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.

Learnvest.com: Why I don't regret walking out on my job

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.

Learnvest.com: I'm a recovering shopaholic

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.

Learnvest.com: What Hurricane Sandy taught me about money

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.

Mike Segar / Reuters

In these times of economic uncertainty, people are spending more than ever on the care and feeding of man's best, furry friend.

The U.S. pet industry is set to rake in a record $53 billion this year, despite sluggish overall consumer demand, according to a report by brokerage firm ConvergEx.

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“Even in a faltering economy, pet industry expenditures continue to accelerate,” strategists Nicholas Colas, Beth Reed and Sarah Millar wrote.

“While people are putting off some other major ‘lifestyle’ changes, such as getting married and purchasing a home, they’re showing no signs of giving up man’s best friend.”

CNBC.com: For the dog that has everything: concierge services

Spending on pets stood at $37.3 billion in 2001 and has grown steadily since. This year, sales of pet products and services are expected to total $52.9 billion, a 42 increase over 2001.

According to the report, the total lifetime cost of owning a small to medium-sized dog ranges from $7,240 to $12,700, and the lifetime cost of a cat ranges from $8,620 to $11,275.

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The report points out that since 2008, in particular, the cost of keeping a pet has surged above the rate of inflation.

“While the price of pets themselves, as well as supplies and accessories are getting comparatively cheaper, the prices of vet and other pet services, and pet food, are all rising at a pace greater than the rate of inflation,” the strategists said.

CNBC.com: Survey says: merry shoppers, shallow pockets

The cost of pet ownership has risen by 11.7 percent since mid-2008, the strategists said, versus just 5.2 percent for the consumer price index.

Americans are still keeping a tight grip on their wallets, bypassing vacations and dinners out, even though they feel better about their own financial security.

What’s still spooking U.S. consumers? Gas prices.

Even though gas prices have been declining for several months, nearly six in 10 consumers say they’ve cut back on nonessential spending because of hefty fuel prices, according to a study released Monday by Bankrate.com.

“Gas prices are still a drag on people’s spending power,” said Greg McBride, Bankrate’s senior financial analyst.

According to AAA, the national average price for regular unleaded fuel declined to $3.689 a gallon, down from $3.871 a gallon last month, and below the average prices of $3.867 a year ago.

“Despite the drop in recent weeks, gas prices are still at elevated levels,” he continued. This at a time, he pointed out, “when so many households are dealing with stagnant incomes.”

But there’s good news in the Bankrate.com report. Consumers are feeling pretty okay about their job security and their debt loads.

For the first time since December 2010, Bankrate’s Financial Security Index -- which tracks how consumer gauge there overall economic health -- passed the 100 threshold, which shows that Americans see an improvement in their financial security.

Bankrate's Financial Security Index

“We’ve seen improvement on multiple fronts,” McBride maintained. “People are feeling more secure in their jobs, they feel better about their debt burdens, and they’re reporting lower net worth with less frequency.”

The main reason for the optimism, he noted, was the stabilizing of home prices throughout many town across the country. “When people see home prices sliding they can see their net worth declining, but when they rise, all of a sudden they feel better about their net worth.”

So the wild card, he added, are gas prices. If they start to decline further, “that’s going to breath some life into household budgets and they’ll have more money to spend.”

And it may take off before the job market gets more robust. 

“While hiring has not exactly taken off, downsizing activity remains relatively low and many employers are actually worried about losing talent," maintained John Challenger, CEO of outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. "This is not to say that job security has returned to pre-recession levels, but workers certainly are enjoying more security than two years ago."  

What’s your take? Have you decided to cut back on nights out at the movies, or Memorial Day travel because of gas prices? Do you feel more secure about you job? 

Getty Images stock

Among young adults, 61 percent said they have friends or family members who have moved back in with their parents because of economic conditions

You would think young adults stuck living at home with their parents would be sending texts of despair to friends about their lot in life.

Think again. Most Gen Yers think it's gr8.

Three out of ten adults, ages 25 to 34, are living with their folks and of those 78 percent said they’re happy with it, according to a Pew Research survey released Thursday and titled “The Boomerang Generation: Feeling OK about Living with Mom and Dad.”

Even more surprising is that 77 percent of those still under their parent’s roof have high hopes for their economic futures.

The Pew survey is based on telephone interviews with about 2,000 young adults around the country in December.

It’s becoming like an episode of “All in the Family” out there.

“The share of Americans living in multi-generational family households is the highest it has been since the 1950s, having increased significantly in the past five years,” according to additional Pew research that looked at U.S. Census data, and the 24 to 35 crowd are among the most likely to be living in such arrangements.

One reason Gen Yers might be happy with the new family order is because so many of them are doing it, the researchers surmised.

• Among young adults, 61 percent said they have friends or family members who have moved back in with their parents over the past few years because of economic conditions.
• And 29 percent of parents of adult children report that a child of theirs has moved back in with them in the past few years because of the economy.

Indeed, the unemployment rate for this group, which on the decline, is still 8.7 percent, above the national average in February of 8.3 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Adults in their late 20s and early 30s have fared somewhat better in the labor market, but they have felt the sting of tough economic times in other areas of their lives,” the report stated. “Many have had to settle for jobs they didn’t really want just to make ends meet. Fully a third have gone back to school, and an equal share (34 percent) have postponed either marriage, parenthood or both.”

