Save $750 in the Holiday Season

In this webinar replay, from the 28th of Nov 18, we shared the following:

• Holiday stress
• How to overcome the stress of money and gifts
• Getting through the shopping season
• Enjoying the holidays
• Gender gap
• The Generous Partnership Armor

Transcript of the webinar about the “Save $750 in this Holiday Season” by the Generous Marriage Podcast Team

Hello and welcome to yet another generous marriage podcast webinar. I’m Ziv Raviv and I’m Shachar Erez we’re here it is together. We are, uh, the two dudes that are operating this, uh, this thing called the generous marriage podcast in Generousmarriage.com. We want to help you guys with your marriage, with your partnership. And specifically today we actually have a, we want to save you some money. So yeah.  

 So here we have, here we are in the Generous marriage podcast Webinar. Thank you guys for watching this. Um, it’s, it’s going to be the holiday season soon in December. And it turns out that there’s a good chance on average case, there have been studies showing that you will spend 1000 bucks. And, Shachar and me, we met and we started to plan ahead on what we’re going to do in, in towards this, uh, this very stressful season. Um, and one of the things we wanted to tackle was, you know the distress about money and what if you could not spend those thousand bucks? 

What if you could spend way, way less. So I think a reasonable, like 250 bucks that you will do and you will, uh, we will show you some ideas of how to actually do that, how to actually save money in this holiday season. So that’s a noble cause. Let’s go right into it. But first of all, we need to make sure that you’re in the right place. Shachar, let’s do it, uh, together, uh, you ready? Ready? Awesome. So people that listened to the podcast or there’s just joined the webinar without maybe even listening to the podcast yet. Uh, here’s what you should check with yourself to verify you’re in the right place. So first of all, you should be, you know, either married or in a deep, meaningful connection, a relationship with someone in order to enjoy, uh, our messages about, about partnership and marriage. So that’s obvious. 

If you are married, you’re in the right place. If you have kids and a career and you’re carrying all sorts of of other responsibilities or monkeys on your shoulders, then you’re in the right place because we’re going to get rid of a few monkeys, um, related to the amount of money that you’re spending. Um, it is a known fact. It was well researched that there is this thing called holiday stress, and it’s a very common type of stress. So if you all concerned about this huge amount of money that you’re about to spend this holiday season, even if you’re just a bit concerned then you know you’re in the right place. Alternatively, you might be terrified about the, the amount of money that you are about to spend. If that is the case, then boy, oh boy, you’re in the right place and you know, you, you, you already know form your past experience how stressful it can be to go through this holiday season and to choose the gifts and to buy the right gifts and to like even receiving the gift is very stressful for many. Um, do you enjoy getting gifts by the way Shachar? 

Well, the right gifts, gifts that make me feel seemed and that you know, that are not a waste.Yeah. Yeah, I know what you mean. So, uh, alternatively guys, if you understand what we’re all about, what generous marriage podcast is all about, it’s a free podcast that you can listen to anytime, anywhere. And I learn about the framework of the generous marriage and that framework is based on research and tools created by many talented, um, marriage advice or say, and a skillful, uh, researchers. And we are, we, we, we, we see ourselves as both students of this concept of generous marriage and thinkers in this, uh, area. Um, in our own way, our own humble way. So we are here to share with you our ideas on generous marriage. And if you understand what we’re all about, then you’re in the right place. So with that said, we really do want to give you some value right away. So how can they sell? So how can people save 750 bucks in this holiday season where we’re going to as soon as possible. Right now, give you three tips to save that money Shachar. Tell us all about the first one. 

3 tips-Main Takeaways 

All right. First one is a preparation conversation. And what I mean by that is you need to be ready. It’s going to be stressful and they want to sit together and prepare and we’ll talk more about it later. Or do you want me to say more about it right now? Would you say? Well, we, we’re, we’ll talk about it later, but just give us, give us a little bit about what should we talk about in that conversation.

Well, first of all, we should connect and re eh, mind ourselves that we are a team and we’re in it together and that we’re going to go through this stress together and maybe together it will be less stressful and we want them to be ready for the stressful events or things that could happen and find ways to overcome them and um, and be ready for the whole, uh, for the challenges and some for the fund as well. Yeah, and I think the underlining the underlying principle here is that you have to do this conversation just with yourself. You’re, that’s going to manage to save 750 bucks on gifts just by deciding it and not shanky these, this plan of yours with your spouse. So that’s a very important point. Could stand it wants to be generous. To be deciding things by yourself is not, is never generous. And talking about it together, reaching a conclusion about, yes, you know, this is a negotiation even easy or spouse with you on this. If she is not, then maybe this is not the right time. Maybe next year, uh Oh, maybe she’s okay with 750 bucks of expenditure instead of a thousand, I dunno. At least. Yeah, you saved 250 bucks potential. So yeah.

So the second tip we have is all about the list and we’re not talking about a list where you kinda go back in time and check what they gave you in all sorts of stuff like that. This is not our point of view. We actually are trying to be generous. So what you’re going to do is prepare a list of the people that you feel, that you need without looking at anything physical in your life. Just from your feelings, from your, uh, connections with, with the world around you. Who are the people that you really need and want and desire to give them a gift. Like think about it as if those people are the people that you will take with you to to, I dunno to a Cruise ship, a vacation. Like if he, if it’s not mandatory that if you, if you don’t feel like they have to come with you to the Cruise ship because they are really a part of the Familia and a part of your life, then maybe they can get out of the list. So don’t try to be ultra nice, just a right to feel who are the people that are in your list and then, you will probably, we’ll talk about it later. Who will also try to show them the list there. I said it, you know it’s okay, you’re going to be better if you will manage to go over the list and shorten it a bit and try to, to make it as, as a realistic as possible is, is as generous as you can afford and without adding so much stress on you.

