Ok, I know it’s early to be talking about Christmas and the holidays but here’s a sure fire way NOT to spend too much money during the holidays.

Alter how much you deposit in your online savings accounts at HSBCDirect or EmigrantDirect.com or wherever you automatically save money for your “Rainy Day” or “Emergency” account. So for a simple example, let’s say you’ve setup your deposits to be $100.00 every month from January thru December. I know that’s a lot for some folks so stay with me, I’m using these figures just for the example. You could setup your savings something like the following:

January thru June – $100.00 every month

July thru September – $150.00 every month

October thru December – $200.00 every month

I know it’s hard for some folks to save more money for the rest of the year but what this will do is help you from NOT spending too much during the holidays. You might be thinking that you’re saving more money so you can have more to spend but remember I’m preaching NOT using your “Rainy Day”, “Emergency” money for Christmas and gifts during the holidays.

I believe that people, especially young folks remember the time, attention and interactions you have with them during the holidays not what you give them. Some of you know this by simply asking a young person to recall what you bought them for the holidays last year. A lot of times they don’t remember.

Think of your past holidays where you might remember an uncle, aunt, grandmother, grandfather, etc. who did special things that stuck in your mind as being great memories. These are the types of presents to save up for.

So start saving for the holidays by coming up with the gifts of communication and interaction with those you’ll be celebrating with, funny stories, stupid old stories that “Uncle Bill” always tells every year, games, songs, activities, etc.

Over at The Simple Dollar there’s a great discussion on Figuring Out A Debt Strategy After The Home Purchase and I wanted to weigh in on the comments but didn’t know if my comment was too long or what.  So here it is below.  Basically there’s discussion on what Trent wants to do now with his debt/money after he moves into their home.

My recommendations are listed here:

1. Pay down the education debt normally.  Feel ok with debt that’s allowing you a better life – education.
2. Pay your mortgage normally.  Did I read that right?  You want to pay off the mortgage?  That is a grand goal and can certainly be paid in 15 years.
3. Too much in HSBC – 3-6 months total for the both of you or set an amount that the return will make the account grow automagically to your satisfaction.
4. Lose the 529 plans for your kids.  It would be better to have an investment account at a brokerage with both your and your wife’s name on it called the education account.  If your kids need it then use it for their education.  If they don’t because of grants, scholarships, etc. then it’s your money or help them start a Roth IRA with it.  You owe your kids equality of opportunity and not money for all of them to go to college.  You never know what they’ll want to do when they get there.  Plus you really need to look at what the 529s do to your financial life when your kids reach that age.  There’s more than one way to pay for college, there’s only one way to pay for your retirement.

Of course, like Trent says, there’s more Personal than Finance in Personal Finance.    

So there’s some folks in my life who always ask me, “What stocks are in that mutual fund you’re talking about?” I remember asking this question myself a long time ago when I didn’t know what the heck mutual funds were. When you first understand what mutual funds are sometimes there’s a feeling of “gee, I own a piece of this stock and a piece of that stock. ” Which is true but the mistake is when people choose mutual funds based on that reason.

That isn’t the best way to choose mutual funds. The moment you find out what’s inside a mutual fund or what stocks are held within the mutual fund, the fund manager could have already sold them.

An analogy would be if you were deciding to buy a baseball team and you asked, “What color are the uniforms?” Implying that if the color of the uniforms are pleasing to me, then I’ll buy the baseball team and everything will be good. Ok, kind of a goofy analogy.

The analogy you want to use is, what if you were buying a baseball team and you had a great batter like Sammy Sosa and great pitcher like Randy Johnson on the team. If these folks were on your team, then the odds of you having a pretty good season go way up.

Well, the same thing applies to mutual funds. The question is, “who is the manager of the fund and what’s his or her track record?” That’s how you should be thinking when reviewing mutual funds.