Staying Within Your Christmas Budget
The most wonderful time of the year is often the most expensive time or the year. While shopping for the perfect gifts for your loved ones, you may find yourself picking up more presents for office gift swaps and buying festive foods for your holiday feasts. While some extra spending this time of year is inevitable, you can stay within your means with a few tricks.
Set a Budget
I set a budget for each of my gift recipients each year, plus a grocery shopping budget. You can set aside money each paycheck or each month all year long to pay for gifts and your holiday food budget alike. You can do this the old fashioned way by saving cash in envelopes, earmarking some savings, or creating a separate bank account.
Some banks may still offer Christmas Club accounts, which allow you to create a dedicated fund to save weekly or monthly for the holidays. If you participate in online banking, you can create a separate account yourself and schedule automatic transfers to fund it at whatever interval you want.
Using a free app like EveryDollar allows you to earmark cash each month for a "sinking fund," which is a separate stash of money that you can use to pay for a larger expense down the road. Since Christmas comes on December 25th each year without fail, you can plan out your Christmas spending starting in January. Since Hanukkah is more variable, you will have to check the calendar in advance and see how many weeks to save in your sinking fund.
Use a Gift Spreadsheet
Setting up a spreadsheet before starting your gift shopping allows you to keep track of all of your recipients, what you have purchased, and what you have spent. This will keep you from experiencing that frustrating feeling of having bought something for a loved one, forgotten about it, then bought them another gift and spent double what you meant to! You can add a running total of your holiday sinking fund to the spreadsheet to ensure you stay within your overall budget. Keeping track of your gifts in a table works particularly well when you do your shopping in more than one session over time. Which brings me to...
Start Shopping Far in Advance
I set my gift spreadsheet up in January each year as I begin the hunt for Christmas presents far in advance. Starting my holiday shopping early allows me to pick up deals as I find them, which helps me to save on my gift budget while still buying fantastic gifts that my friends and family will love.
Many gifts can be bought relatively far in advance, like candles and non-perishable bath products. I often pick up things like candles, bath bombs, and fashion jewelry long before the holidays and store them for later. You may be able to find some winter/holiday themed items on deep discount right after the holidays and save them for next year! I have done this with socks, mittens, and hats with great success.
Black Friday
This shopping extravaganza is a divisive topic, but I personally like to participate. I have never experienced raucous crowds or other drama while Black Friday shopping. My favorite place to go Black Friday shopping is Kohl's for several reasons. The store generally stays pretty clean and it is large enough to accommodate a lot of shoppers without feeling too crowded. The best deals are often to be found on toys, clothing, bath items, and kitchen items. I find that most doorbusters, which are the most heavily discounted items, are kitchen items at Kohl's. The doorbusters at Kohl's are extra special in that some of them come with instant rebates or mail-in rebates. These are your very best friend while Black Friday shopping.
Instant rebates credit to you right at the register; you see their value subtract from your total at the bottom of the receipt. Mail-in rebates print out at the register on receipt paper and you need to fill them out and mail them according to instructions on the rebates; you will receive some kind of reward in the mail (this is usually a prepaid Visa card) in several weeks' time. Sometimes, rebates are worth more than you paid for the item! For example, in 2019 I purchased two small kitchen appliances, which I will either gift or donate. They cost $2.15 each and I received a $14 rebate for each one. Not only did I get paid to "buy" these items, the rebates covered almost my entire bill! If I had arrived at the store earlier, I would have snapped up more of these doorbusters and turned quite a profit.
Set a Budget
I set a budget for each of my gift recipients each year, plus a grocery shopping budget. You can set aside money each paycheck or each month all year long to pay for gifts and your holiday food budget alike. You can do this the old fashioned way by saving cash in envelopes, earmarking some savings, or creating a separate bank account.
Some banks may still offer Christmas Club accounts, which allow you to create a dedicated fund to save weekly or monthly for the holidays. If you participate in online banking, you can create a separate account yourself and schedule automatic transfers to fund it at whatever interval you want.
Using a free app like EveryDollar allows you to earmark cash each month for a "sinking fund," which is a separate stash of money that you can use to pay for a larger expense down the road. Since Christmas comes on December 25th each year without fail, you can plan out your Christmas spending starting in January. Since Hanukkah is more variable, you will have to check the calendar in advance and see how many weeks to save in your sinking fund.
Use a Gift Spreadsheet
Setting up a spreadsheet before starting your gift shopping allows you to keep track of all of your recipients, what you have purchased, and what you have spent. This will keep you from experiencing that frustrating feeling of having bought something for a loved one, forgotten about it, then bought them another gift and spent double what you meant to! You can add a running total of your holiday sinking fund to the spreadsheet to ensure you stay within your overall budget. Keeping track of your gifts in a table works particularly well when you do your shopping in more than one session over time. Which brings me to...
Start Shopping Far in Advance
I set my gift spreadsheet up in January each year as I begin the hunt for Christmas presents far in advance. Starting my holiday shopping early allows me to pick up deals as I find them, which helps me to save on my gift budget while still buying fantastic gifts that my friends and family will love.
Many gifts can be bought relatively far in advance, like candles and non-perishable bath products. I often pick up things like candles, bath bombs, and fashion jewelry long before the holidays and store them for later. You may be able to find some winter/holiday themed items on deep discount right after the holidays and save them for next year! I have done this with socks, mittens, and hats with great success.
Black Friday
This shopping extravaganza is a divisive topic, but I personally like to participate. I have never experienced raucous crowds or other drama while Black Friday shopping. My favorite place to go Black Friday shopping is Kohl's for several reasons. The store generally stays pretty clean and it is large enough to accommodate a lot of shoppers without feeling too crowded. The best deals are often to be found on toys, clothing, bath items, and kitchen items. I find that most doorbusters, which are the most heavily discounted items, are kitchen items at Kohl's. The doorbusters at Kohl's are extra special in that some of them come with instant rebates or mail-in rebates. These are your very best friend while Black Friday shopping.
Instant rebates credit to you right at the register; you see their value subtract from your total at the bottom of the receipt. Mail-in rebates print out at the register on receipt paper and you need to fill them out and mail them according to instructions on the rebates; you will receive some kind of reward in the mail (this is usually a prepaid Visa card) in several weeks' time. Sometimes, rebates are worth more than you paid for the item! For example, in 2019 I purchased two small kitchen appliances, which I will either gift or donate. They cost $2.15 each and I received a $14 rebate for each one. Not only did I get paid to "buy" these items, the rebates covered almost my entire bill! If I had arrived at the store earlier, I would have snapped up more of these doorbusters and turned quite a profit.
My 2019 Kohl's haul, which was $1.84 after rebates!
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