Hello, Wine Abbers. My name is Jesse Meekham and this is

podcast number 86 for You Need a Budget, where we teach you four rules to

help you stop living paycheck to paycheck, get out of debt and save more money. I want to remind everyone

and the sole focus of this podcast is to remind you that we are halfway through the year and most of you have holiday spending at the end of the year.

It comes the same time every single year and it has been that way for a long, long time.

As long as I can remember, so we have all at this point budgeted for June

unless you're very late to the party.

And that means that you've had months 1 through 6 to fund your holiday spending category 50%. If you are crazy, maybe you've depleted some of that

category and have already bought some Christmas gifts. But most of us haven't.

That doesn't begin until, oh I don't know, November, October for some.

So this is a very short podcast because I want you to take the other three minutes where I might have said

some things.

Go to your Christmas or holiday category, whatever it is, and see if you are 50% full, have you set a target for what you want to spend for the holidays?

If you haven't set that target, divide that in half, compare that to your category balance, and see where you fall short.

To come up with what you need, take your target, subtract what you have, and divide by six. That will be your monthly

contribution through the end of 2013, well through December, where you funded at the beginning of December, your sixth and final

installment. That will get you totally balanced and flush with cash so that you can spend without any guilt. I will talk about this again in January

where you will divide your target by 12 and have 12 monthly payments that you make to yourself

so that the Christmas spirit can actually

exist and we can be happy and have joy and all that stuff. I'm not sure what else to really say there. It's pretty simple, but a lot of times people kind of spend themselves silly with the holidays and then get stressed when January hits. So spread a little

holiday cheer for yourself and be ready for it. Until next time follow

Wineb's four rules and you will win financially. You have not budgeted like this. you're going to.

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