Maintaining a budget is hard at any time of year, but when the winter holiday season is on the horizon, and the time has come for gifts to be purchased, decorations to be pulled out and updated, and parties to be thrown and attended, budgeting can easily and quickly fall by the wayside.

While it’s no big deal to swap a restaurant meal for a home-cooked dinner during the year, it can feel like your best laid plans go to waste once Thanksgiving hits. Between holiday celebrations, extra treats for coworkers, travel plans, and more, it’s easy to see how, for Americans, the average Christmas debt is around $1,054.

The scariest part? While more than half of the respondents to a MagnifyMoney survey said they would pay down the debt in three months or less, around 30% said they would need five months or more to pay off the holiday debt on their credit card.

In order to avoid being part of that statistic—and avoid interest rates that could haunt you well into 2019—here are some budgeting tips as well as tips for how to manage credit card debt.

Maybe you love sports. If so, transforming your basement into a rec room where you can, say, shoot pool and watch football games on a big screen with your best friends may feel like a dream come true. Or, maybe you just need an extra bedroom and/or more bathrooms for your growing family. Either way, read on.

No matter what extra room you want in your home, basement remodeling makes good sense because you can handle the renovations without needing to add an addition onto your house. “Sure,” you might think, “but you haven’t seen MY basement. The floors and walls are concrete, and we store all of our extra stuff down there.”

Well, that sounds just like a normal basement, pre-remodel. And in this post, we’ll share steps to help you turn that cold concrete into a livable (and even lovable!) living space, as well as providing information about a typical basement remodel cost. We’ll start out by sharing inspirational remodeling ideas, so you can solidify what you want your finished basement to look like, and then we’ll do some reverse engineering for you, including an excellent way to finance your remodeling project.

There are few things as exhilarating as finally finding the right person and deciding to commit to a life with each other. If you’re basking in the warm glow of a recent engagement, enjoy every minute of hazy happiness before the realities of planning a wedding sink in. Planning can be exciting, full of cake tastings, dress fittings, and venue visits. But all of those price tags can really add up. As you begin planning your wedding, it’s important to know what to expect.

The average cost of a wedding in the United States in 2017 was $33,391. According to the Knot, who polled 13,000 couples in their annual wedding study , this number is actually on the decline, down from about $35,000 in 2016. And this doesn’t even include the honeymoon!

What Caused the October Stock Market Decline?

One thing that’s always kind of freaked me out is how quickly things can turn on a dime. I know, that’s the way life goes sometimes, but it still can feel a bit unnerving. And evidently, I’m not alone, at least if this past month is any indication.

Prior to this past October, the economic data hitting the news read like an investor’s dream. The US economy was booming, wage growth was picking up steam, inflation was contained, and American stocks were on track for another year of double-digit returns.

Most economies outside of the US were also doing very well—in fact, every single major economy was displaying expansionary tendencies. It’s not often that synchronous growth occurs around the globe, but everyone seemed to be playing their part and marching ahead. Life was good.

Then, October came through like a wrecking ball. Everyone got spooked—weeks before the actual ghouls and goblins came out to play, and in turn, stocks took a dive. Things were going so well prior to this, so what happened?