Howdy, Mark and Grace Driscoll here

with the Exo Real Marriage Special Holiday Edition podcast.

This one's going out right after Thanksgiving on

Black Friday, shopping day.

On or around, Black Friday, happy shopping day.

Do people still go to stores anymore? Is that a thing?

I don't know if they will this year. So one of the things that can happen for a married couple,

especially after Thanksgiving, because usually most people, you're kind of busy heading up to Thanksgiving.

And then as soon as Thanksgiving hits, you start thinking about Christmas, holidays, gift buying, gift giving, spending,

and if there's not a really agreed upon plan. Or a budget. Or a budget. What we have seen, though,

is that for a lot of couples, the gift giving can become a real point of division. The budget can get

ratcheted up, and then who gets on the

gift receiving list. Yes. And then there's always the, oh, we didn't buy them a gift. They bought us a

gift. Now we got to go, buy them a gift, which usually means somebody gave us a gift and we're

going to re-gift it and just try to even this thing out.

So what would your recommendation be for those couples that are looking at their Christmas list,

their shopping, their gift giving, how can they, in agreement in advance, help avoid some of the pain?

Because a lot of us, we just rack up credit card debt and you're

both doing it, and then you don't know what kind of position you're in until after the holidays,

and then it's a bit of a catastrophe. Yeah, I mean, I think talking about it again is super

important because there's expectations that aren't always mentioned, but they're there.

Like what?

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