The holidays have a way of sneaking up on you. One minute you’re trick-or-treating and the next, you’ve drained your wallet on gifts, flights, and party supplies. We challenged you to buck this trend and come up with a holiday spending plan. Are you on track?


On average, Americans with holiday debt add almost $1,000 extra to their load. This month, we challenged you to avoid holiday overspending by drafting a plan. This plan involved a few simple steps:

List your holiday expenses : This calculator

: Crunch some numbers : Come up with a realistic spending plan for each expense, considering your discretionary income.

: Come up with a realistic spending plan for each expense, considering your discretionary income. Find ways to cut back or earn more: If your budget is stretched thin and you have more expenses than discretionary income, what will you do to cover your costs? Maybe you’re going to cut back on restaurant spending. Or take up a seasonal part-time job.


It’s a simple challenge, but not necessarily an easy one. If you participated, chime in below. Tell us what kind of expenses you have and how you plan to cover them this year.

We have two more challenges for the year, too. Stay tuned tomorrow, when we’ll announce November’s challenge.