So here we are mid November, and just over a month before Christmas. The stores have already been stacked with decorations for a few weeks now. Houses around me here are slowly getting the Christmas lights put up on the house, and the lit wire reindeer are starting to appear on front lawns.

Now is the time you should really start thinking about buying Christmas gifts, and digging out the box of lights, and dusting down the Christmas tree.

With the economy as it is right now, things are tight for most, and many of us need a way to stretch our dollar at this time of year. So why not share your ideas of how you get through to January without feeling the need to take scissors to your credit card.

As far as decorations go, I love going down to the dollar stores. For 20 bucks you can easily get all the decorations you need to make any tree sparkle even without lights. I also try and buy decorations a year ahead, so when they all go on sale in January I did through to find the 60% off bargains. They seem to bring the same decorations out each Christmas time, so I don't see any difference between buying this year or last year, except it is a lot less and I have had to store it all year.

So, how do you spend your hard earned dollars over Christmas?