A Christmas Shopping Budget is essential when preparing for Christmas.
Having one will help you stay on track and eliminate anxiety from overspending.
A typical Christmas shopping budget ranges from $50-$1,000.
Following a simple plan to create your budget is all you need when buying gifts for loved ones and preparing for the holidays.
Here are a few simple steps to creating the perfect Christmas shopping budget for you!
How To Create A Christmas Shopping Budget
Plan Out Gifts
Before jumping to finances, you want to know what you’re buying and who you are buying for. Take a moment to write out all of your loved ones’ names on a sheet of paper and what you would like to gift them. Include a potential price range near each name for how much you are willing to spend for each gift. This will help in giving you a rough estimate of how much you’d want to spend before you begin buying gifts.
Tip: the higher the price range, the earlier you can start saving towards the gifts so that you will have more time to prepare.
Decide How Much You Want To Spend Overall
After planning out gifts, you want to get an estimate on the total cost for all gifts and make an overall total. Once you have the total, begin creating a budget around that number.
Create Your Budget
A budget is important because it will help to ensure that you have enough money for all of your needs and wants. A budget will help you decide what to spend money on, and the categories you may need to reduce your spending in to allow you for more money in your pocket.
The first step would be to gather your net income for the month and begin to list all of your expenses, variable and fixed. What are fixed expenses? Fixed expenses are rent, utilities, phone bills, etc. Variable expenses can be groceries, clothes, gas and so on. After writing this out, you will then make a plan. In your plan, you will use your expenses from the previous step to estimate how much you would typically spend in a month. Once you have an idea, use your expenses as a guide to see how you can reduce your spending to have more money for gifts. If you find that you can’t reduce your spending in a certain category, the next option would be to brainstorms ways that you can make more money. Once completed, you will monitor and adjust your spending to stay within budget.
Start Saving Early
Another great step to include is saving earlier in the year to prepare for Christmas ahead of time. In the earlier months of the year, you can save a couple dollars to a couple hundred dollars on a monthly or weekly basis. Then begin to save bigger amounts as the holiday season quickly approaches. You can also make saving less overwhelming by incorporating different savings challenges which will help to make saving effortless and less overwhelming. You’d be surprised how much you can save and how quickly you can too. Pinterest has many savings challenges that you can use to save money year-round.
Take Advantage Of Holiday Deals and Yearly Sales
Throughout the holiday season, we have huge sales such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and many more before and in between. Shopping sales for items you intended to buy saves you money. Be sure to take advantage of sales when possible.
Affordable Christmas Gifts for Loved Ones
Don’t know where to start shopping for affordable gifts? I got your back! Take a peak at my shop for affordable gifts that are perfect year round.
Having a Christmas budget will save you the stress that can come when you’re not prepared.
Now that you have created a Christmas shopping budget, shopping for gifts doesn’t have to be overwhelming, but effective for you and your holiday needs.
I hope you all enjoy the Holidays and have a Happy New Year!
This article is all about creating a Christmas shopping budget.