A lot of Americans set out to do a lot of their shopping for Christmas on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, but that can present a dilemma to the Christmas shopper if their money is tight: how to stay within a budget while shopping for everyone you're giving gifts to this year.
That dilemma then carries down to each individual gift purchase, as our hypothetical shopper must work how much to spend on each. Surely there must be a better way to work out how much to spend on each gift!
And yes, as it happens, there is! Brain Candy and Beyond IQ author Garth Sundem shows how to apply math to solve this problem of gift-giving with a budget:
Obviously, that kind of math is hard to work out while on the go, so we're happy to present a tool to help you make your shopping list! Just enter the indicated data below into our generic list below and we'll work out how much you should target spending on each:
We'll leave it as an exercise to you to identify just who Person A, B, C, etc. are when you print out the list and take it with you while shopping. In the meantime though, we can recommend Garth's books Brain Candy or Beyond IQ as gifts for those thinking people you know this Christmas season.
But the best part is that Garth's gift-budget system isn't included in either of these books, so the recipients will have no idea how you decided to spend what you did on them!