And then we call it the ICU gift that a big part of what we want to convey today is that, being generous is not about money, it’s about making the gift receiver feel seen, feel loved, like you know them. Like you know what they like, like you know what’s important to them. And that might not be a material gift at all and it might be a material gift from this kind or the other. So the right gift, Eh, is way more valuable than it’s a dollar a worth. Yeah. So we go through the list that you made earlier in tip number two and you try to find the right kind of gift for each loved their person that you have on the list.

And I just want to say one last thing about that. The idea is not to add stress and find that perfect, perfect, perfect. Yeah gift. And now it’s more about the creativity and then it can actually be fun. Okay. Yeah. And actually we, you know, with a list of options that we’ve created, it’s not going to be expensive and it’s not going to be hard. And you can pick a few of them for different people and, and save weight. Let’s save tons of money. Another thing that we want to mention is the gift of quality time. And this is a little bit counter intuitive. It’s, it’s you, you feel like maybe you’re not generous enough because they’re not spending money, but actually, you know, um, giving someone like a coupon that you printed that says you know, that you’re going to spend someone, some, some in the cinema with them or that you’re taking them or for a coffee break or that you’re taking them for lunch or that you’re doing, I dunno, camping with them. And you know, you sit down there, you scheduled this. That is for some people, for quite a lot of people. Potentially, you know, even your spouse and kids or even, you know. My dad, he, he just wants us to go and watch basketball together. I don’t like basketball, but that’s what he wants, you know, and it’s all about the quality time. So the gift of time, that something that is underrated, underutilized and you can actually use it and save tons of money. Yeah.

I love this one. Very Generous, very generous. Donate it. You know, so many of us, we don’t really need those gifts that we give and that we get. How about we decide everyone together that we’re just gonna donate their money to a cause that really is important to us, that is close to our heart. Oh Man. If you come to to, to a family gathering and you say, guys, this time instead of buying gifts for everyone, I donated 500 bucks to this association. Oh Man. I think you will be the hero of the day. Everyone will actually applaud and be happy with what you did. And Yeah. So yeah, I think if you suggested this ahead of time, probably most of your family members will join. Oh yeah. And then you can, you can change the world.

So what, uh, what are we going to do here today? Well, we’re starting with understanding what exactly is gifting stress. That’s an actual thing that, that affects you. And we want you to know the research behind that and then we will share you with, a bit of uh, of color and story about us so that you know, you know, who are we Ziv Raviv and Shachar Erez we will give you four steps to overcome the gifting stress in very, you know, in many, many details and everything will be clear by the end of this webinar. And finally, we’ll get a small gift from us and that’s the gift, uh, of the generous partnership armor. We’ll talk about that then. So, uh, I feel, uh, that we’re ready. Are you ready? Shachar? I love this Santa. Yeah, I am ready. Yes. Santa itself seems like he’s already on his way and he’s ready. He’s preparing for the season as well. Yes. Just buying the last few of the gifts. So take it away. Shahar tell us about this thing called holiday stress and and gifting stress.

Why Stress increases during the Holiday Season?

A few years ago, the APA, the American psychological association did a survey and they found out that 44% of women, almost half of the women and 31% of the men, third of the men report that the an increase of stress during the holiday season. So instead of relaxing and enjoying, they are actually more stressed during this time. Now, where we went and searched for a how much people actually spend and the National Retail Federation expects that in 2018 this year, shoppers will spend more than a thousand dollars each thousand and $7 yeah. This is easy because it’s just glows like the, that we actually look, there’s data, right? A yearly data in every year it’s like 4% more, you know, it’s going to be $1 billion is pretty solid so much. It’s amazing. It’s just getting worse and worse. Yeah. And I know people that actually struggle to put groceries on the table on some months, that extra thousand bucks. It doesn’t come from nowhere. You need to either take it on depth or it’s really hard. That’s what happens is more credit card debt.

Main Source of Stress

And you know, the reasons for the stress, the sources of stress, uh, out of those people that are stressed, 76% say they’re worried about money and 70% of them say they, they’re worried about having to buy gifts. These are, these are the mental reasons. There’s also in that list, there’s also a lack of time and the family gathering stress. We talked about the family gathering stress in the other Webinar we made a couple of weeks ago. But these are the top two reasons. And so this is why we’re doing this Webinar to tackle the and help people be less worried, less stressed. Okay. I think we should tackle the time one next time in December. I think we should help people, uh, find ways to tackle this time stress. Let’s think about it. Okay.

Who is the team behind the Generous Marriage Podcast?

So who are we? Shachar, why are you, so I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist. I was asked as in California and now I live in Israel, so I’m licensed here as well. I’ve been married for 11 years. We’ve been together for 13 years. Me and Judy, my wife, we have two great kids, uh, two and a half year old and a six and a half year old. And I really love working with couples. You know, I love helping them fall in love again, good couples therapy is really all about falling in love again. And a big part of that is generosity. I, I think, uh, you only know that I told before, but I think deciding on helping people, I know couples to fall in love again, that’s might by itself shows generosity. Uh, and, and I can see other ways where you will, you know, uh, just sharing advice or listen or, or be a family therapist or a marriage and family therapist without, you know, caring about people’s emotions. That’s just fixing stuff. I Dunno. And, uh, and, and if with you, it’s so clear how important it is for you that people will actually be connected to that wonderful feeling of love that, uh, that’s created the partnership to begin with. 

