Bob at ChristianPF.com has this post “Six tips for a debt-free Christmas.” It’s one of the featured entries in the Nov. 12 edition of The Carnival of Personal Finance hosted by Million Dollar Journey.

A snippet:

My wife and I started doing this a couple years ago, after we realized how out of hand our Christmas spending was getting. We just sat down and made a list of everyone we were going to buy a gift for that year. We wrote down (actually we used Excel) how much we were going to spend on each person and totaled it up. We took this total figure and worked backwards from Christmas to see how much we would have to save each week in order to have enough. This helped us get motivated to start saving early.

I’ve been doing a spreadsheet Christmas list for about 10 years now. I set up the list in my computer with estimated amounts at each person’s name, and program the spreadsheet to automatically add the amounts for a running tally. If, for example, I decided to spend $10 or $20 on someone rather than the original estimate of $15, the spreadsheet does its update.

I include the amounts spent on wrapping paper, cards, new decorations and any non-grocery holiday expenses in the spreadsheet. Then I save the file for next year, along with any notes I’ve made as to where I found certain gifts, what I bought ahead for next year (now I’ve got to find where I put those greeting cards purchased on last year’s clearance) or what to expect on prices for my favorite standbys (such as Russell Stover chocolate).