Love More. Live Better. A Southern Couple's Guide to Successful Living

I know it can be hard to think ahead to the cooler months when it’s 9000+ degrees outside, but now is the time to start planning for your Christmas/holiday spending! We have 19-20 weeks until the holiday season, and that gives you plenty of time to save up (although, you know we prefer for this type of thing to be a line item in your budget)!!!

I always start talking about and planning for the Christmas season around this time. Although we save for it all year long, I like to start planning early, to give me plenty of time to decide what gifts I want to give to loved ones and have plenty of time to find deals on those items I want to purchase!

What if you haven’t planned ahead like us? Well, even $10 a week from now until Christmas will give you almost $200 to spend on a nice dinner and some small gifts for your family, that you didn’t have to put on a credit card!

I know we all get busy, but it’s no excuse for using credit cards to buy gifts for family members because you “forgot” Christmas was in December! It’s like I always say; No one wants you to go into debt to buy them a present. So, what do you do? Take the initiative. Start saving now if you aren’t already. Make this year the year you pay Cash for Christmas!

Today, I’m not going to talk about any article, I’m just going to talk about the problems in Washington DC regarding the FAA.

So, as most of us know by now (unless you live under a rock), congress passed the debt ceiling bill, and avoided some tough decisions of who and what to pay. What did they do next? Went on vacation of course! They’ve all left for a 5 week vacation, which normally I only make fun of, but this year I can’t laugh, because they never finalized a temporary measure to keep funding the FAA! Why is this bad? Because those people cannot get paid, not until the government hammers out a deal, but until congress has had a vacation! Absolutely ridiculous!

This is why we want everyone to have am emergency fund! If, because of something like a congress vacation, you couldn’t get paid for 5 weeks, could you cover your bills? Or would you have to be selling things and looking for a second job, in the hopes that congress cuts their vacation short so you can get back to work?

What are your thoughts? We want to hear them!