Preparing for Christmas

I cant believe how close it is to Christmas.  This year seems to have flown by. 

 

 

I know people will be a lot more prepared for the festive season than I am but I wanted to share with you some tips, and how I like to prepare for Christmas.  What gifts to buy and how to save a few extra pennies!

 

A couple of years ago me and my boyfriend started putting any loose change that we had in a pot.  We thought it would be a good idea to help us save some extra money for some holiday spending money.  We did this from January until our holiday in July and we managed to save over £200!

 

We did it again once we returned to start saving for xmas and we were going to split the money we had saved to help buy family and friends gifts.  We ended up saving nearly £300.  This was a big help when it came to buying presents.  It is such a small, simple thing to do and you save more than you realise.  Every time we went to the shop and had some lose change or at the end of the week, any change that we had in out purse/wallet we would put in the pot.  You can do this for any occasion but every little helps.

 

Another thing I started with a friend at work on 1st January this year was saving 1p per day.  I saw it online somewhere and thought it would be brilliant.  Day 1 you save 1p, day 2 you save 2p and so on.  When it comes to June/July it does get quite costly so we started putting the money for the month in a pot on payday so we didn't notice it going out so much and didn't miss it for the month.  Had we done this every day we would have had £600.  As you know in life things crop up and you sometimes cant afford to keep it up by putting money away every month but if you do as much as you can afford, come Christmas you will have a pot of money to help.

 

Another thing that is good and will help are saving club card points.  Boots for example, they give you points every time you spend, which is added up in money value.  If you can save these up all through the year you will have money to spend in store at the end of the year.

 

I have started my shopping and have managed to get some good deals.  It is worth looking around online for the best deal if you know what someone wants.  A website I use quite often is Fragrance Direct.  They sells high end perfumes for a cheaper price than buying them in a store! 

 

Shopping around - A lot of shops do sell the same products but some will have a better price than others and if you can spend some time shopping around you will save yourself some money :)

 

When buying gifts for my family, I do try and find out if there is anything that they want/need but I do try and like to find them something special that means something, or something I know they would like that they might not normally buy themselves, show that I have put a bit of thought into my gifts.

 

I do find Danny is quite hard to buy for as men don't drop hints like us girls do?!?!!! but I do always seem to find things that I know he will like.  (I cant go into more detail yet in case he reads this! hehe but I will do a post around xmas to let you know what we bought each other)

 

My favourite part about this time off year is eating lots of food, spending time with family and decorating the house!  The Range has some lovely decorations in and it is all colour coordinated so you can easily find something that you want.  I cant wait to get the tree and decorations out and see what else I can buy new for the house this year.  I will do a separate post when we have got the decorations up and let you know what I have found :)