By Dian Dewi

It’s December, and as holiday season drew closer, you found your preschooler saying this to you, “Mom, I want this and that toy …My friend is going to get those from his mom. ”

When you went and checked price online, you were shocked with price. You couldn’t believe that a child toy can be that expensive. To make things even worse, you doubted that those toys would make a good buy and did not feel good about giving them to your precious little one.

Does this situation sound familiar to you ?

If your answer is yes, don’t despair ! Chances are, almost every parent, have come across this situation. In one hand, you want to make your children happy, but in other hand, you know that you dislike those toys and buying those expensive toys will definitely create a huge dent in your pocket.

The question is, how are you going to deal with this situation ?

These are some strategy you can use to deal with this situation and at same time dramatically decrease your spending on toy and other gifts during holiday season. The key are: skillful budgeting, advance planning and creativity.

To begin with, figure out your budget for each child. If you don't like your child's choices of toys, you can do either of these followings:

• not buying toys that your children want, but replacing them with toys that you know your children will definitely like.
• buying one toy that your children want, and add some more toys of your choice.

To find out which toys are best buys , I suggest you to jot down previous toys your children got during holiday celebration. Make note on how often those toys are used and estimated price. By doing this, you can roughly determine cost of use for each toy. You may find that something like board games or construction toys are best buy. In this case, plan on buying a different version of these toys. Chances are that your child will also love them.

This is such a wonderful, joyous time of year for most people, but there are still those that find this most lonely and depressing season of all. It is said that more suicides occur during holidays due to depression and loneliness. Do you know of someone that is single and alone, no family to share holidays? Invite them to share holidays with you and your family, gather friends for dinner or a party. There are so many reasons for all of us to be thankful for at this time of year and above all we must remember what season represents. It has become so commercialized in last few decades that we forget that, YES, it is a time for celebration, but not of giving and receiving gifts; it is celebration of birth of Jesus Christ.