Our favorite things about the upcoming holiday season:

• Visiting with family and friends
• Sparkly décor and general festivities
• Gifts (we're just being honest)
• As much hot chocolate or anything pumpkin flavored as we want, sans judgment

Our least favorite parts of the holiday season:

• Air fare to visit family and friends
• How all that fun holiday-themed décor adds up
• Shelling out for gifts (again, being honest)
• Sugar coma from the pumpkin spice lattes and guilt about all that hot chocolate

Admittedly, we can't help you very much with that sweet-hot-beverage addiction, but we can help you get through holiday madness with your financial health intact. As reader Mara put it:

"I am back in debt, but not by much. I want to pay this up by January so this year I will not be buying too many Christmas presents."

Smart! And yes, there is a way to celebrate the holidays in style and show everyone you love them, without winding up in the red yourself.

Learnvest.com: 5 steps to curbing kids' impulse buys

So, well in advance of Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or whatever you celebrate, we'll break down the four easy steps to budgeting for this year.

1. Decide where holiday spending fits in your budget

LearnVest lives by the 50/20/30 Rule, which states that 50 percent of your take-home pay should go toward essential living expenses like rent and food, 20 percent should go toward financial goals like retirement contributions and debt payments and 30 percent should go toward your lifestyle choices, which are the personal, and often fun, decisions you make about your money. Lifestyle choices often include things like your cable bill, charitable giving, entertainment, hobbies, etc.

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Although holiday spending often feels essential — How can you not give your mom a gift?— it falls into this 30 percent allocated to lifestyle choices.

Of course, if you are planning for holiday travel, gifts and more, you’ll need to bake them into your budget. And unless you already had a ton of wiggle room, this will probably mean cutting back in other areas to make up the difference. We'll show you how below.

The good news? If you start now, you're less likely to feel the pinch, less likely to make spendy, last-minute impulse-present buys and more likely to get a plane ticket for a price that won't eat up your whole gift budget.

2. Calculate how much you can spare

The easiest way to calculate where your holiday budget is coming from is to log in to LearnVest’s Money Center to see your spending trends. These are already grouped in your financial inbox according to the 50/20/30 Rule, so you can see at a glance what percentage of your income you’re spending on lifestyle expenses.

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If you have money left in your lifestyle choices before the 30 percent mark, you can allocate the leftovers to holiday spending — and create a special color-coded folder to account for it. If not, it’s time to trim back.

Could you free up enough for holiday travel by cutting a dinner out once a month or temporarily stretching your time between salon visits? How about freezing your gym membership for two months and starting anew in January? You'd be amazed by how easy it is to free up funds when you see exactly how much you're spending on what is laid out before you.

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You can even set a specific savings goal for the holidays and play with various contribution amounts per month to see how far they would get you.

3. Obey the seasonal spending commandments

These are a few easy rules to follow to make sure your holidays are happy and financially healthy:

1. Never go into credit card debt for holiday spending.
2. Never dip into your emergency fund for the sake of buying gifts or decorating your home.
3. Never go into credit card debt for the holidays. Seriously. Ever.

Does that mean you don’t have a lot of cash to spare for gifts for your loved ones? We have a feeling they’ll love you even if you don’t drop a boatload of cash for gifts for them.

This story originally appeared on LearnVest.

You’ve got to eat, but – as many of our readers have learned – you don’t have to break the bank doing so.

This week in Life Inc., we featured a story on how one woman saved $600 a month on her grocery bill by making a few basic changes to planning and shopping for food.

The post prompted a number of readers to share their own tips for saving money on food. Here are some of our favorites.

1. Don’t shop based on sales or coupons
That’s right, you read that correctly. Several readers said coupons and sales can actually end up being a waste of money if the good deal lulls you into buying pricier foods or items your family doesn’t normally eat.

“Most sale items (with the exception of fruits/veggies) are packed full of preservatives. Eating for less shouldn't mean you stop eating healthy. I rarely plan my grocery trips around circulars, but I do check to see (and compare) if what I usually buy is on sale,” one reader wrote.

2. Do consider store brands.
Several readers said they have switched to generic or store brands for staples, saving a bundle without losing out on taste or quality.

“What really saves money is to try store brands. I've found that store brands of some food items are every bit as good as the name brand, and a whole lot cheaper (even if you have a coupon for the name brand),” one reader noted.

3. Make and serve food your family wants to eat.
Planning meals on a budget can have some unhappy consequences: Unappetizing leftovers, huge vats of soup your picky eaters won’t touch or big piles of ingredients no one has time to cook on a busy weeknight.

Several readers offered tips for planning ahead to make sure your frugal food plans don’t go awry. Here’s one we loved, for avoiding the monotony of eating what you cook in bulk:

“I freeze a lot of our leftovers so we're not eating them a couple days in a row. I need a little variety! And when there's a busy day with no time to cook, just thaw and re-heat,” the reader wrote.

4. Learn to cook.
OK, this may be a longer-term goal for some people. But many readers noted that prepared meals can be a lot more expensive than making things from scratch. Homemade food can also be healthier and tastier.

“If you don't know how to make tasty meals from about anything, you are paying a cook. You paid the cook that put it in the box or can before it went on the shelf. If you can't afford a private chef, you need to learn how to cook,” one reader wrote.

Do you have tips for being a frugal foodie? Share them in the comments below.

