I used to get stressed about how I was going to afford Christmas gifts for the entire family. When you think about your spouse, kids, parents, siblings, nieces, nephews, grandparents, and more, the number of people can make December an expensive time. While you are making your list and checking it twice, you may remember the long list of people doesn’t even include all the Secret Santa gift exchanges you get roped into! I learned the best way to eliminate the money stress during the holidays is to PLAN for it. Here are a few ideas of how you can plan ahead … for next Christmas, of course!
- I currently save all my credit card rewards points all year long and get the cash back for my Christmas spending at the end of the year. I love having a chunk of money to pull from when it is time to buy Christmas presents for that long list of people! This may be a good strategy for you if you struggle to save cash for Christmas throughout the year and don’t use your rewards points for travel. Just make sure you don’t use any of those rewards point during the year.
- Another strategy is to open a separate checking or savings account for Christmas. You could save a certain amount of money in that account each month throughout the year. When the holidays arrive, you can let yourself use the money saved for your gift purchases. For example, if you put $50 into a separate account each month, you could have $600 saved by the end of the year.
- Some people purchase presents through the year and save them for the holidays. Personally, this option sounds tricky, but, hey, it may work for you! Hopefully, you have good storage space for gifts and enjoy shopping. If you have twelve people to purchase for, you could buy one gift each month and spread the cost throughout the year.
- On one side of our family, the siblings decided together not to purchase gifts for each other. We still buy gifts for the nieces and nephews. It makes life a little easier to have a few less people to purchase for.
- Finally, when I think about purchasing Christmas gifts, I put a rough dollar limit on each person. It may be tough to implement a limit per person if you are not used to it, but it really helps set the total budget and expectations for gifts.
Planning your gift-giving budget for the holidays may give you a little more freedom and a little less stress. Give us a call if you need help planning now or in the future.