How to Budget for Christmas

With Christmas approaching, chances are you are going to have to start digging into your wallet pretty deep.  Between buying everyone presents, traveling to far off places for family gatherings, the insane deals that make you want to buy up everything in sight, and the holiday themed treats at all the major restaurants, it’s hard to keep an eye on your budget.  With some focus and patience, you can still emerge from this holiday season ahead of the game, if you play your cards right.

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1.  Numbers

To start with, make sure your approach to the holidays is comprehensive.  You need to have a view on he amount of all the little things that you are going to need.  Every.  Single.  One.  Once you can look at the scale of your holiday shopping, you can then start to tackle the actual problem of figuring out your budget.  Knowing what you have to get helps you figure out where it’s ok to cut corners and forgo certain luxuries.  Hurry and make a list to help yourself out.

2.  Income

Know your income for the month, if you can.  Obviously, some jobs like those that depend on holiday tips are going to be skewed and more unpredictable, but you should have a general idea of how much dough you’re going to be bringing in for the month.  Christmas time makes it so that many people’s schedules go straight zany, and might mess with your income.  Make sure you know your bank account before buying everyone an iPad for Christmas, and you’ll save yourself some heartache.

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3.  Travel

Make your travel plans extremely early!  The earlier the better.  Train tickets, bus tickets, plane tickets, and any other kind of ticket are almost always cheaper far in advance of their date.  The prices around the holidays tend to skyrocket, so you need to take that into account.  Don’t forget about the intense traffic as well.  Getting from point A to point B will not be an easy trip.  Public transportation will be exceptionally crowded, and the freeways will be packed.  Be careful.

4.  Time

The absolute most important thing to budget is your time.  You need to make sure you have the time to achieve all of your holiday goals at a reasonable rate.  That includes: time to go shopping, time to take off work if you need to, time to spend with your significant other, time to spend with your family, time to decorate for the occasion, and any other situation that might arise because of all the Christmas chaos.  If you make sure to space everything out right, you’ll be far less stressed at the end.