Now is the perfect time to make a plan to save money for Christmas! Christmas is an easy time to blow the budget! There is always a last minute gift to buy, an idea that catches your eye for your significant other or child, and an endless string of unexpected expenses. Planning is not always enough to avoid overspending during the Christmas season. Using these 7 tips you can start to save money for Christmas. These tips will help get you ready with gifts, supplies, and money so that Christmas does not have a chance to catch you unprepared!
7 Ways to Save Money for Christmas
1. Shopping the sales on supplies after the holiday seasons is one of the best ways to save money on Christmas. You can get wrapping paper, gift boxes, and tape on big sales and mark-downs. There’s no need to pay a premium price for things that are going to be discarded during the frenzy of Christmas morning. There is also a ton of sales going on right after the holiday seasons. Pick up stocking stuffers, hostess gifts, even themed presents or decorations at a steep discount to help save now on expenses for next Christmas.
2. Start a Christmas club or savings account specifically for Christmas spending. Tucking away a few dollars here and there can really add up. It can be even easier if you have that amount automatically withdrawn each week and added to your Christmas club account. Just think, if you start now and have just $15 each week deducted you can have over $500 in an account ready just in time for Christmas next year. That can really help take the strain off of shopping expenses as well as post-holiday bills!
3. Yard Sale / eBay all of the things you no longer use from years past. All of that money can easily be placed into your Christmas account. It’s “found” money or money that you didn’t expect to have in this case and would make a fantastic addition to your Christmas club account or a savings account. Even an old fashioned yard sale can generate more cash than you might expect to help you save money for Christmas
4. Start a list of items that your kids, friends, and husband or wife mention they want or like. If you know what to look for throughout the year you can easily shop sales and mark-downs for items that your loved ones are really interested in receiving. This will also help keep you from overspending when you do your holiday shopping. If you know someone wants a specific item it makes it easier to buy that and then quit. Being uncertain can easily lead you to buying lots of items that you don’t need!
5. As we creep up on tax refund season consider setting aside a small portion of your tax refund for your Christmas account. Even $200 is a great start to the year when it comes to saving for Christmas!
6. One super easy way to accumulate money is by saving all of your coins. Keep a coin jar handy and keep all of your change for an entire year. End of the year rolls around and you can cash in for the Christmas fund! Another fun way to make this system work for you is by setting aside all of one kind of bill. $5 bills seem to be the popular choice but I believe $1 bills would work just as well! In theory what you do is set aside each bill in a savings account or an envelope and at the end of the year you’ll have accumulated a nice amount to be used towards expenses!
7. Finally, try out a savings challenge. These are a great way to accumulate quite a bit of money over the course of the year. You follow a simple guideline and the amount you end up with will surprise you! One 26 week savings plan I saw left you with a total of $1,000 and didn’t require a deposit of more than $51 (the final week)! Go through this cycle twice and you are ready for Christmas! You can even adjust the amounts to work with your budget and needs to save money for Christmas!
In reality your plan may end up looking like a mash-up of all these ideas to save money for Christmas, and that’s okay too! If you start out with one idea and it doesn’t end up working for you at least you tried! Saving a little bit is better than saving nothing at all! Hopefully you are able to find a system that works for you and your budget. No matter if you like to shop to save money, squirrel money away a bit at a time, or make a large deposit once a year, saving now for Christmas will take away financial stress during a time when you should be celebrating!
Growing up, my parents had a Christmas Club account at their Credit Union. I remember this being handy for them every Christmas because the money would be right there when they needed it. These are great tips, thanks for sharing!