Um, on, on my side, I ran businesses. That’s what I do. I’m podcaster and I have online schools and podcasts and I’m a businessman. And uh, I’m married with both him and we have three kids. I actually married my high school sweetheart. Uh, so 18 years ago, that’s when we got, uh, when we got married. And then, uh, for my experience, if you’re interested in business, if you’re doing anything in business, uh, for my experience, it is a correlation, just a huge correlation between your success level and the communication, uh, and your skills in your connection and your partnership with your spouse. So if you’re not working actively on really dialing in to your spouse and working on, um, understanding each other, then you’re amazing. You’re actually blocking yourself, uh, on your business as well.

And now there’s research that shows that people in happy marriages and live longer, uh, uh, our healthier and make 25% more money. Yeah, than people unhappy marriages. I, I believe it, I believe in and it’s all interconnected. It’s just amazing how interconnected it seems. So let’s help people save some money in overcome this stressful period of time. Uh, moving forward, we’re still in November now, today, but just in a few days you’re going to go into the most stressful periods of times in the history of mankind and that’s like December 18.

How to Overcome the Stress of Money and Gifts?

So we are going to work with four C, four steps. The first step system, uh, that is something that is useful. You know, no matter what you’re trying to solve, if you’ll, if you can manage to split it into four different steps, there’s a good chance there will be small enough to, easy to understand. And it’s the same time practical. And um, yeah, so we, we’ve split it into those four before the shopping season. That’s like right away. Literally, we want you to watch this Webinar and finalize the discussion and the planning. And all of that just within the next few days. And then the weekend pretty much. Yeah, that’s the, that’s what you need to do. And then step two is getting through the actual shopping season. We have quite a few tips that are very practical and very, uh, generous as well. And then step three, how to enjoy the actual holidays. We want you to enjoy this. It’s the holiday season. It is a family, it’s family time, it’s time for, for disconnecting from the stress of the year and starting to plan the next year. How can you properly plan the next year if you’re, you know, you’re, you’re, you keep thinking about, oh man, what if the gift is on? What if I didn’t buy enough gifts while, you know, how can I pay for all of that and all of that stress. So we want you to enjoy the holidays and we’ll give you a few tips about that. And finally, how to wrap up at the spore says and get into the new year. So solution about, you know, what you did here. Okay. So we’re going to start with, uh, before the shopping season and please explain to us Shachar, what can a couple, what kind of partners the partners can do. Uh, in this situation.

Things to do Before Shopping Season

This is a super important step. It’s it, it lays the foundation for the whole month or a coming up and it’s about preparing together and their preparation conversation is actually about reminding ourselves we were a team. So you’re going to sit together and vision, um, the whole, uh, shopping season and the holidays themselves and Eh, prepare for the hard spots. You know, we call it a prepare for the failure. And you really want to see where it might be hard and how you’re going to get through it together, how you could support each other, how you could take stress off each other. And they always the good way to start a conversation like this, which might be triggering, you know, if you, if you’ve had past experiences that weren’t good at, we’re too stressful. So start with gratitude. Gratitude is a great way to open our hearts and allow us to, uh, what’s the word? I forget who it took to calm down and relax ourselves. And you can be grateful about, you know, your life and other people.

It’s really cool if you’re grateful about each other about your partner. And I mentioned some things that Eh, you’re thankful for that you’re sitting in out together, that you’re doing this together. Like even just a, so it’s like it’s been 11 months that you’ve been doing stuff for, for one another, for 11 months. You know, maybe one of them, one of you did more of the laundry and maybe one of you did more of taking out the trash and it doesn’t matter which one of you did more of what, but showing gratitude for, for the other partner about that, that something, that is an opportunity, right? And you can do a few rounds of that. It doesn’t need to be one thing and you can, you know, just let yourself really feel the gratitude, appreciation and give each other as you give her, she gives you or you know, it doesn’t matter the genders here. Yeah. I think that’s how you get to the point, like the picture of this sweet couple that uh, you know, they just gave each other, showed some gratitude to one another like five, six times. He’s just makes you happy and grateful. It brings you back to the days in your partnership where you will calling each other with all sorts of names like schmoopy and stuff. And also we recommend talking about what is meaningful, what is meaningful for you in the holidays. Like is it about family? Is it about tradition? Is it about gratitude? Is it about, you know, the coming of flight into the great darkness. What is it about this time that means a lot for you and how you care? How can you support each other in, in getting that? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe just food. Yes. Good food. Good drinking with the family. I Dunno.

Maybe for some that’s okay too, but talk about it. Just exchange, exchange the ideas and that creates the foundation for, for the, for the next day. Because apart for starting with gratitude and telling each other, we’re going to work as a team in this for holiday. For me, it’s the food for you, it’s the family. After that you’re going to basically talk about the actual process of saving money. Like you’re going to make a decision about saving money and that decision is not going to be that easy. Um, you need to be both aligned on, on this idea in. And one way to do this one framework is actually a tactic for handling a conversation of that salt in negotiating even between partners. And that is a technique by Alison Armstrong. Uh, and the technically is the, if I had it all my way, if I had it my way, the hate the conversation so that the, the, if I had it my way, conversation starts by two people sitting down after the did to the, the gratitude and uh, stuff like that. And then one side of the partnership says, if I had it all my way, we will do this. Like for example, we will not buy anything for Uncle Jack and we will spend only 250 bucks. And then you don’t start by just saying it by the way, just saying if I had it all my way, just exposing yourself that much, that shows that, that you need to, to be vulnerable in order to say that because that aside might say you’re crazy. We’re not, you’re not getting it all your way. Right. It’s an option.

