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Image credit: Kostiantyn Li on Unsplash |
When summer meets winter. I'm planning Christmas 2026 already. I know it feels early for planning for the holidays, but I want to explain why. I set my budget now, while I still have months to save and I choose gifts in advance, eliminating last-minute gift-buying fatigue. What I gain is incredible peace of mind knowing the how much, what, and the timeline I'll follow.
Crunching the Christmas Numbers in June
I need to budget for our expenses. Coming up with a budget right now means I won't make sentimental over-expenditures as the holidays near. And this allows me time to set aside money in cash, so I have the whole holiday prepaid. I am including our Christmas dinner and Christmas Day brunches in this figure, as well as the gifts.
I know how much I will spend in total. The money will come out of two different funds, one the grocery fund and the other a holiday fund. I will set aside money every week to meet both categories.
For the extra grocery items I will want for Christmas Day meals, I will put $2 every week from my grocery budget into an envelope. By November 20, I will have that $50 and can use Thanksgiving sales to fill out parts of our menus. What does saving $2 per week look like for my family? It looks like beans and rice one night per week (we already know I have a lot of rice to use up right now), using our garden produce to its fullest this summer, and using all the little bits, such as pickle liquid and rinsings from ketchup and mustard containers. I could even make our own ketchup just for the next few months and save a couple of dollars every 6 weeks or so.
Since I grocery shop with cash, the dinner and brunch savings will be easy to do. I'll take $2 out of my grocery envelope each Friday and slip it into the Christmas dinner envelope. With the gifts, I'll need to dedicate a portion of our monthly income to Christmas savings. This will all be on paper, and not in cash, as I often buy Christmas gifts online.
Finding Perfect Gifts (Without the December Panic)
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The Priceless Benefit of Early Preparation
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image credit: Steph Quernemoen on Unsplash |
Every year I struggle to come up with ideas for my extended family members. I tend to not think as rationally as I should, and often overspend out of guilt "for not being early" or trying to match their lifestyle, which is more affluent than my own. By pre-planning gifts that are meaningful to each recipient and nice in their own right, I have interrupted that faulty line of gift-thinking. I have gained peace of mind in gifting.
The bonus to all of this planning is, as a person who needs to have some certainty in life, I can fully appreciate knowing how much all of this will cost, what I have to do and when, and how we will pay for the holiday.
Taking the time to plan for Christmas in June might seem early, but the financial peace and mental space it creates are entirely worth it. By setting up a savings plan and selecting the gifts now, I am giving myself the ultimate December gift: time to reflect on the meaning of the season.
Now I want to hear from you: When do you typically begin your holiday planning, or do you prefer the thrill of the last-minute rush? Let me know in the comments.
As usual, you are much more organized than I am, but I do start looking for gift items almost immediately after Christmas. When my kids were small, I would pick up clearance-priced hats/mittens as gifts. Living where we do, it never hurts to have more winter-weather items.
ReplyDeleteI'm finding that our gift-giving with our kids is changing as they get older. Last Christmas, my son was given new kitchen essentials to replace the hand-me-down items. He got married a week ago (!) and I think that, once again, gift-giving will shift. I try to include at least one fun gift in amongst the practical stuff. For years, I've gotten both kids a variation on a gingerbread-house building kit. They channel their inner children and have a lot of fun building together. I've also used Christmas as a time to build up my supply of board games and puzzles.
Hi Kris,
DeleteI've done the same with picking up post-Christmas items that are always needed, like you did with hats and mittens. That's a more difficult strategy to follow as kids get older. Their material needs grow, and they themselves will pick up household items as they need them, meaning us buying for them in advance without telling them could result in duplicating their belongings. In our family, now, we circulate wish lists in late November. That really helps with getting exactly what they want and need.
Black Friday is a big day for one local store's sale on games. We've stocked our game closet buying only on Black Friday. The sales are no longer as great, but I still find some discounts on games on BF every year. My daughter went to a puzzle exchange last summer at our local library. She brought puzzles she was tired of and picked up new ones to her. I also find puzzles to borrow from the free library stands in our neighborhood.
Oooh, I love making gingerbread houses! The four of us did a Halloween house in 2020 as a way to pass a Sunday afternoon at home when so much was still closed or limited access in my state.
My focus on planning for Christmas right now is setting aside a fixed amount of money each week so there will be no big bills due at the end of the year, which is why I sat down and calculated our anticipated expenses for Christmas 2026 now in June. I did also plan what gifts I will purchase for my siblings, as these are consumable gifts that one can use whether or not they have something in the same category. But that in itself, choosing what I will order and send, is peace of mind for my future self.
