Preparing for Christmas | A guest post from a reader

Today’s post is an email I received from a reader of mine named Juliana. I was so encouraged when I read her story, I asked if I could share it with the rest of you, and Juliana graciously agreed.

Of course, it’s a little bit late in the season now for you to make all the preparations Juliana did, but hopefully her story will inspire you to starting saving for and thinking about next year’s Christmas celebration a little earlier than usual.

I’ve been reading your blog for about 18 months now and I just love it. I rarely comment (sorry!), but I love hearing about your frugal tips – particularly those on budgeting. Money was never really talked about it our family and so when I moved out on my own and was earning an income I’m afraid I had a few (too!) many frivolous years purchases before I started to work out that it doesn’t matter how much you earn – it’s what you do with it that counts. So I have been slowly trying to educate myself about budgets and saving and your blog has been great to help me learn from it in practice. I see your blog like the money education I never had from my family! Every day I check in a learn something – small or large – about how to help be more frugal. I particularly love your definition of frugal – it’s about getting great value for your dollar, and being frugal in most areas so you can save up and spend good money on things you love (like your camera or holidays and vacationing).

Anyway – I just had to write and say THANK YOU! Back in February 2010, you wrote a post on preparing for Christmas with three ways to do so – start saving, buy gifts year round, and think about what I could make for Christmas. I thought your ideas sounded great and I had recently set up an entire savings account for all my bills (as per your post on multiple savings accounts!), so it was easy to add an extra category for Christmas. So I looked at your email and I:

1) STARTED SAVING: I added up costs of all my Christmas expenses (airfares home, gifts, Christmas trim, even the birthdays in late December and early January were accounted for!) and divided the total by 26 paypackets. I then arranged for that amount to be automatically put away each time I got paid. (Automatic transfers are my friend! The money is spirited out of my sight and into an ING account before I even see it. It makes it much easier not to think of it as “my” money, or “money-I-can-transfer-back-and-spend-if-needed”. Not that I would ever do that. Ahem.)

Note from Kristen: If you’re interested in learning more about how I use ING accounts to save, you may want to read my post about my multiple savings accounts, which Juliana also linked to above.

Anyway, the money had been sitting there, growing, out of sight, out of mind since 4 Feb (the date of your post!), until yesterday my mother called to say there was a sale on Christmas-New Year airfares, and wouldn’t it be a good idea to buy my ticket now? I looked – they are reduced and after a few clicks to see the nice little pile in my Christmas account, I was able to buy the ticket at a great price! Such a change from last year when I had the same phone call from my mother – but I had to think “that’s a great deal – but I had to wait until I get paid/next week/after the next big bill etc” and by that time the good deal was finished. I just bought my air ticket today and am thrilled at the savings! That’s even more saved in the Christmas account!

2) KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN FOR GIFTS: This one was actually a two-part process. After an 11th hour Christmas phone call from my brother-in-law about what to get my sister (his wife!) for Christmas (nothing sends a shiver down your spine like “so what should I get your sister?” on Christmas Eve), I started to keep a list of potential gifts for people – everytime one of my sisters said “that looks good” or “I’d like to read that book someday” or “your nephew is really into trains at the moment” I would jot it down on a notepad in preparation for Christmas.

(An aside: this was easier that I expected! I bought a little notebook that fits in my purse and after any conversation which mentioned an item (or if they told me they had bought the book/train/item in question!) I would jot it down (or cross it out!) for that person).)

By having this in my mind because of the adding to the list meant I subconsciously kept an eye out for those things or other possible gifts when I went shopping each week. It didn’t happen often, but when it did it was an easy matter of buying it and I adopted the method you wrote about in your response to the comments on the Christmas post – if it was a few dollars I didn’t worry about it, but if it was slightly more I would either transfer less into my Christmas category the following week or go in and transfer that amount back to my account. But it was lovely to see these items (often on sale!) and know that I could afford to buy them, and wasn’t taking money from other bills of groceries.

For example: there was a big mid-year toy sale and I bought a few of my nieces and nephews Christmas gifts then. Normally I wouldn’t have had the money to take advantage of the sales as much as I did (and for such good prices!), but as the money was specifically allocated to come out the of “˜Christmas Budget’ category, and wasn’t grocery (or other allocated) money and I didn’t feel bad about it! And I got some great deals!

3) THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU COULD MAKE FOR CHRISTMAS: Whilst this isn’t strictly within the category you wrote – I still think it’s in the spirit of it (making something and starting ahead of time!).

Anyway, I had wanted to make (and finish!) these lovely Santa sacks for my newest nieces (having already made some for my other nieces and nephews, it was high time I finished these before they were old enough to notice they didn’t have them!). Last year I tried – but fell woefully short when I started to sew them in the last 2 months before Christmas. Christmas time is so hot here (Australia) and the last thing you want to do in the lead up to Christmas is sew a heavy, hot quilt.

And ummm……they didn’t get finished. (Oops!) Your post motivated me to get started early and make it a winter job. So I pulled out all the materials in July and set myself the goal of finishing the last two Santa sacks by the end of winter. It’s only a little *cough* – 2 months – *cough* past winter now, and I stuck to my goal and finished the last two Santa sacks last weekend!

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I hope that Juliana’s story is inspiring to you! I know how fabulous it feels to prepare for Christmas ahead of time (the saving ahead of time is especially wonderful), so I’m thrilled that someone else has gotten to experience that too. And I must say that I am very impressed with Juliana’s quilting abilities!

Do you do any of those things I suggested in my February post (saving ahead of time, buying gifts year-round, or making gifts for Christmas)? I’d love to hear about it!

Today’s 365 post: These ponies used to be mine…