So just the fact that you’re coming to the partnership and your exposing what you really want, um, that is really powerful in curing shame and in um, creating a connection. But you are not going to just say what what you wanted to achieve. Like if you had it or my all your way, you’re also going to say what it will mean to you. So for example, if I had it all my way, we wouldn’t buy a gift this year to Uncle Jack. And what it will mean for me if we manage to a grantees is that we will probably save, you know, hundreds of bucks on the or on, on this season. And that money is money that stresses me out. And when I’m stressed about money, I can’t really notice that the kids needs me and they want to play with me because I’m so focused on trying to come up with how, how are we going to deal with the money? And so now that you’ve explained what was the reason why you really wanted it this way, your spouse will actually care to listen and maybe even just say, well, let’s do it then. Let’s do it your way. And another thing that might come and happen is that she will not be able to have it all your way. She might actually, the partner might say, well, if I had it all my way, then we would buy jack a gift, but it will be something very symbolic, even up to 20 bucks. Right? So suddenly there was a suggestion for a compromise because you explained what will be the meaning of you having it all your way. And sometimes it’s okay to take the second option or to continue the debates, uh, in a very respectful manner and tried to find the common ground. And sometimes it’s the first option. Sometimes it’s the second, sometime it’s the six, but you’re acting like partners. You’re trying to find a solution together.

And many times the six or whatever around it comes up, feels magical. It’s like a solution that wasn’t obvious at the beginning, but something in the way that you were vulnerable with each other and a release and really careful to each other creates this magic that brings a creative cooperative solution that wasn’t available earlier. Even just to say out loud to your spouse, if I heard it or my way, this is what I would want it, you know, I would want us to do that is such a declaration of us. We are in this together. We are, we know working actively on fulfilling our needs, our dreams. And you know, we’re two human beings, so I have my way of, of seeing feet and you have yours and let’s talk about it. So you can use this not just for the shopping season, you can use it every couple of months. So every three months come to to your partner and tell her I want to have a, if I had it all my way conversation. Um, and you can do that every time there seems to be a conflict of needs or have a dreams. It’s time. Yeah. Yep. I found it very magical when a rotem listens to me saying that and more, more often than not, she will say, okay, if that’s what you need, because I explained why I needed it that way. Sure, let’s do that. So, so it’s, before that I was frustrated. I was like keeping it all inside and I didn’t feel it’s okay to say, you know, here’s what I really want. I wanted to just like that. Just exactly like that. And it’s a, it’s a matter of overcoming the shame in being vulnerable.

So another thing that you need to do with it might be a game, right? You might turn it into a game sitting down together over a nice cup of, I dunno, whatever you want to drink, like coffee or tea and cutting released, like creating released of who will get a gift and how much you’re going to spend on the gift and making it shorter and smaller. And you know, just trying to fit into a budget. By the way, even if you fail to fit into the goal of the, the dream budget of 250 bucks instead of a thousand, you don’t manage to do that. You only made to get to let’s say 400 bucks. You still agree actually said 600 bucks. It’s like a huge advance and huge progress. And in many, many complicated situations in life and in business, we make lists, uh, and we, and they help us plan. And so why wouldn’t we do that for something that cost us 1000 bucks and well, it’s just, it’s, it’s the, just the crazy to not do this, uh, and skip this step. You just need to sit down and, and go over the details and try to plan it out. Yeah. It actually, it takes a lot of stress just to point it out on paper already takes out stress of having to have it in your mind and thinking and being confused about this stuff really takes away a lot of stress. That’s really, yeah, it can, it can really be fun. And it’s something that makes, uh, make sense in so many levels. Like there’s nearly no way for you to save money if on anything, especially on gifts. If you don’t have a good idea of, well, how many gifts are you going to be? Well, how many people will, who are those people will you need to buy them all the same thing. You know, there’s so many details involved in this. If you won’t make the least, it will be very hard for you to manage everything inside your head and you’re not supposed to manage it alone. You’re supposed to manage it as a partnership. Okay.

Getting Through Shopping Season-The ICU Gift

So, uh, that will step one before you’re going to do the conversation, you’re going to talk with your spouse, you’re going to make the decisions and the list. And then we’re getting to, you know, actually going through the shopping season at itself and we’re going to share with you the ICU gift. In order to understand the ICU gift, I needed to get some grasp on a concept form our toolbox of, of, of love, of joy or degenerates marriage called the five love languages. Shachar. Please explain that.

Five love languages is a concept that comes from doctor Jerry and Chapman. Yes. Who understood that as human beings we have the bias and our perception. We think that everybody is like us. And if something makes me feel loved, then it probably makes everyone feel up. So we have this mistake in our head that Lexus give love in a way that, you know, it doesn’t really, you don’t really know if it makes the other field loved it next as Philip. So what they found out that there’s like five main areas that make people feel loved and they are a physical touch. And words of affirmation and acts of service and quality time and gifting, small gifts that show that you care. And what is trying to help us understand is our own love language and our partner or our kids or our loved ones. What is there lab language. So we give, give them what actually makes them feel loved.

Yeah. And so the old concept of the ICU gift is to take into consideration that there’s a better way to express love, not necessarily that um, one, one way that fits everyone and knowing that is the basis of, of the ICU gifts. So one we’re going to share with you a few gifts that you can use as an ICU gift that will save you money and will potentially create an, a better result like your return on investment, um, in, in terms of how much money you spend and how much love you get out of it is going to be so much better.

