With crowded stores and an ever-growing list of people to shop for, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and to overspend on your Christmas shopping. No worries, though; Catholic Federal has you covered! Read on for some pre-Christmas tips and have yourself a jolly December without breaking the bank.

1. Revise your gift list

Chances are, lots of the people you exchange gifts with would be relieved to be taken off your list. Talk to coworkers and acquaintances about just exchanging cards this year, or make a deal to only exchange homemade or inexpensive gifts.

This way, you can focus on buying special gifts for those closest to you instead of generic gifts for everyone you’ve ever met.

Q: It's my turn to host my family for Christmas. How can I entertain the crowd without spending a fortune?

A: Hosting a holiday meal is one of the most stressful parts of any holiday. Sure, it's great to help everyone get together under one roof as part of a fantastic tradition. On the other, though, feeding many people can put a serious strain on your budget. With Christmas gifts to buy, a strain like that really can't come at a worse time!

Fortunately, it's possible to be a great host and a great saver at the same time. It's not easy, but you can put on a great Christmas meal without breaking the budget. Try these 3 handy tips to save this year!

Christmas spending can be a budget buster. The expenses are numerous: presents, wrapping paper, food, travel and more. However, if you don’t have the funds to buy everything you want, there is no need to despair. With a little DIY creativity, you can get through the Christmas season without draining your checking account.

1. Get crafty

Why spend $40 to buy a scarf if you can knit it yourself with $15 of yarn? If you have a knack for crafts, making your own gifts is a great way to save, since supplies usually cost less than the finished product. Not only are homemade gifts cheaper, but many people appreciate them more than store-bought presents because of the personal touch. Don’t know your way around a glue gun? A framed photo always goes a long way.

Want to avoid long lines and large crowds this Christmas season? Shopping online lets you zip through your list with just a few clicks.

Before whipping out your plastic, however, you'll want to make sure you're shopping on a secure site. Use these tips to keep your data safe.

The average American will spend nearly $900 on Christmas presents this year. If you have two adults in your household, that's almost $1,800.  The odds are good that you've already spent a good chunk of that on Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday specials.  In looking at the sales numbers from the weekend, Americans are getting smarter about how they spend that money.  Brick and mortar stores suffered about a billion-dollar decrease in sales from 2014, largely avoiding many of the big-ticket items that lure customers into waiting overnight in cold parking lot lines.  Instead, consumers pushed online purchases to a record high of $4.45 billion, roughly 20 percent more than last year. At the time of this writing, Cyber Monday sales had not yet been released, so we can't compare those.  

With Thanksgiving only a few weeks away, Christmas shopping is on the minds of many.  You might have gotten off to a solid start but have a few people left on your list that have you stumped when it comes to deciding what to get them. One of the simplest ways to check them off as complete is to pick up a few gift cards.  Clearly, they have become a go-to gift given that Americans spent nearly $32 billion on gift cards last year.  So it should come as no surprise that you'll hear a lot more about gift cards as November rolls on. This is particularly true of your Facebook friends and family, who are probably choosing sides with one camp believing gift cards to be far superior to traditional gifts and the others finding them incredibly impersonal.  This guide will go over the case for and against gift cards and give yousome tips on how to save money when shopping forthem.

It’s hard to believe that, while the calendar says September, now is the perfect time to start getting ready for the holidays. By making a plan, watching for sales and adjusting your budget, you can make this Christmas one that will be easier on your pocketbook. These helpful tips are brought to you by Accel, a company that Catholic Federal has partnered with to offer free financial counseling to members of the credit union; Accel’s personal finance counselors want to help you budget for the holidays so you can come out debt-free.

If you’re old enough to remember a time before credit cards were part of everyone’s life, you probably remember the customer-service area in the back of many department and discount stores that offered “layaway.”

A layaway plan that’s offered by retailers allows their customers to shop for and make a claim to items they don’t have the cash for at that moment. In most instances, the customer will make a down payment (usually 20%) and pay the rest over time on a regular schedule. Once the item is paid for in full, they can bring it home.