Happy holidays, friend! It is officially the Christmas season for me and my household. Yes, I know we still have Thanksgiving coming, but my Christmas tree has been up since October 2^nd. I know you’re judging me. I am totally OK with that. Moving on …

The holidays truly are a fun and special time. Christmas movies, hot chocolate, presents, and Santa Clause give me all the feels! They also take a LOT of my money. As great and special as the holidays are, they can really drain your finances and leave your wallet black and blue by the time January comes.

My goal this year was to have a nice, special Christmas that my bank account didn’t have to recover from in the new year. As of today I can say we have fully decorated our home, bought all the gifts (including stocking stuffers), and put money aside for fun holiday activities while paying for it all in cash and staying within our budget (*lifts hands in praise).

Our goal was to be able to have a debt-free holiday season. I’ve mentioned previously that we are aggressively saving and paying off debt this year. We didn’t want this season to set us back financially, so we got smart. I talk about self-care a lot here with respect to the physical and mental aspects of our lives, but financial self-care is just as important. The goal is to set yourself up to win financially by not putting undue stress on your bottom line.

I want to share a few of the things we did this year to take the stress out of holiday shopping while protecting and caring for our finances at the same time. I’m dropping simple but effective keys below. We’re going to make holiday budgeting easy today. Grab a pen (or take a screenshot) and let’s get into these Christmas shopping tips to save you some money!

Don’t buy gifts out of obligation.

Let’s go ahead and set this straight out of the gate. You do not have to buy gifts for everyone if you can’t afford to do so. Heck, you don’t have to buy gifts for everyone even if you can afford them. The holidays have a way of exerting pressure on us. It’s very easy to feel obligated to not only buy gifts for your immediate family but for the Secret Santa gift exchange at work, for your closet friends, your child’s daycare teacher, your in-laws, and a host of other people you feel any type of indebtedness to or affection for.

Please don’t get pulled down the rabbit hole. While it may be nice and super sentimental to buy presents for everyone you’re connected to, doing so may very well put you at a disadvantage financially. It is OK to say no and to set up boundaries around your money while you try to reach your financial goals. Your loved ones will understand and if they don’t, were they really worthy of a gift in the first place?

Set a budget

Once you’ve come to terms with who will not be getting a gift from you this year, decide how much you can afford to spend on those you do plan on buying presents for. Also factor in how much you plan to spend on Christmas décor, parties, travel, and any other holiday-related activities or items. You want to try to be as thorough as possible here. Think back to previous years’ expenses to get a reference point of what expenses you will have this year and start from there.

My husband and I were militant about this. Our budget included all gifts, stocking stuffers, family Christmas PJs, the Christmas tree, the ornaments and ribbon for the tree, the tree skirt, miscellaneous Christmas figurines and other décor, Christmas pillows and throw blankets, gift wrapping paper, bows and tags to put on each present, and more. We were extremely thorough, to say the least. The goal was to capture as much as we could in our budget in order to come up with an accurate number.

Save towards your goal

With your budget finalized you should now have a set amount of money you’re OK with comfortably spending. It’s now time to start putting money aside towards that goal amount. Now we’re already in November. Ideally, you would start this process as early in the year as possible to give yourself more time to comfortably save throughout the year; but we’re here now so we’re going to make the best of it.

As of the time I’m writing this, there are about four pay cycles left before Christmas (based on a bi-weekly pay period). To determine how much you need to save from each check, you’re going to take the amount you set in your budget and divide it by the number of pay cycles you have left. For example: if you budgeted $1,000.00 for holiday spending take that $1,000.00 and divide it by four (since you only have 4 checks left before Christmas). This leaves you with $250.00 that you will need to set aside from each check.

I highly encourage you to save actual cash money to use for your holiday expenses. This will help you avoid overspending and going into unnecessary debt that you’ll regret once the New Year (and the new bills!) come around.

Pull your money out in cash

Friend, this is a major key. It is so easy to overspend when you have your holiday money intermingled with the rest of your account. It’s difficult to keep up with what actually got spent specifically on Christmas and how much you have left when you also have other things coming in and out of the same account. This is why I advocate for pulling your holiday funds out in cash or at least onto a separate debit or prepaid card. This year we opted to pull all of our money out in cash and put it in a specially designated Christmas envelope. We preferred doing it this way because we could literally see how much money was dwindling away, which helped a LOT with avoiding impulse purchases! Using envelopes year-round as part of your money management system is actually a smart money move regardless of the season.

However you do it – cash or card – try to find a system that works for you. The goal is to be able to keep track of how much you’re spending so you always know exactly where you stand.

And last but for sure not least …

LOOK FOR DEALS!

Listen, this is probably the easiest key to execute on this list during this time of year. There are sales everywhere!

If you already know what you’re planning to buy for the holidays, create an account at the store you plan to shop for and save those items to your favorites list and regularly review them. This will allow you to keep an eye out and be on notice whenever a price drops. I snagged 40% off my daughter’s tablet and 25% off a set of box lights for myself using this key.

Another thing I swear by is shopping around. This is a rule I live by year-round honestly and it recently saved me a LOT of money. I’ve had a quilt set saved in my favorites on Target’s app for months now, just waiting for the price to drop. Well, I was checking on the price yet again a few days ago when it occurred to me to google the name of the quilt set to see if it was being sold cheaper at other retailers. Long story short, Overstock had it for less – $50 less to be exact. I’m about to put it on my bed as soon as I’m done writing this article.

This was also a huge help for me when it came to Christmas décor. Initially, my plan was to go to Target (if you can’t tell already, Target is my happy place), but Target didn’t have any deals so I got just a few (and I do mean a FEW) things from there. Hobby Lobby on the other hand had all of their décor 40% off. We decorated the entire condo almost exclusively with things we got from Hobby Lobby. We threw in a few things from Marshall’s and Home Goods and came out saving close to $400 on decorations alone (including our tree) by the time we were done.

Shopping around (or Googling) for better deals will save you so much money. Your favorite retailer isn’t always the one with the most competitive price. A little extra searching on your part will have your bank account thanking you once this season is over.

When it’s all said and done, only you know your financial goals and the things that are valuable to you. I’m hoping you can tailor these simple tips to your own lifestyle and end the holidays on a high note and with a strong bank balance!

Happy Holidays!

Jas

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