So the first thing that you, we want you to like later on, maybe Google or maybe press this a link over here is a picture popup box. There are so many picture pop up boxes these days on youtube that you can actually create these by yourself. And it’s basically, um, something that you can even buy if you’re too busy to make these or you’re not the crafty kind. Uh, you can buy these on Amazon, you can buy these in alley aliexpress. You can buy this now and get it on time. And it’s not expensive. It’s like 12 bucks or up to 30 bucks depending on the size of the popup box. And it’s basically place where you can put pictures and a small note that says something cool about the person that you know, and maybe you want to remind them, it’s something that connected you together. And remember when we were 29 and we went to the Niagara Falls, so remember when, uh, our first child was born and here’s a picture of him from that day. Like, just sit down and invest some time in populating the po the box. But when you get it and you open it and you go through it, it just creates such a connection with the a person. And that is a huge experience. My wife would love that. She would totally melt. Oh Wow. Yup. And you can, you can prepare by the way, the popup to get a, if it has a gift like for someone else. So like if you making this for your mom in law with your spouse, then that would be very generous, right? Because of the, because of the investment of quality time.

 Now, um, another way to show someone that you see them is like with my daughter that loves Unicorns, that, that, that the idea that you acknowledge that someone has a hobby. Now it doesn’t mean I have to buy the most expensive thing in the hobby. Like if someone loves, loves to play guitars, I can either buy an expensive guitar or just buy him a book about guitars, right. Over a picture of guitars. Right? So a statute. So there’s so many other things that documented the fact that you acknowledge, you know them, you know, they care about this topic, but you don’t have to basically do anything except for documented. Just showed that you know, that they love that hobby. And that is the gift itself, the gift of seeing that.

Another thing that is very inexpensive as trophies, you can give a medal for Uncle Jack for being the best uncle ever and that will cost you eight bucks. And you know, we in even with the engraving, they might only have jack engraved on the medal. Uh, if you’re lucky and a, and it’s just like Uncle Jack is going to feel amazing by getting some trophies and medals and yes, you know, you, you tell everyone today we’ve decided to give you medals for how we love you and how much your meaningful for us and you give them, I think they will love it way, way more than we bought you some bottle of wine and chocolate that cost us 80 bucks each and you don’t eat that chocolate and you don’t drink that wine like, um, so be, it becomes routine.

And of course you know, all of those type of gifts you can prepare them together, which will, you can do that with your kids in certain ages. They can sit down and have so much fun with you. Decorating debt picture popup box or, or deciding, you know, what to write for the trophy. Okay. Shachar.

 More Tips about The ICU Gift

I guess like for example, if you gave someone a trophy, you know, men, we work for points with love trophies, but it’s really, really great if you can explain why this specific. So uncle Jack, you’re the best anchor because you hug us when you come and you take us to places and you’re always smiling and really be specific. Explain what it is it’s about uncle Jack or whomever you gave the gift to that makes them so special. How could them feel even more scene, right? Sometimes the gifts need some more explaining. Yeah. Like for example, if you’re giving like a statue or a picture that acknowledges someone’s hobby, then by explaining, you know, this is not a picture, this is a symbol of how amazing I think you are by, you know, doing all of those bicycle trainings and how it’s important for you and for much. Yeah. And, and, and just like, uh, uh, like I want you to always remember that you’re super cool. So put these on your wall and remember that your cool, um, that is a cool gift by itself.

Another thing that you can do is prepare every day for this upcoming month. You can prepare a video, uh, and share a story like even two minutes on your commute. Don’t do it while you’re driving. Be Safe. But, uh, like you can take a break on walk and just do a video that tells you, hey mom, remember when I was 27 you said this? And I said that, uh, he love you and I appreciate that you said that it was so good that you did. And then the next day you might say, hey mom, um, I, what I really love about your Eggnog is the fact that he just so tasty. Like everyday you shared a video of one minute, two minute, 30 seconds of how you feel about that person and you put all of those videos on a flash drive that gifts is something that will mean way, way, way more than spending 60 bucks or 120 bucks on some clauses. And you can have so much fun doing that. It can be so much fun. Just remembering all those moments and putting them on a video. It’s not just fun and generous. It’s also going to actually rewire your brain because you’re showing gratitude. You’re basically showing gratitude and that rewires your brain to notice, uh, happy things more easily to be optimistic. It’s just, just such a wonderful habits to help. You might even later on decide to continue with it after that. And if you do, please send us an email to [email protected].

So finally, there’s the matter of low tech documentation, which is just as powerful, like just writing carbs to people. Uh, and uh, may maybe doing a journal where you write down every day, uh, just with the pen and paper in the journal, why you appreciate a certain certain people and give that as the gift. Uh, well he talks in the generous marriage podcast about the idea of postage notes. Um, I dunno, we feel if I mentioned this lately, Shachar Beattyville ever since that episode where we mentioned that I am still using this tactic and giving a posted note every day for each family member and those things mean so much for them. Yeah. In, in the, in my daughter’s bed it just notes everywhere. Um, Yup.

Getting Through Shopping Season

And so, uh, we want to give you more tips on how to get through this uh, shopping season and you, Shachar, you work a lot of people that has stress in their life for all sorts of reasons and some things that apply to this situation specifically as well. So there is all about that, right? We live in the age of stress and stress is, you know, super problematic web, so many diseases and the stuff that happens to us these days because of stress and it’s really a shame that people get even more stressed for the holidays. But there are ways to work through that. And so one really effective way is the daily venting conversation and the daily venting conversation goes, bye. You meet every night and you spend time that you did, you decide ahead of of time how long it’s going to be. Usually it’s like 15 minutes each and each person just vents about everything other than your partner. So about your boss and about the lines at the mall and about the parking and about the lack of time, lack of money, whatever stresses you out, whatever you need to vent about and your partner is just listening and showing eh that she or he understands and that they are in it with you together, no criticism, no judgment, no advice, just listening and being there for each other and then you switch. Okay.

