Christmas Money Thank You Notes

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Yesterday we had an awesome sermon at church about Christmas. Mostly about the same stuff we're always reminded of every year ("Remember to keep in mind what Christmas is really about", "Jesus over gifts!" ), and for the most part I was following along pretty well. I'm not gonna lie and say I listed to every word that came out of our good priest's mouth (we all zone out at times, right?), but the second I heard the words "money" and "financially stressed" enter his vocab I immediately perked up!

"Money? Did someone just say money??" "In CHURCH??"

All of a sudden I was eager as hell to find out where he was going with this (can I say "hell" in a post like this?), and I just prayed it was something fun so I could bring it back to y'all on this fine Monday morning :) And it was! Well, fun for blogging anyways, not so much for the stats…

He started going on about a survey he had recently read about how 40%+ of Americans stress out pretty good about their finances during Christmas, and that almost another 20 or 25% of people are on the hardcore stressed end of the spectrum. Like to the point they can barely pay bills and/or go in large debt every year around the same time.

Now I tried to find this survey he was talking about when I sat down to do this post, but unfortunately the only ones I came up with were from some weird PayDay company – which obviously I wasn't gonna touch ;) Regardless though, it DID make me wonder how many of YOU ALL out there reading this right now are currently stressing out (or not) about the upcoming gift giving madness? I know some of y'all already started the process from our last post we did about it on Halloween (haha…), but I'd like to do a quick poll here and see what we're working with now. My gut said y'all will fall a lot lower on the stressing out side of things than the average person, but I could be totally wrong ;)

Anyways, if you could be so kind as to submit your answer to this stress-o-meter below, I'll be sure to make it worth your while next week when I announce the results. We'll be doing something pretty exciting so make sure you don't miss it! :) Here's the poll:

{poll now ended}

Be as honest as possible now, Santa Money is watching you! ;) Here's how I think it'll play out:

Percentage of people hardcore stressing out: 5%
Percentage of people medium stressing out: 35%
Percentage of people not even breaking a sweat!: 60%

All pretty much based on the fact y'all are here on a money blog and probably pay more attention to this stuff than the average person :) Let's see if you prove me right!

Explain further in the comments too if you'd like. Maybe you have questions on how others work it? Or you just want to rant? Either way we got your back!

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PS: I still haven't started shopping yet myself btw… that's always the hardest part :(

[Photo credit: hoyasmeg. Doodles by J$]

Jay loves talking about money, collecting coins, blasting hip-hop, and hanging out with his three beautiful boys. You can check out all of his online projects at jmoney.biz. Thanks for reading the blog!