Month: November 2010

Holiday countdown: You’re probably already running late.

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The retail industry treats Christmas as one big countdown. This year has been the worst yet: Black Friday seems to have lasted the entire month of November.

But right after Thanksgiving the real fun began: “Only 26 more shopping days until Christmas.”

I think it’s because as a nation, we love to be nagged. The phone company reminds us to call home on Mother’s Day. Florists fuss at you to buy flowers for Secretary’s Day. Jewelers warn men to buy bigger and better diamonds for each year’s anniversary.

Nagging works, too: The phone system is overwhelmed on the second Sunday in May. Administrative assistants smile as they load up the vases (even if they’re inwardly wishing they’d gotten gift cards, or raises). And wives all over America decide to hang in there for another year because the big lug actually remembered.

But this is not a cynical post about the commercialization of sentiment. Not this time, anyway. It’s about why “(however many) more days until Christmas” is too vague to be of any use.

That’s because it’s not a warning — it’s a snooze alarm.

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Could your family survive on one salary?

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Some couples choose to go to one income: to have a baby, to go back to school, to start a business. For others the change is involuntary and terrifying: layoff, illness, a business going under.

Those who seek change have the option of preparing for it. Those who have change thrust upon them can only scramble to minimize the damage.

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Snow days.

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Yesterday it snowed in Seattle. This happens rarely enough that folks panic when the first flake hits the ground. Buses run less often. The stores sell out of milk and ice melt. Driving becomes an adventure on Seattle’s famously sloping roadways. (I swear it really is possible to walk through the snow uphill both ways.)

On Saturday I’m heading up to Anchorage, Alaska for a month in the frozen north. Which today happens to be the glazed-over north: Freezing rain on top of snow turned streets into skating rinks and hilly streets into luge runs.

The thought made me cringe, which in turn made me realize I’ve become a total weenie after nine years of Lower 48 living.

When I moved from Alaska to Chicago in 2001, I actually missed winter. Ice and all.

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Christmas stress: Wrap up guilt and simplify.

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thOne harried late-October evening, I rushed through a store’s costume section in a frenzy of last-minute preparations. To my horror, the reds and greens of Christmas cards and wrapping paper beckoned from a nearby aisle.

“Oh, spare me,” I said aloud. “I haven’t finished feeling guilty about Halloween yet.”

 

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Discounted gift cards: The new coupon?

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That’s how one guy described discounted gift cards — the subject of my current column, “Instant savings on holiday shopping,” over at MSN Money. (Edited to add: That column is no longer available on the MSN Money platform. Read on for the basics.)

These cards become available for various reasons, usually because their owners need the money or because the gift was unsuitable. Resellers like Plastic Jungle or Cardpool make them available to consumers at less than face value.

You can save 3% to 30% (or more) on cards for places you plan to shop for the holidays. There’s an aggregator site called Gift Card Granny that pulls up the best deals from eight different sources.

But these aren’t just for gift-shopping. You can use this “new coupon” to provide consistent discounts for your everyday purchases.

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