Of course the 15 minutes is too long for you. You can do less of that or if you said the ahead of time, you’re going to do 15 minutes, but then after 10 minutes you had enough venting. You can send a break, you can be grateful, you can do other stuff, but it’s really about letting the stress out and feeling like it’s okay. Someone is listening to you and you’re not alone in this. This is something that is going to be needed because interest month you will find out all sorts of situations. Some people that you know bought expensive gifts and that will fill you, that will make you feel either shame or stress or or end gear, all sorts of feelings. And if you do that, find a way to communicate about that and strengthen each other, you know, through, through, um, reconnecting and re-establishing the partnership that is going to be harder on you. So that’s daily venting conversation is going to be a lifesaver. Yeah. Another great way to handle stress is taking care of yourself. People should have, most people already have that. People should have self care habits. It’s really well researched. For example, three times a week, 30 minutes of exercise is just great at reducing stress and releasing the court is of the hormones of stress and letting them get out of your body. Also meditation and mindfulness is of course a great way. And people have other, uh, kind of habits, spending time in nature, spending time with friends. Whatever is your spouse habit, make sure he or she does it, you know, because we get so stressed sometimes when we’re stressed, we are actually take, we don’t take a good care enough, good care of ourselves. But in times of stress we need to double our self care habits and also support each other in going to the gym. Uh, during the meditation, doing whatever makes you feel better and a more relaxed and less stressed.

And finally we want to talk about the emotional bank account, which is, uh, an idea that comes from Dr John Gottman, the famous a couples, a researcher. And it talks about the emotional bank account that couples have, that when it’s full, things are easy. Love is flowing, you’re generous with each other. If you miss each other, sometimes it doesn’t develop to a fad. You can go over these kinds of hurdles pretty easily. And if the emotional bank account is low on funds, it’s a bit harder. Know everything is annoying. You fight more than usual, you argue more than usual. If you’re in the red, if you’re overdraft, you know the house feels like a battlefield, you fight over every little thing and then you should probably go to therapy and money. In this emotional bank account. Currency is connection. Every time you bid for connection, every time you try to connect with your partner, you invest some money in this emotional bank account. And, and, and connection can be just a look in their eyes or smile or a touch. And it can be bigger things, you know, uh, if you bring flowers to each other or if you do things for each other, if you have great sex, that’s another great way to reduce stress and, uh, invest in your emotional bank accounts. When you say sorry, when you take responsibility, when you, uh, appreciate each other. These are good investments. So remember the emotional bank account and this, especially in this time of stress and you know, in other times of stress in your life, put more attention into it, give more attention into connecting and seeing each other more.

Eh, I really love this one because it’s all about how you design your life and how you, you, if you, if you’re not doing certain things like creating that connection, um, and investing money into the, you know, investing connection into the motion bank account, then eventually you will go into the red. Um, and I just, it just links me to, to a conversation I had earlier today with someone that was considering joining one of my coaching programs and we talked about their body and how they don’t exercise and how they don’t do anything like that to, to help them harness, harness, you know, selfless spect and soothe themselves through that. And basically, I, I, I basically said this is a go no go type of situation either. If you’re, if we’re going to work together and if I’m going to coach you on business, you going to have to commit to doing some workouts. That’s it. It as it has, it has to be in the gym outside. If it’s snowing right now, you don’t have to drive to the gym. There are many, many ways, um, of, of you, you know, using your body and getting fitter and you know, creating the situation of, of self soothing. So yeah, it’s really important.

Going out a Date with your Partner 

Um, so we are, we also want you to enjoy the holidays and its a wonderful, wonderful opportunity to actually, um, be with your loved ones. And it also can be a little bit of stress. I stress a situation with a family gatherings. Yeah. Um, Shachar we, we will be discussed the family gatherings in length in, in the other Webinar we did a couple of weeks ago. And if you go to generous marriage.com you can find it on the webinars tab. But I just want to make our listeners and the people that watch this Webinar, make them into some love Ninja and some generous ninja. And so please explain to us how people can harness the scheduled check ins. Um, and I will talk about the money traps. So we talked about connection earlier in the emotional bank account that the scheduled check ins are a way to make sure you connect, you know, even through the uh, sometimes, uh, crazy times in, in, in the holidays or at the family gathering or just preparing for the holidays and then will preparation and then buying gifts and everything that it needs to be taken care of and all these parties at work. And you know, there’s just so many things. Is you scheduled check ins, you know, we talked about the [inaudible], the venting gay conversation earlier. You can say that’s a kind of a check in, but getting through the holidays, you, you, you set up a couple of times, um, that you know ahead of time what would be the tight by the clock time and it might be an event, you know, before the meal, after the meal, whatever works for you that you go outside or you find a quiet corner, just you and your spouse do, you and your partner. And you check in with each other. How are you, how’s it being, what do you need? What do you need? Right now. How can I take some stress off of you? What kind of support can I give you? It’s really about connecting and showing that you care and, and, and uh, offering your help in supporting each other. Yup. The scheduled check ins might be for a few weeks now during the season, before the actual holiday. It’s might be a weekly date where you go over the list and you complement each other about how you manage not to spend extra money on, on more gifts. I’m on, uh, on those specific people that are in the list. And so the scheduling of, of a checking, it can be done within the event, within the actual holiday before the holiday. It’s just very important. Uh, like me my wife, we have two weekly our check ins when your date night and one which is like home date night.

