Poll: Has the Recent Economic Downturn Changed Your Holiday Plans?

In the midst of everything that’s unfolded over the past year, many people will be faced with difficult decisions, especially around the holidays. For those who are already struggling financially, taking the family to see relatives across the country might be out. For others, it could just mean a few less presents to give, while others may break expensive traditions in favor of more frugal alternatives.

I’m curious to see what impact the economic conditions are having with the readers here. Are you making changes, or have you been planning and preparing ahead of time that you can still do everything you planned on doing this year?

For us, no major changes are in store. Like I wrote about back in August, it’s never too early to begin planning and saving for the holidays, and we’ve been tucking a few dollars away from each paycheck over the course of the year for holiday expenses. A dollar might not go as far as it did last year, but at least we won’t have to cut back drastically. Of course, we don’t have to buy plane tickets or do extensive traveling either, which can be quite costly. Our travel consists of a lot of driving, and since gas prices have come down quite a bit in recent months, that will help out a lot.
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Filed Under: Polls

About the Author: Jeremy Vohwinkle is a Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor® and spent a few years working as a financial planner. Today, he helps people make the most of their money by writing about personal finance here and About.com. Jeremy is also Coach at Adaptu and a regular contributor for other publications such as Intuit, and American Express. Be sure to follow Jeremy on Twitter or Google+.

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We weren't planning to spend much anyway.

Not so much. The family comes here, and I generally don't spend much in gifts anyways, so things are relatively unchanged.

I will admit, we are cutting back this year on spending for the holiday, keeping only in mind that this is all temporary, but what we spend or don't spend will affect us in the long run. So we are going to stockpile this winter and keep it to a minimum, maybe spend next xmas in hawaii for limiting ourselves this year.

We almost changed our travel plans but in the end we decided to just forget the stress and have a relaxing holiday...

My holiday changes remain the same. I will be in beautiful Miami Florida relaxing on the beach

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