I ended up spending about $500 dollars on christmas gifts this year. It was basically the accumulated total of getting so many people presents, with the occassional bigger present. I need to learn to not spend so much during christmas, but, more importantly, I also need to save money throughout the year so I’m prepared to spend that money on gifts. I think I should plan on taking $100 from the paycheck before christmas and use that on gifts. Any other money I spend on Christmas gifts, I need to save up throughout the year. I need to figure out how much money I would need to save each paycheck to get to the $400 mark before that last paycheck before Christmas.

My steps for a christmas budget needs to be as follows.
1. Analyze prior spending. - Unfortunately, I don’t have any information on how much I have spend on any other christmas other than this one, so I can only use this one as a reference for now.
2. Figure out how many paychecks until next Christmas.
3. Come up with a budgeting figure amount - What I mean is that I need to find an amount that I start saving on the paychecks before christmas, but not exactly what I will be spending on christmas presents. I can have money set aside on the last paycheck before christmas to fill this amount out. For example, If I want to budget $500 for christmas presents next year, than my savings goal would be to save $400 through the year, and grab the final $100 from that last paycheck.
4. Divide my budgeting figure amount by the number of paychecks to save with. - keeping with the example above, that would mean I would be taking $400 dollars and dividing it between the 25 paychecks I will be saving with. The 26th paycheck is the last paycheck before christmas, and I will take the last $100 out of that amount. This means that I will want to save $16 each paycheck to have my goal of $400.
5. automate the money taken out of my account. - I need to automate this step, so that I can make sure I that I save this money for this specific purpose. When you break if down into chunks like this, it doesn’t seem like a lot, but if you have to come up with a big chunk at once, it can seem more than it really is.

Filed under: budget, money