And in both of them we, we, we even use them to schedule additional check ins on certain weeks that are very stressful. So, so it’s really, really powerful, powerful thing. Now we also need you to remember the context of this Webinar, which is saving money. Um, and be establishing generosity in your life and saving money at the same time. But we, we need you to know that this, a lot of people will try to make you spend more money. Uh, they call it, you know, a shopping mall. That’s, that’s a big, big money trap. And uh, uh, very smart people out there trying to make you go into that money trap and tried to make you spend more money. Now, and that’s saying that you can’t go to a shopping mall, but you need to be very intentional about the fact that they are going to make you try buy the more expensive stuff by showing you the discounts.

So you plan to spend only 50 bucks. They show you a gift that is 200 bucks off. So it’s only 100 bucks, but it’s usually 300. And suddenly you forgot that you only have a budget of 50 bucks. And because they discounted it from 300 to a hundred, you feel like this is an amazing opportunity. It’s not. It’s a way to sell you more stuff that you don’t need and to make you spend more money. And the same goes with, you know, good old, uh, Amazons. Uh, um, if you bought this, you might want to buy to buy this or all sorts of websites that say is uh, you know, hey, just one, just this moment. Um, some x x x person from Y, Y, y location actually bought uh this product, right now. And this creates this wiring in your brain where you’re feeling urgency, where you’re feeling go, I should hurry up and buy this right now because otherwise they won’t be enough items or something like that. And the, you know, it’s a, it’s a trap. Uh, those, those people, uh, can, you know, set up or have that automatically so that it will look like many people are buying, um, that out. So the Armani traps out there, you need to avoid them in order to actually be able to stick to your plan. And another concept we wanted to talk about, Shachar, maybe you can explain just in shorts, because we did talk about the team. There were other Webinar, but what is planning for the failure? How can this help us?

It’s preparing ahead of time for, for the challenges is preparing for where you might fail or where you might feel bad, where things might not work so much and it might be a long day holiday season. But here we mean more about the holiday itself and you know, maybe there’s this uncle gets your triggered or this mother in law that wants you could do stuff that you don’t want to and you know, just see where things might go wrong and think ahead of time how you can avoid those things or get through them in a smoother way. Yup. And yeah, there might be, you know, someone that’s will comment on the gift that you’re giving them. They might even say something that is very painful. Like what’s that it or something like that. Like I can imagine my dad grandmas saying that, uh, I got blessed and uh, and yeah, like, uh, you, it’s okay to talk about is it’s okay. I have, I’m afraid that this will happen. And like, just sitting down with your partner and talking about what will be the part that would be, uh, most painful for you. That by itself. We probably make that thing kind of not be as painful because you’ll ready for it. So, uh, tell us, uh, about this then. Yes.

Gender Gap Around Holiday Stress

Survey talked about earlier, finds that there’s a gender gap around holiday stress. Women get much more stressed during the holidays. And the reason is they work harder on preparing meals and then the house and the table and whatever needs to be needed and they’re just less good at resting. Men are better at allowing themselves to rest. You know, Eh, it says here, 41% of men strongly agreed that they will feel like they can relax during the holidays, but only a quarter of women feel this way. And, and we want to suggest that if you’re a guy and you can be generous with your wife and help around the house because you care, that would be awesome. And we want to give you another incentive. So Dr John Gottman, we mentioned him earlier, he found in his research in research that women find the men’s willingness to do housework, extremely erotic. You know, some people call it a female, a women’s porn, you know, when the guy who cleans the house. So consider being generous and helping around, isn’t it a bit for a selfish reasons. So be more like this, uh, santa dude and uh, it’s, it’s quite amazing how in 2018, this is still a huge thing and I think it will be somewhat the same in the future as well because there’s a lot of hormones in play creating these situations. So I’m talking about how men has this testerone in the brain causing them to single focus. And that ability to single focus also allows them to single focus on sleeping and resting, uh, in the middle of the dinner. Like, even, and women has something that Alison Armstrong describes as diffused awareness or diffused focus and you, you keep hearing all of those, all of those voices from around you, from the surrounding telling you what is, what is on getting to what is needed to be done and then that you, how can you relax, how can you sleep when the laundry is calling you and the dishes are talking to you and they are not talking in a nice voice like, hey, look at me. Please come here. No, the shouting at you and they’re talking down on you. So it’s not a coincidence that that only a third of the women said, Oh yeah, I will be able to relax, uh, in the, in the holiday. So it’s really, really important.

So, um, at the end of the year there will be some new year’s resolutions, uh Shachar, what, what is the process that is important here that talk. I think it’s important to process how it’s been, how the holiday season was and the preparation was, and maybe learn from it. And maybe next year do it even better. No, maybe next year you can do it even less stressful, more fun, more connection. So, uh, reflect back on the past month or a month and a half and see how it’s been. And again, gratitude, you know, say thank you to each other. You went through this, hopefully it was better than last year. Okay. And even if it wasn’t, at least you tried, at least you are a team. You were together. So expressing gratitude here is also great. It’s, well, it’s always great. And make a resolution, you know, make a reservation for the whole here year that you got to be generous, be generous with each other, going to be generous with your kids. And generosity is such a great way to, to handle your life. And it’s just so healthy and nurturing and eh, Eh, Eh, just makes you feel good and you know, you can resolve to listen more to the generous marriage podcast. It’s really a great inspiration on being generous.

It’s a way to touch base with yourself, to remind yourself that generosity is an important part of any partnership and focus of marriage. And a, I really resonate with that. Like a let’s make 2019 the year of generosity and let’s do that together. You know, you and your spouse, you and us, you know, um, let’s try to get as many people on board of this as possible so that, you know, people would be happier and more fulfilled with their marriages and it’s just a, even just you talking about the generous marriage podcast would be a generous thing to do for your friends in depth in that regard.

