Budgeting & Saving, Monthly Budget Templates

How to Make a Holiday Spending Plan for 2026 (Step by Step)

Credit-card balances hit $1.2 trillion in Q3 2025 — an all-time high. CFPB holiday guidance outlines four pre-shopping steps: set a budget from available cash, list every expense category, assign a payment method to each, and plan repayment when credit will be used. This step-by-step guide builds those four steps into a 2026 holiday plan using Federal Reserve, BLS, CFPB, and IRS data — with two SaveXpert calculators to run the numbers.