloved readers).

Clothing

Everyone seems to feel a special need for “party clothes” during the holidays. If your children tend to go to parties or social events where dressing up is expected, factor at least one new outfit into the equation. And even if you’re frugal about your own fashions, consider the chance that you’ll at least need to put some money towards accessories or holiday dry cleaning.

Power

Electricity–If yours is the kind of family that makes a big splash with outdoor lighting displays, your electric bill for December should reflect that. Make a note of how much your December bill exceeds your winter monthly average (and look into long-term changes, like LED lighting.)

Batteries. Batteries. And more batteries. Toys, gadgets and goodies all need juice to work, and you don’t want to be caught short. Budget for a pack (or ten, if you’ve got little ones) in all the popular sizes.

Personal–Think about packaging your stress-busting holiday massage and even flu shots into your holiday budget, to keep you running like that Energizer bunny.

Getting organized and putting finances in order are always top resolutions or goals. Careful budgeting and planning may not sound all that exciting right now, but I bet that going into 2011 with some extra money in your pocket would be a reason for confetti and noisemakers!

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Thank you for your readership, Paper Doll fans, and for giving me the chance to share my perspective on the paper in your lives, from those finger paintings on the fridge to calendar pages, from the Post-Its to the financial, legal, medical and household files, from busting identity thieves to archiving the papers of the heart. It’s an honor to write for all of you.

Have a safe, healthy and happy New Year!