 

Additional Tips in Fixing Gifts Issue

So we have a additional, additional tip, that is a little bit more more um, powerful in fixing the, the, the gifts issue and uh, it’s not something that we, we were a little bit afraid to say it by ourselves, but Martin Lewis came in and just for the UK and just said it very clearly. We actually put the link here for the video so you can watch it later on. But there are other ways, eh, to not give gifts at, at all and save families in America say they want to ban gift exchanging. They want to opt out of gift exchanging. Yeah. And I did. And many people, many families are doing it already and some of them have great ideas. You know, some of they, they volunteer together, they go, the whole family goes together too. I want to shelter and, and you know, feed, feed the homeless. It’s such a great experience, you know, being, being uh, eh in service this way is just a great way to, to, to spend the holidays. Oh, such a, an amazing educational message for your kids as well. Yeah, a very humbling and heart opening experience. Also donating to charity now instead of giving a material gifts you donate to charity on behalf of, of the, of your loved one. And there are many other ways of opting out but still being generous, still exchanging energy of gifts even without spending money. There’s a lot of, uh, great ideas online as well and they think it’s really worth even watching this margin. Lewis video it really well.

And if you do decide to Ben a gift gifted changing and to harness, you know, to, to uh, get your family involved on this and to put everyone, uh, on the same page, in the same boat, uh, on this, then what one of the things you can do, you can actually share this webinar on the generous marriage.com website. It will be there as a replay for free and you could share this with them and to show them the poor sense of understanding that there is a, it is okay also to decide not to give gifts. Yes. And we do recommend here. And also, you know, I forgot to say it when we were talking about the list and cutting it. I think one of one important thing to do when you cut your list on one or when you decide to opt out is communicated, you know, be responsible about it. Be, what’s the word? Not Responsible. Then behind it, you know, just, Eh, let the people that you’re not going to let the people know that you’re not going to give them a gift. Don’t, don’t hide it. Don’t be ashamed of it. Be Proud of that, you know, talk about the spending less money, spending less time saving, the environment being more sustainable or many good reason why not to go into this commercialism and uh, you know, hiker capitalism that, uh, has been, has become part of this, Eh, this holiday season.

It’s, it’s just, uh, we’re, we’re in a world today where a person can decide to duties vegan person can decided he’s the tea doesn’t, uh, that he recycles everything that he can and, and, and so on and so forth. Like, why not also decided that you are opting out of gift exchange him? It’s, it’s, it’s, we’ll be okay, you can do this. So we want to wrap up today.

The Generous Partnership Armor 

We gave you the first steps. We want to also give you the generous partnership armor and it all starts with the weekly date night. You have to be pretty much crazy if you’re, if you opted out of a date night routine. I, you know, some people do it because of the money because like finding a good babysitter and then that extra money of the babysitter can really make a difference. But there are ways to have a weekly date night. We’re actually working on, on helping people through this, um, through, you know, creating a resource for youth so that every date night you have a very clear thing that you need to talk about or play or do. And that is something that we will talk about it later in January in the generous marriage.com a website. But you need to have the ability to go on date night if he, even if it’s not expensive, it’s not about the money. It’s about the time that you spent together about reconnecting, about charging your partnership with generosity. And so this is our mission in the generalists marriage podcast in the gym, generous marriage.com um, we, we have a vision where people fall in love again and people strengthen the connection and they have this, this actual Alamo around them that protects their partnership. And that protection, you know, is made not of metal that armor, is made out of generosity. So if you understand what we’re all about and you want to support us, we would really appreciate if you go and just talk about us just to go to Facebook and do a post with Hashtag generous marriage or oh, with uh, the website link, generous marriage.com, uh, go obviously and subscribe to the generous marriage podcast on your podcast app, on your iPhone or on your stitcher. Those things. Uh, even just one of them would help us help other people in their journey of strengthening the partnership armor, and you know, guys, I’m not really sure why you showed up today, to this webinar about saving money on the holidays.

I think it’s, you know, you’re here today because more than just money and I want you to take a moment and think about that, that, that, why that reason, that was the reason behind the reason, like not just why you came here to, to learn how to save money, but why was that important for you in to why? What do you will really hoping to achieve by being here? And, uh, maybe you’re just a bit concerned about the money. Oh, maybe you actually know that your marriage requires some walk and that’s okay. I need some work on my marriage and everyone needs to work on my marriage. It will be, I want to say even a sin if you think otherwise. But that work is, it doesn’t mean that, that it’s easy. It’s not.

Ending

So we want you to be familiar with the generous marriage podcast and it has, uh, 12, free episodes at the moment. Each episode comes with a story and the tool that is ultra practical that you can use, uh, immediately after listening to the podcast. And it is backed up with a research, uh, like [inaudible] you are a licensed marriage and family therapist you have to go through, did the scientific process of, of that, just giving advices in, just tell, talking about tools. They have to be tools that are actually going to get you results, right? And we also give like a free bonus pdf or with a game or tool in every single one those episodes. You can go there and see them just, yeah, generous raj.com. That’s where we are. And uh, we want, uh, this to be something we do together with you guys. Please help us spread the world. 

Thank you so much for being here. If you have any questions, we are available on [email protected] That’s team T..E.A.M. That’s us the team, uh, it generous manage.com Shachar how do you feel?  Great. Thank you. This was fun. I hope it was practical. I hope people get value out of this. We’d love to hear from you guys. Well, if you’re saving money this year because of this Webinar and you need to send us a posted note of how much money you saved, take yourself, take a picture of yourself. I saved that amount in Hashtag generous marriage, uh, dot com. Uh, we would love to hear from you, uh, for everyone and see you soon. In two week’s time in yet another Webinar by the generous marriage.com and happy holidays and try the holidays. Happy holidays. Thank you so much. Bye. Bye.