CHRISTMAS ON A BUDGET

from Russell Grant Magazine - Nov21 (FIREWORK1121)

MARTIN COMPSTON

Christmas is an exciting time of the year, allowing everyone to enjoy, feel happy, and spend some quality time with their friends and families. Although Christmas is a time of giving, it can mean you overburden yourself with debts by purchasing Christmas gifts you can’t afford. Instead, take your time choosing your Christmas gift ideas for each person. You may feel a great temptation to buy expensive gifts and spend money on luxuries. Or to buy the biggest Christmas tree you can find, when you really don’t need to. By doing so can cripple your finances. That’s why it is crucial to plan, budget, and stay organised to avoid getting into debt at Christmas. There’s a reason Credit Card searches spike in January every year!

Plan Early For Christmas As always, planning and organisation is the key to a successful Christmas.

Therefore, you should set yourself a budget early on and keep to it. When calculating how much you’ll need, you should: ◊ Work out what your budget is for every thing you will need to purchase this

Christmas. Budgeting first will allow you to work out what you can spend per person, and on food, drink and decorations. ◊ Then create a list of everyone you need to buy/make gifts for. ◊ Plan what you want to get or make for each person in terms of their Christmas gifts, and how much it will cost. ◊ Create a list of all the other items you need to purchase – food, drink, decorations…etc. ◊ Once you’ve done the above, work out how much that all comes to and see if you’re still in budget. If not, go back through your lists to see what you can swap out, make instead of buy, or find cheaper elsewhere.

Once you’ve done this, make sure you stick to it! Shop Around For Christmas Gift Ideas

Start early when it comes to your

Christmas shopping. This will give you time to shop around to find the best deals for the items you want. Shopping around allows you to compare prices and find any discount codes or coupons for as many items as possible. Going to Christmas markets is great to window shop. However, you’re likely to find the prices here are a lot more expensive. So if you’re looking to have a budget Christmas, perhaps only go for the atmosphere, and not to buy.

Look Out For Coupons & Vouchers

You could even sign up to something like Honey that will alert you when items you’re interested in get discounted. It’s a free browser you install on your computer. You list the brands you’re interested in and it will alert you any time a new discount code becomes available. It’s amazing for saving money without you having to do anything. Another way to find coupons and vouchers is to look in your local newspapers. They don’t come around very often but have a quick flick through next time you’re at a newsagents. One very simple way to get vouchers is to get your supermarkets free brochure. They will normally always have discounts and coupons on food for you to use during your shop with them.

Do Your Christmas Food Shop When Supermarkets Reduce Their Prices Have you ever gone shopping on certain days and noticed more yellow reduced stickers than usual? This is because each supermarket reduces their prices more on certain days and at different times of the day. We would recommend buying as much of your Christmas groceries on these days as possible. If you have the space, you

can always freeze anything that’s due to go over it’s best by date before the big day. Buying frozen food at your supermarket can often be a much cheaper way to buy your groceries, even festive party food. Before you go buying fresh veggies that might go off before you can use them, checkout the frozen aisle to see if you can get something similar, cheaper. This is a tip that I highly recommend following, not just on the day of your Christmas shop, but for every grocery shop. This way you can save more money on the lead up to Christmas. To help you work out when supermarkets reduce their produce, you can checkout supermarket reduction times here.

Homemade Christmas Gift Ideas

Remember, Christmas isn’t just about how much you can spend on a person. It should be more about spending time with loved ones, and giving something they’ll love, instead of an expensive gift they may never use. Now that you have your list of people you need/want to give gifts to. Make your Christmas gift ideas personal to each recipient. Put your detective hat on and do some digging. What is it they love to do, eat or drink. Do they have any hobbies? Do they have a sweet tooth? Perhaps they love your mince pie Christmas cookies. Say for example they have a love for chocolate. Instead of buying them super inflated bars of chocolate. Why not see if you can make them a hamper full of homemade baked goodies. If you have a few people who love cakes, why not double up and make a larger batch of goodies and give them to multiple people. OK, so this won’t save you time as it could be quite time consuming. However, it will save you a lot of money doing it yourself. Once you’ve filled your hamper up with delicious treats, you can then start to personalise each gift with the decoration. Ribbons, foliage, stickers, homemade pom poms…etc.

Use What You Have

Instead of going out to buy fancy decorations, or gift wrap, take a look around and see what you already have. Have you recently been sent a package that came in brown paper wrap, or packaging paper? If you can, instead of throwing it away, try to smooth it out and see if you could re-use it as wrapping paper. Perhaps you have some left over ink Christmas stamps (or you could buy some) to print your own designs over the packaging paper. Perhaps you have a few old gift bags lying around the house that you could repurpose into Christmas gift bags. Not only is wrapping paper so expensive, it’s also not great for the environment, especially if it’s covered with glitter or foil. Most recycling centres won’t accept wrapping paper in the cardboard or paper waste. It ends up in with the general waste, filling up the landfill sites. Plus, when you think about it, paying a fortune for something to be thrown away as soon as it’s received seems silly doesn’t it?

You could even go on a little walk in the country to see if you can find some foliage to use as decorations around your house. A sprig of holly perhaps. Or maybe some pine cones. Even a bit of an evergreen tree. OK, so don’t go chopping down other people’s plants and flowers, but out in a field, a little sprig here and there might be fine. You could even ask the owner if they would mind – i’m sure they won’t!

Stay Organised

To reiterate the first point, stay organised! Although Christmas is a time of joy, it can make you feel disorganised because you have a lot to remember. Keep checking in with your lists and your budget to make sure you stay on track. Oh and make sure you keep all of your receipts, just incase any gifts aren’t quite right in some way. This way you can make sure you’ll get a refund for anything sent back. There’s nothing worse than having to send a gift back without the receipt and wasting your money as they won’t take it back without a receipt. You can’t overlook the significance of early planning when it comes to Christmas. The tips given above will help you enjoy a more cost-effective Christmas. Make sure you plan for next year’s Christmas by reviewing the mistakes you committed this year and developing a strategy for doing things differently next year. Make the most of the sales just after Christmas. If you need to stock up on Christmas gifts for next year, wrapping paper, cards…etc, now is the time to do it when the prices will be at their lowest! Try to think outside the box when it comes to Christmas gift ideas this year.