Today from 6 to 7 p.m., the annual “Home for the Holidays” workshop will be at the Student Affairs Annex (SAA) room 129. It will detail methods for how to save money for the holiday.

Makayla Mason, Financial Peer Coach, will be hosting the event. She confirmed the workshop will double as an informative and hands-on workshop.

The event will start with showing statistics regarding how much students spend over the holidays, followed by how to cut costs. There will also be a holiday budget sheet, followed by shopping and then gift ideas.

“So, we’re doing a ‘Do It Yourself Gift’,” Mason said. “[Students] are going be given a gift they can create that night and it’s, of course, free.”

Mason anticipates that a new gift, a new speaker, a new presentation and more exposure will lead to a bigger attendance than last year.
“I think it’s going be a lot more fun,” Mason said. “And so it’s going to be much more appealing to people who weren’t interested last year, [the event] maybe didn’t really grab their attention last year, and we also have a much broader student base than last year. We’re bringing a lot more students into the Center so a lot more people are hearing about the events.”’

Mason plans to expand the shopping part of the presentation this year.
“We’re going more into Black Friday, Cyber Monday, watching out for coupons and discounts and stuff like that,” Mason said. “We’re making sure students know that you don’t have to go out and shop to participate.”

Mason said that students need to start saving up now seeing as holiday expenses include many aspects like presents and traveling.

“Students need to know that you spend a lot of money over the holidays,” Mason said. “It’s not just presents, you spend money on, it’s traveling, it’s paying for gas and different food for the duration of the holiday. And so, you really need to start budgeting now so that you can be prepared for Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years comes around because if you don’t start now, you’re not going to be prepared.”

However, she comments that gifts do not have to have monetary value.
“So we have that in our gift section and it can be something hand-made,” Mason said. “It does not have to be something that you actually go out to shop for and purchase. It’s important for students to know that gifts don’t have to be expensive. Gifts are from the heart, not from the wallet”.

Also be sure to check out this link for the worksheet, in case you can’t make it!

http://www.shsu.edu/dept/smmc/Holiday+expenses+budget++worksheet.pdf