It’s that season once again, of holiday cheer, traffic, and of course, spending. Well, who doesn’t love cheer and we can’t avoid traffic. What we can control, though, is the spending. In this article, we are going to share with you some solid tips on how to save money this holiday season and still be comfortable. Enjoy!
Talk to the Family About a Holiday Plan
We recommend planning your holidays as soon as two months before, but if you’re just reading this article today then there’s still time! So grab that pen and paper, huddle up the entire team and talk over your holiday plans. Here’s how.
Creating a Plan for the Holidays
- Set your budget. Speaking of big-ticket items, we understand if you might be feeling a little rushed thinking that there’s not much time to save anymore, not to mention the holiday sales happening left and right. If your money isn’t enough, we can suggest considering a personal loan. Just make sure that the thing you’re spending on is worth it—something that you deem can make or break your holiday spirit.
- Brainstorm the ideas that everyone has on what they want to do during the holidays. Since you’re planning a little it earlier, you still have time to save up for big-ticket items or DIY things that you can actually create yourself. Pinterest is a treasure trove of inspiration!
- Set a deadline. Finally, prevent procrastination and set deadlines on each of the members’ tasks. You can even create a competition out of it to further motivate everyone. Just come up with a price that you can award on Christmas Eve.
- Designate tasks. Once you have set your budget, you can now designate your tasks (and your budget). In this way, everybody’s involved. Plus you’ll be teaching your kids about financial literacy too! For instance, you can assign all the decorations to your eldest son this year. If you’re budget is limited, it’ll be his task then to make do with what you have and plan a DIY decor-making session with the entire family.
Don’t Forget About Food!
How are your plans coming along? Great, we hope. While that’s already in the backburner, we can now talk about food. Plan the menu you’ll be eating during your get-togethers and parties. You can start by setting a food budget and divide it into how many holiday meals you will be hosting.
Here’s a pro tip: search for recipes that have similar ingredients but different taste profiles. In this way, you can buy things in bulk, save money, but still have more than enough ingredients to work with.
Finally, Gifts
Ah yes, the never-ending struggle of finding the perfect gift. But don’t worry, that struggle ends today. Here are some tips on how to handle gift-giving like a pro:
Create a Gift List
Make a list of everyone you want to give a gift to this year, and by that, we mean everyone. Then, once you’re done, sort them by priority. We suggest you to focus on the people who made the top of your list. These are apparently the ones who mean the most to you.
What happens to everyone else? You can sort them out according to categories. For instance: kids, women, men, etc. In this way, you can also buy your gifts in bulk just in different variations. Choose one or two gifts per category then mix-and-match. You can even trim your gift list down if you’re really on a tight budget. Don’t worry, at least you already have a gift for those who really matter. Life’s too short to please everyone.
Set a Budget
You will already notice the theme of our article: everything revolves around the budget. Once you have your budget set, divide it into two. The first half will be spent on your priority list while the other half will be spent on everyone else. You can further divide your budget into different categories you’ve created.
Consider DIY
Finally, make your gifts a little bit more special this year by making them your own. This is a good idea to give to your priority list since they are also the ones who will appreciate your effort the most.
Happy Holidays!
We hope that our list has proved helpful and it has given you some awesome ideas on how to make the most out of your holidays while still being able to stick to a budget. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year guys!
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Related article you may find interesting: “What is a Budget?“