The holiday season is just around the corner, and I'm freaking out! Last year, my husband and I overspent our budget for christmas shopping by $400. I want to make sure it doesn't happen again.

My question to everyone is how do you keep from overspending, and how much is acceptable to spend on each child for christmas?

Helping others has always been in my nature, but now, I'm wishing I never agreed to help out.

My neighbor asked me if I could start babysitting her daughter since her and her boyfriend split and their original babysitter no longer wanted to sit. I agreed because I was told that I would only watch her when she had the kid, and other days, the boyfriend will have her.

Well, little did I know that I have her everyday except Sunday and Monday with 40 hours of babysitting a week, and was originally going to get paid $50 a week, but fought for $85 with the excuse of buying food and drinks for her. The mom fought me for awhile about $85 a week because she didn't find that necessary, but she agreed. I've never really babysat anyone's child before, but I feel that $85 is not enough for what I'm sacrificing from my daily routine. Plus, I don't even know why I have to watch the kid on her mother's day off from 5am-7pm? Why can't the boyfriend take the kid? Not to mention, the kid is eating me out of my house!

I need some serious advice on what to do. I don't want to be a prude and say that i'm going to do it and then later on back out of it, you know?

I'm NEVER doing my before the New Year's Tradition again!

We got kicked out of base housing a few weeks ago I really hate the Air Force with a passion now. I mean, common sense can go a long way, and they don't have any at all! But you know what they say, whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger.

Here's how it went. The husband went into the ARMY, and there was a two day break in service where he wasn't going to be ARMY yet and wasn't Air Force anymore. Well, the housing office called to inform us that their priority were Active Military Air Force, and we had turn in our keys my next week Friday. I was stressed out since we didn't have a place to stay, the short notice, and I wanted to strangle the lady who I talked to a month before explaining our circumstances, and was told that we could stay on base.

Anyway, long story short, we found a place to rent while the husband is gone until mid-November for some training.

I'm nervous about having to pay utilities (we don't pay utilities on base). We have to pay water, sewage, natural gas, and electric.

I'm curious to know how much other's pay on their utilities, and if you can offer me suggestions on keeping the bills low? I know the basics but any advice would be helpful for me.