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We've heard so much about in the past few weeks about all the fun President Obama, House Speaker John Boehner and that jaunty-sounding "gang of six" have been having trying to wrangle with the nation's debt ceiling and deal with the federal budget. Who wouldn't want to get in on that action?

Here's your chance! Budget Hero, a new web-based game created by American Public Media, lets you at least pretend you're holding the national purse strings. Want to cut defense spending? Bam, you can do it with the click of a mouse. Feel like Social Security should be kicking in a lot later than it is? Now's your chance to make it happen and see where the chips fall.

The game is free, but there is one caveat: You are asked to provide a name, zip code and e-mail address.

Getty Images stock

Our friends over at WalletPop did an enviable experiment recently: They compared the cost of homemade versus store-bought ice cream.

The verdict: If you eat a lot of ice cream, and use pretty basic ingredients, you may be able to get a better deal by going the homemade route. But if you're not an ice cream fanatic, or only crave the tasty treat in the summer, you may be better off just shelling out for a pint of Ben & Jerry's or Haagen-Dazswhen the mood strikes you.

Check out WalletPop's full report and methodology here. 

Bureau of Labor Statistics

In general, people in their 20s don’t save much money by getting married but they do spend less than their single friends on certain things.

Like alcohol.

A new report from the number crunchers at the Bureau of Labor Statistics finds that overall, 21- to 29-year-olds spend about the same amount overall whether they are married or single.

But while single people were spending more on fun stuff, like alcohol and food, married people were spending more on mundane services like transportation, health care and personal insurance, according to the report, based on survey data from 2008 and 2009.

The cost savings associated with marriage appear to kick in once people reach their late twenties.

A typical married person 21 to 23 years old spends more on average than a single person of the same age ($21,138 and $19,980 a year, respectively). But it’s worth noting that the average income for married people in that age range was about one-third higher than for single people.

The tables turn when you look at people who are 27 to 29. In that age group, married people spent an average of $27,816 per person per year while a single people spent $35,026 on average. Income levels for 27- to 29-year-olds were about the same regardless of marital status.

The economy is barely afloat, but at least our hair looks great.

Nearly 42 percent of adults say haircuts and hair coloring is one spending category they refuse to trim from their budgets, according to a 2010 survey (.pdf file) sponsored by Stores magazine, a retail industry publication. The study examined what spending areas are "untouchable" and what are "expendable" in consumers' budget.

As the economy improved last year, many adults were a lot quicker to say hands off to certain areas of discretionary spending, the survey found. A few luxuries, including casual sit-down dining, department store shopping and haircuts made their way back onto the untouchable list after falling victim to America's flirtation with frugality as the recession unfolded.

Related story: Going gray to save money? No way!

"Small luxuries such as gourmet coffee, casual dining and even high-end cosmetics were among the things many consumers really had to learn to live without,” said Susan Reda, editor of Stores magazine. "Though most Americans are still quite focused on maintaining a budget, many are once again falling in love with the things they had to temporarily say goodbye to."

Luxuries deemed "untouchable" by Americans:

• Internet service: 81 percent
• Basic cable TV: 61 percent
• Hair cuts and coloring: 42 percent
• Charitable contributions: 38 percent
• Casual sit-down restaurants: 32 percent
• Upgraded mobile devices: 23 percent
• Organic food: 17 percent
• Daily cup of gourmet coffee: 17 percent
• Facials: 11 percent
• Maid service: 9 percent

What luxuries do you refuse to cut from your budget?

You know times are hard when you have to heat your pool with the dead.

A cash-strapped council in the United Kingdom has come under fire for its plan to use the heat from a nearby crematorium to heat a public swimming pool, according to a report in the U.K.’s Daily Mail.

The excess heat generated by the incinerator at the Borough Of Redditch Cemeteries & Crematorium in Worcestershire would be used to warm the water for swimmers at the nearby Abbey Stadium Sports Centre -- the plan will reportedly cut £14,500 each year (slightly more than $23,000) off the council’s heating bills.

Aside from saving cash, council leaders argue that the plan is a greener way of powering the sports center. Currently, heat from the incinerators (which reaches 800 degrees centigrade) is lost into the atmosphere, the article says.

“I’d much rather use the energy rather than just see it going out of the chimney and heating the sky,” Council leader Carole Gandy told the newspaper.

In an effort to scale back its national debt, late last year the United Kingdom announced the most drastic budget cuts in living memory -- including sharp cuts in public sector funding -- that surpass measures taken by other advanced economies. Prime Minister David Cameron has said the nation is facing an “age of austerity” that will mean tough economic choices for most Britons, but some local residents in the Borough Of Redditch seem uncertain those choices extend to heating their local pool by burning cadavers.

Simon Thomas, of Thomas Brothers Funeral Directors, told the paper: ”I don’t know how comfortable people would feel about the swimming pool being heated due to the death of a loved one, I think it’s a bit strange and eerie.”

“I’m not comfortable with it at all and I think trying to save money due to the death of someone's family member or friend is a bit sick,” he added. “I think it will cause uproar and may even put people off using the facilities which would lose the council money.”

The wealthiest Americans spent much more in 2009 just eating at restaurants than the nation’s poorest spent on all their food for the year.

Americans' richest households, representing the top 20 percent of earners, spent $10,780 on food in 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditure Survey. About half of that was spent at restaurants and the like.

By contrast, the nation’s poorest American households, representing the bottom 20 percent of incomes, only spent $3,501 total on food during the year. Only about one-third of that was spent eating out.