The holiday season is a great time for giving, but unless you’re sitting on some kind of awesome stockpile of ungiven gifts, all that giving can actually wind up getting pretty expensive. And unless you’ve got a job that sees you getting an awful lot, many of us can find ourselves feeling a pretty significant amount of pressure when it comes to all that giving that’s required of us around the holidays. Of course, it’s wonderful to be around your family and friends — as the days get shorter and the weather gets colder, it’s very important to celebrate the people who make us the happiest. Whether you’re giving a ton of gifts, entertaining a ton of people, or are simply just participating in all that wonderful, yearly holiday madness, things can still get pretty expensive around the end of the year, and a lot of us wind up with a few extra new year’s resolutions to make sure we can get back in the black after all that rampant Christmas and Thanksgiving-time spending. It doesn’t always have to be like this, however, and especially lately, there has been a lot of work done towards figuring out how to navigate the holidays without spending an ungodly amount of cash. We’ll talk about some of the smartest strategies that can help you avoid putting yourself in serious debt so you don’t have to start the new year eating ramen for months straight.
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