How to Prepare for Christmas financially as early as possible
I am on a journey with my finances. I know this journey never ends and continues for the rest of my life but I really feel like we have made significant decisions and changes recently for our financial good.
Mrs Mummypenny has been officially trading for nearly two years now as a limited company. This means that financially I have got through the tough times and turnover is good. Alas credit cards were used over the past two years to get me to this place. Currently we do owe some money on the cards, mostly 0% but there is some debt. I wrote my personal finance blogger debt confession back in April. Coming clean about our £15.5k debt.
Since then I have written a couple of updates, this being my latest and we have managed to get the debt down to 14k already!! Have a read and you can see all the things we are doing to cut back, save money and make money.
It is a struggle if I am honest with you. I am grateful to say that most of my life when I was in employed corporate jobs we had enough money, we could fritter money on takeaways, dinners out and holidays. Adjusting to not being able to do that is a challenge. May was a particularly restrained month. We spent hardly anything, the result was being able to knock a £1,000 chunk off the credit cards. But I ended the month feeling hard done by, not proud of the debt that had been repaid.
I have started doing some small things that are helping me to feel better about the restrictive spending habits.
Christmas Savings
I am making a start with Christmas. Always a tough one to budget for when you need to cut back and when you have three young boys. They are already discussing their birthdays (November/October time) and Christmas and the kind of things they would like, its June boys!! Long way to go!
Christmas is tough time. It’s not my favourite time of the year due to it being dark, cold and miserable. Christmas is a time when the wider family gets together, but not mine. This makes me feel sad. I try to make an effort for my boys but it can be a struggle. Comforting food at Christmas is important, roasted ham joints, chutney, roasted turkey, sausage rolls, crisps and dips! I like to get the boys what they want. Josh has already decided on a laptop, so I can start researching that now to find a good deal.
To make life easier financially it makes sense to pay a small amount of money into savings for particular goals, like the Christmas Saving card from Asda. You can have one card or a few and save £144 over the year on each card. At the end of your weekly/bi-weekly shop you can add a regular amount onto the card or maybe round up your shopping to the nearest £10 and put the difference onto the card, this will make the savings less noticeable to your weekly budget!
Once you have saved certain amounts on the cards you will be eligible for a bonus in November, in time for your Christmas shopping.
- Savings between £49 and £96 means a bonus of £1
- Savings between £97 and £143 means a bonus of £3
- Save up to £144 means a bonus of £6
Just pick up a card, or cards in store and get saving. All the money saved on the cards will need to be spent in Asda. Here is a handy FAQ section from the Asda website for more questions.
I will be saving around £800 using the Asda Christmas Savings Card. This has meant saving £20 a week for 39 weeks of the year (including a bonus) but it will be so worth it when I have that cash sat there ready and waiting to be spent on gifts for the boys and yummy Christmas food. Hopefully there will be some money left over for a gift for me!
This is a collaborative post.
One Response