Neighborhoods are lit up, songs about Santa fill your ears, and your checking account is barely over the beating it took feeding the fam at Thanksgiving. While its great to show our loved ones how much they mean to us, out of control spending is not the way to do it. Here are some tips to stay within your budget without coming off as a modern day Scrooge.

1. Pay attention. Friends complain to each other. On the phone, over coffee, while running on the treadmill we chat about the day to day challenges in our lives. Listen for the items that would make your loved one’s day a little bit easier. A friend of mine once gave me a meat thermometer as a gift. I was thrilled. I got something I needed and was touched by my friend’s thoughtfulness.
2. Save throughout the year. Planning ahead is a budget’s best friend. But its already the holiday season, what now? Well…
3. Set realistic expectations. If funds are low this year scale back. Realize that a batch of homemade cookies can mean as much as a store bought gift.
4. Resist the urge to buy on credit. There is not going to be a better time to shell out your hard earned cash. Be kind to the future you that does not want to get stuck in a rut paying 20% extra for the things you are buying now.
5. Stay on budget shopping for kids. Parents want to make the holidays special. Seeing children smile, hearing their laughter as they open presents under the tree is exciting and fun. Its easy to rationalize overspending as something that’s needed to make a child happy. In reality, children are happiest when you are happy…and its hard to be jolly when debt is looming overhead. Plus, children are always watching and learning from the adults in their life. Setting a good example financially is a gift that will never get old or broken.

Gearing up for a shopping adventure at 4am this Friday? I’m packing a diaper for my baby and myself…totally kidding! But there are a lot of amazing deals that happen for this one day, once a year. Some shoppers get giddy at the mere mention of Black Friday. For many people, getting up at the crack of dawn the Friday after Thanksgiving is as much of a tradition as eating Turkey the day before.

Curious about the origin of Black Friday? According to an article in TIMEBusinessBlack Friday began quite some time ago.

“As early as the 19th century, shoppers have viewed Thanksgiving as the traditional start to the holiday shopping season, an occasion marked by celebrations and sales. Department stores in particular locked onto this marketing notion, hosting parades to launch the start of the first wave of Christmas advertisements, chief among them, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, running in New York City since 1924.”

Another source cited the term, “Black Friday” as being used for the first time in 1966. Kimberly Amadeo stated that, “This is when [in 1966] a story appeared in an ad in The American Philatelist. The Philadelphia Police Department used the name to describe the traffic jams and crowding in the downtown stores.”

There is more research to be done, but its hard to concentrate when images of delicious Turkey and fluffy, buttery mashed potatoes are dancing in my head…

Hope you have a wonderful, Happy Thanksgiving!!!

PS. Is Splasm Software having a Black Friday Sale? Check our website repeatedly to find out…or subscribe to our newsletter to find out when–err–if there is going to be a fantastic sale coming soon!

Back in my days as a human service worker, I thought all advertisements and marketing efforts were devious ploys to wrestle money from my cold dead hands.

Blinders in place, I happily blocked out banner ads, ignored radio jingles, and left the room during television commercials. Coupons went directly from my mailbox into the recycling bin. I even went on an elaborate quest, calling the places sending the coupons to get them to stop wasting trees trying to get me to their so-called ‘Sales’. Still, certain messages seeped through the cracks in my resolve. Shampoo sirens promising to give me the “shiniest, silkiest hair” always somehow made it into the cart. Children missing their upper lips found me, in-between an articles about simplifying laundry and 3 three ingredient meals, and guided me towards my checkbook.

Since joining Team Splasm, and meeting my alter-ego (Resident Pixie), my views on ads have been thrown into the air like so much confetti after the high school team takes the State Tournament. Lost in a flurry of new concepts, it has been hard to reconcile my formerly steady belief that EVERYONE was out to take my money. Could it be that the ads I found irritating were simply for products that did not apply to me?

Reading articles about marketing, I found this quote that really struck a cord:

“If your passion is to provide your product or service to help others and to make their lives better you have a responsibility to let them know it exists, you owe that to yourself as well as to them.” –Payson Cooper

As the Resident Pixie, here at Splasm, I am working to educate users and potential users about Audiobook Builder, CheckBook Pro (and our other products) so that others can benefit from something that we already enjoy. And, in learning how to get the word out, I’ve concluded that the best advertisements and/or marketing efforts are the ones that are delivered to the correct audience.

Now, making sure that such efforts are reaching those who want to be reached is an untamed frontier. Multiple metrics, gads of opinions, and ideas from others involved in marketing are out there.

Some gems are waiting to be found…and so…on I ride.

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We’re looking for a fun, technical, creative mind to join our crew. We work from home and coffee shoppes, crafting crazy cool apps and daydreaming about making more of them. That’s where you come in. Can you program? Do you love the Mac, the Macintosh Way and the iPhone/iPad? Do you have some experience with Objective-C and an almost insane desire to learn the ropes of creating and maintaining great apps your users can’t put down? Get in touch so we can talk it over, see where things go.
 
This is an entry-level, full-time position. Compensation includes a salary based on experience, medical benefits, 3 weeks of vacation and your birthdays off. We would prefer candidates located near Birmingham, Alabama but, if you’re a good fit for our team, location may not be an issue.
 
If you care deeply about taking care of the customer, have read the original Human Interface Guidelines or occasionally look at license plate numbers and try to convert them from hexadecimal (of course, they’re not usually in hex), you are at the front of the line.
 
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