Good Morning! Today I wanted to talk about our Christmas Budget. I don’t have a Christmas sinking fund like I usually do so I’m using this method here to save up for Christmas this year.
I know it’s super early and people are like, Christmas?! Really?! But when you only have small amounts to put aside at a time, planning is crucial. We have to plan far in advance to save up what we need for something that is bigger like this.
This year we are doing something a little different for Christmas. We are going out of town and having the trip and experiences be our gift. But we have little children and I personally just love giving gifts so I wanted to do something small for gifts as well. I’ve settled on little stockings for everyone on Christmas morning. We will be with several family members on our trip so I have a total of 8 stockings to fill. I want to keep them small and manageable so I set a budget of $20/stocking. That comes to $160 for gifts. I bumped that up to $200 so that I have money for a little decor or extra if the gifts end up running more.
I have saved $29 already. I need to save $171 more to meet my budget. I have August, September, October and November to save. That’s $42.75/mo or $10.68/wk that I need to put away to meet my budget goal. It’s very helpful to know that because I know just how much I need to come under budget each week with my groceries or misc spending. So for example, my weekly grocery/household budget is $125. To meet my savings goal for Christmas and put away $11/week, I need to only spend $114 of that amount.
Depending on how big or small your budget categories are, you may need to pull that amount from multiple categories. Maybe you can’t take it all from groceries but maybe you could pull $5 from gas and $5 from food and $1-$2 from a Misc category. The biggest thing is to know how much you need to set aside and to start early and plan ahead!
Until next time …
Grace