Valerie and Gary were the typical American couple.

“We had credit cards, car loans and orthodontic loans,” Valerie said. “We made the mistake of refinancing the house and rolling our credit card debt in there. We swore we would never use those cards again. But we did. And then we took out a second mortgage.”

When Katie B. from Zanesville, Ohio, left the corporate world for a new career as a high school business teacher, she knew the 50% drop in her pay would require some financial adjustments.

Having followed in her dad’s footsteps to a career in business, Katie found the work took too much time away from her family. In an effort to reclaim her schedule while still pursuing her passion for business, she decided to teach instead.

Christmas is just around the corner!

That means it’s time to decorate the tree, brew up some hot apple cider, and turn on your favorite holiday classics. It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

But if you’re trying to get out of debt, you might be dreading the holiday season instead of looking forward to it. Can you keep making extra payments on your debt and still buy presents for everyone on your list? Even if you spend just $20 on each person, those numbers add up—and fast!

Well, guess what? You can still give gifts and keep your debt snowball rolling. All you need to do is get creative. So set your Christmas budget (no matter how big or small) and get ready to think outside the box! Here are some ideas to get you started.

Keeping up with your budget can be a challenge when you’re a busy family. Just ask Jimmy C. and his wife, who live in South Carolina. With two boys and a hectic schedule, they struggled to keep up with their money. In fact, they’d gotten off track with their spending, too.

Then Jimmy found EveryDollar.

“I looked at a couple of other budget tracking apps, but I didn’t find anything like what I wanted. When it [EveryDollar] finally came out, I got it pretty quick,” Jimmy said.

And it was exactly what the couple needed to get back on track. With the app on their phones, they could keep up with their money in real time.

When Joel was deployed to Iraq in January 2015, he and his wife Nargis (both U.S. Army captains) were two months away from becoming parents and had more than $100,000 in total debt. Being able to talk about money was difficult but important. But EveryDollar made it easy for them to communicate without saying a word.

“While I was deployed, it helped to streamline our conversations about finances,” Joel says of the budgeting tool. “When we actually talked online or on the phone, we didn't have to spend any time talking about money. We communicated about money through the EveryDollar iPhone app. It is formatted in a way that makes budgeting really easy.”