I think Christmas is only stressful if you let it sneak up on you. When there’s only a week or two until the big day, life can suddenly become a whirlwind of presents, decorations, wrapping and food prep.
Sure, there will still be some of that going on in the run-up to Christmas but you can make the rest of the holiday season super-calm (and less expensive!) by trying some of these ideas.
Join me as I try out these thrifty tips between now and Christmas:
Save £50 pounds
I always find it easier to stick to a savings schedule when there’s a finish line in sight. So, I’d like to suggest a simple savings plan that’ll help with budgeting for Christmas:
Save one pound every day.
Do this between now and Christmas, and you’ll have a lovely £50 budget to help make the cost of your Christmas food shop more palatable. In past years, this has been enough for my whole Christmas dinner – turkey and all!
You’ll probably get £1 in change each time you buy a travel ticket, a morning coffee or a lunchtime sandwich. So, keep hold of those pounds in a jar or piggy bank and open it up just before Christmas for an injection of cash just when you need it.
If you don’t often use cash or get change, I don’t mind if you bend the rules and put aside a £5-pound note every five days or £10 after ten days – the result is the same.
And the important thing here is that you’re saving little and often, so you won’t miss a pound here and there. It’s an easy way to put money aside for Christmas but it’ll make a big difference when you have £50 extra to spend in December.
Buy 50 presents
Similarly, if you want to spread the cost of Christmas, you can start your gift-buying now. Okay, you might not need to actually buy fifty presents, but if you have ten family members to buy for, let’s buy one present every five days.
This not only means you’re not splashing out £££s during one massive shopping spree (ouch!) and spreads the cost over fifty days, but it also helps you to feel more organised and in control over Christmas.
I’d rather spend my Christmas Eve chilling out at home (watching Father Christmas by Raymond Briggs and drinking hot chocolate!) than rushing around the shops spending untold money on last-minute gifts.
This also allows you to shop with independent makers, as any personalised or handmade gifts will need to be ordered in advance to give the craftspeople time to customise the gifts and get them delivered to you. Many have mid-December cut-off dates for Christmas orders, so shopping early really is an advantage here.
Plus, it’s likely you’ll be able to make savings on the price of the presents you buy now. There are already Black Friday deals available, and the cost of must-have toys will only increase as stock gets lower. And no one wants a Jingle All The Way scenario on Christmas Eve, do they?
Stash 50 treats
Do you remember the Christmas hamper from the milkman? In our area (decades ago), it was possible to save up tokens on your milk delivery throughout the year and then choose a massive hamper of Christmas essentials to be delivered just before the big day.
That was always an exciting moment in our household – opening up the hamper and seeing what treats we’d got to enjoy over the holidays. Christmas pudding, tinned ham, brandy snaps, chocolate coins, dates…
So, I suggest putting together your own hamper of festive treats for the family to enjoy. Much like saving the milk delivery tokens, it’s a great way to spread the cost. Plus, little ones will love opening it up and seeing all the special things you’ve selected.
Just adding a couple of items to your regular food shop will help you to budget for those extra treats. You won’t notice the cost of a chocolate orange and a bag of nuts amongst the rest of your food shop, but you would feel the pinch if you had to go out and buy a hamper full of treats all at once.
Write 50 cards and wrap 50 presents
This suggestion is a little tongue-in-cheek, and of course the task will vary, depending on how many people you need to send cards to or wrap presents for. But the key here is doing it bit by bit to make your to-do list more manageable.
If you imagine sitting down to write fifty cards and address fifty envelopes, it can seem like a massive task, and if you’re like me, you’ll probably keep putting it off. Whereas, one or two cards can be done in a couple of minutes.
Likewise, a mountain of gifts and oceans of wrapping paper are very daunting and will probably eat up all of your downtime in the days before Christmas. However, if you wrap each of those fifty gifts when you buy them, they’ll be done and dusted straight away.
The only tricky thing is that you might forget what you’ve bought and for whom. Sure, you’ll be labelling them with a gift tag, but I always keep a ticked-off list with me so I know what I’ve already bought and wrapped, so that I don’t end up duplicating gifts while I’m shopping for the next one!
Having to refer back to my list is just a minor inconvenience compared to keeping all the gifts unwrapped and putting off the task until the last minute.
The longer you put it off, the more it’ll cost if you have to use first-class post rather than sending the cards and gifts early using second-class mail. Plus, you’ll have to hop in the car to make a specific journey to get cards and gifts to the people you’re hand-delivering to.
If you’ve already written the cards or wrapped the gifts, you can keep them with you when you know you’ll be seeing those people anyway – and save time (and fuel!) on the last-minute car journey on Christmas Eve.
Do 50 things
This section covers all things festive – both practical and fun!
Spreading the activities of decorating the house, going to the local festive lights switch-on, choosing a spruce tree, visiting Santa’s grotto, carol singing, making a Christmas wreath from garden foliage, watching festive films and so on, means you’ll be able to enjoy the spirit of Christmas for longer.
Christmas shouldn’t be one long to-do list, but it certainly feels that way once we’re adults. So, it’s important to dot a few fun activities throughout the next fifty days to make it enjoyable and to make some festive memories with your friends and family.
I hope these ideas will make the whole run-up to Christmas less daunting and much more budget-friendly for you by spreading the tasks and costs over the next 50 days.
Please share your own ways of making your festive to-do list more achievable and enjoyable in the comments below. I’d love to hear your hacks and Christmassy plans!
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