Hello K-Mart Shoppers!

Hello K-Mart Shoppers!

Christmas is here and so is iPlanShopping!

My wife said to me this afternoon, "We are shopping tomorrow for Christmas...".

We've been traveling the last couple weeks to see her parents in Seattle and prior to that we were in Florida for a business conference and mini-vacation... shopping for Christmas has been hanging over our heads as the days tick by and there are really less than 20 days because we need to ship the gifts to family on the East and West Coast!

So what did I do over Thanksgiving at the in-laws you might ask?  I was programming a shopping app for her ;-) And when I installed a beta pre-release version on her iPhone 4S she started to use it to organize her shopping list.  Not only that she emailed me a budgeted list so I now know what we need to buy... I was thrilled!

I found this great blog by SimpleMom from 2008 which still applies.  SimpleMom writes:

However, if you’re late jumping on the “Christmas planning ahead bandwagon,” let it serve as a great fire to get you going for the next holiday season.  When you save a little every month all year, the Christmas season truly becomes something worth anticipating.  As Dave Ramsey says, Christmas is not an emergency – it falls on December 25 every year, so you know it’s coming. 

I also like her suggestions here:

More than anything, consider curbing your gift giving.  Many extended families draw names, where everyone is only responsible for giving one gift.  I think that’s a fabulous idea.  Many also don’t give to each other at all, or only give to the children – also a smart move.  I mean really – how many random knickknacks do your parents need?  Embrace simple living, and express this in your gift giving.  (We’ll discuss some simple gift ideas closer to Christmas.)

Hey I like that "Simple living"!  Holiday shopping however is just the season when all of this is magnified.

There are 12 months of shopping that we as parents need to get under control from basic needs, travel, household items, birthdays, anniversaries, back-to-school, and back to holidays again... so I decided to create a custom "Categories" table related to Ideas... this way you can create an idea and relate it to any category.

Similarly there are people who receive and benefit from what you buy for them... family, friends, relatives, co-workers, etc... and then there are retailers where you buy the stuff... I believe these three entities then allow us to effectively organize what we buy.

Then a budget and amount was added to the the Idea form.  And also to the Reports.  So you have the ability to look at line item budgeting as well as a monthly or weekly/daily budget.  Then each report can be filtered by Category so you can budget within a report... an overall budget can be added to each report.

We hope you like our new iPlan app!

Andy

Note:  I haven't decided on creating a blog for iPlanShopping reports... I'm not sure people want to share their shopping lists in a blog... TBD