The economic turbulence, Pew reported, “appears to be giving rise to a protracted set of economic ties between parents and their adult children.”

Having the kids return home isn’t all bad for the parents either, especially when it comes to finances.

• 48 percent of young adults report that they have paid rent to their parents.
• And 89 percent said they helped with household expenses.

This might be why many young adults reported not feeling footloose and fancy free, even though they’re not burdened by paying their own way. “Nearly eight-in-ten of these 25- to 34-year-olds say they don’t currently have enough money to lead the kind of life they want,” Pew results found, “compared with 55 percent of their same-aged peers who aren’t living with their parents.”

Are you over 20 and still living at home with your parents? Let us know on Facebook.

The economic doldrums left many Americans pinching pennies on vacation this summer — if they took a break at all.

Fewer Americans took a summer vacation this year than in the past two years, and the weak economy forced even many who did take a vacation to cut back on spending.

About one-third of American adults took a summer vacation this year, according to a poll conducted in late August by Rasmussen Reports. That’s down from 41 percent last year and 37 percent in 2009.

About half the people who did take a vacation this year and last year said the weak economy forced them to cut back on spending.

The results were based on a survey of 1,000 Americans conducted Aug. 30 and 31.

Reuters

If you find yourself constantly stressed about money, making poor financial decisions that get you nowhere, you're not alone.

A new study provides insight into why some people are locked into these seemingly losing battles with their finances. The research, published in The Journal of Financial Therapy, identifies four basic attitudes that can hurt people’s finances.

These "money scripts" are usually unconscious and typically originate in childhood, said Professor Brad Klontz, one of the authors of the study. They drive our financial decisions and can have catastrophic effects on our finances and lives.

The four harmful money personalities:

• Money avoidance: Believing that money is bad or that you do not deserve money. For people with this personality, money can evoke feelings of fear, anxiety or disgust. Low-income, younger and single individuals were more likely to hold this attitude.
• Money worship: Believing that an increase in income or financial windfall will solve your problems. People with this attitude are likely to carry revolving debt. The most common money attitude found in Americans, Klontz suspects it could be a reaction by Baby Boomers to their parents' extreme frugality, which was developed as a survival mechanism during the Great Depression. "When parents take an extreme view of money, children will either emulate that attitude or do the exact opposite, which can be equally dysfunctional," Klontz said.
• Money status: Tying your self-worth to your net worth. Individuals who believe that money is a status symbol are more likely to be young, single, less educated, and less wealthy.
• Money vigilance: Being secretive about finances and overly wary of spending. In other words, the classic miser. While people with this trait are often financially secure, they often do not allow themselves to enjoy the benefits of having money. In extreme cases, it can lead to hoarding and underspending.

A healthy attitude about money requires flexibility, said Klontz, who worked as clinical psychologist in Hawaii and specializes in financial therapy.

"If we can identify our money scripts, have insight into the early experiences of our childhood and multigenerational patterns of money beliefs in our family, we can challenge and change financial beliefs that may be causing us financial harm or limiting our potential," Klontz said.

Oh, how quickly we forget.

The wounds from the Great Recession have yet to heal, but Americans are once again spending more, saving less and still carrying credit card debt, according to a new survey by the National Foundation for Credit Counseling.

Twenty-six percent of adults report they are spending more than they did one year ago, the Harris Interactive survey found, and nearly 40 percent of people still carry credit card balances from month to month.

While that is good news for the nation's struggling retailers, it suggests Americans are reverting to the free-spending ways that preceded the housing meltdown. It's also a sign that people are suffering from "frugal fatigue,' said Gail Cunningham, spokeswoman for the nonprofit organization.

To make this trend even more worrisome, more than 41 percent of Americans give themselves a C or lower grade in regard to their knowledge of personal finance, an acknowledgement that they lack the ability to make sound financial decisions. Nearly 50 percent of adults do not maintain a budget or track their spending.

"An admitted lack of personal finance skills coupled with increased spending is a recipe for financial disaster," Cunningham said. "People owe it to themselves and their children to become financially savvy."

Another disturbing statistic from the survey: 33 percent of adults have no emergency savings. This makes them "one flat tire away from financial disaster," says Cunningham, who suggests adults put 10 percent of each paycheck into a savings account.

It’s no secret that Americans have cut back on spending over the past few years, as the recession and high unemployment have either eaten up our extra cash or caused us to rethink our free-spending ways.

Even now that the economy is in a slow recovery, a new poll from Harris Interactive shows that many Americans are continuing to pinch pennies in much the same way they did in June of 2009, the month the recession officially ended.

The poll of about 3,000 people, taken in October, asked Americans what money-saving techniques they’d used in the past six months. According to the poll:

• 62 percent of Americans are purchasing more generic brands, the same as in June of 2009
• 45 percent are bringing lunch instead of purchasing it, slightly less than in June of 2009
• 37 percent have switched to a refillable bottle instead of buying water, up from 33 percent in June of 2009.
• 22 percent have stopped purchasing coffee in the morning, up from 15 percent in June of 2009.
• 17 percent have canceled land-line phone service, up from 11 percent in June of 2009.

Readers, have you cut back on anything in the past six months?