I guess what I do now is a lot like how my mother handled the Christmas budget. She set up a Christmas savings account at the bank sometime early int eh year and would make a deposit once a month when my father gave her the household allowance. Do you pre-plan your budget for the holidays before December?
It always feels good to have a plan. At least for me. However, we don't plan ahead for Christmas quite like you do. We try to keep aware and get gifts when we see something, but usually we are working on a birthday or some other gift-giving event that comes before Christmas. I find that if I buy too far ahead, the gift is often no longer relevant or needed by the time Christmas rolls around. Also, we draw names among the extended family and that doesn't happen until October.
ReplyDeleteHi Live and Learn,
DeleteI see what you mean by working on other gift-giving occasions that come between now and December. We have 2 fall birthdays. We have general ideas of part of what we buy for them at that time, and also wait to hear from them on what they particularly need or want. But the actual shopping isn't done for those birthdays until fall.
I like the idea of drawing names for extended family. It's just my two siblings/spouses that I buy for at Christmas, and my husband's family doesn't exchange gifts. You also have a big family get-together near the holidays, don't you? Do you do a big gift exchange all together?
As I said to Kris, my focus right now isn't on the actual purchasing of gifts, but planning the budget and how I'll save for gifts and special foods. Tomorrow is the first Friday that I'll put some money into an envelope. My plan is to not have big bills due just after Christmas without the cash in hand, so to speak, to pay them. I mentioned the Christmas savings accounts from my mother's era. Do you remember those? I wonder if that was something more regional.
I start Christmas shopping immediately the day after Christmas. I have 5 kids and although they make a lot of things for each other we also thrift shop, yard sale shop and clearance shop all year long. I keep a plastic tote for each kid labeled with their name in the basement where the temperature stays pretty much the same and pop things in there as I find them. I purchase one new item for each kid for their birthday and for Christmas usually using my Ibotta rebate money and money from Pinecone research surveys. So far this works for us. I agree how it is vital to a budget to start that shopping early.
ReplyDeleteHi Amanda,
DeleteI admire your organization. Shopping early is such a financial benefit when the budget is limited. You can find some spectacular deals this way. I used to regularly check clearance sections of Target, Kohls, Toys R Us, and Penneys and find some really great deals on items my kids loved. When they were young, I also tried to find one thing that they would really like, but likely wouldn't end up on a clearance shelf or in good condition second-hand. But I shopped Black Friday sales for those few items. The other thing I did with birthdays is ask family (grandpas and grandmas plus aunts/uncles) to gift my kids those things that I couldn't buy at some sort of discount but my kids wanted.
Are Pinecone surveys easy to qualify for? I did Swagbucks for several years and did well with those.
Lili, Pinecone Research is not nearly as good as a it was even a year ago. You used to be guaranteed $3 a survey and if they sent you one you qualified. They have since changed this policy and are similar to all other survey sites where in you have to start the survey to see if you qualify and sometimes I spend a good ten minutes or more just qualifying. I use to highly recommend them but I don't anymore. It's a lot of work for not much in return.
DeleteThank you for your opinion and information on Pinecone, Amanda. $3 a survey that they previously offered sounds quite good compared to what I was earning on Swagbucks. It's frustrating to do a series of partial surveys and not qualify. Thank you for your honesty.
DeleteWe have extended family gatherings at Christmas for both sides of our families. What's getting hard is that we buy for all of the youngest generation and there are getting to be more of them every day. Right now the count is nine.
ReplyDeleteSounds like your mother had a Christmas club account at the bank. Those used to be quite popular.
Hi again, Live and Learn,
DeleteI thought you had a couple of gatherings each year. Those must be fun! Oh, I know what you mean about buying for the youngest generation. On my father's side of the family, when all the parents had finished growing their families, there were a total of 16 of us cousins. At one point one of the aunts suggested we each draw 1 name from the 16 for gifts, instead of each of us receiving a gift from each aunt/uncle pair. That was a lot more manageable for budgets all around.
Yes, Christmas club, that sounds right. The banks gave out promotional items periodically throughout the year with deposits. My mother would come home with Christmas-themed notepads, inexpensive cardboard ornaments, Christmas carol songbooks, and holiday dishtowels. Most of the items had the banks' name prominently displayed. But they were fun to receive throughout the year and look forward to Christmas.