Every year when Christmas comes, I feel like I am scraping to have enough money to buy Christmas presents. Because of this, I have made a decision to start saving now for next Christmas. I figure if I can save $20 every week starting on January 1^st, I can have approximately $1,000 by next Christmas.

Every Christmas I set a tentative budget. I make a list of every person I need to buy for and next to the names, I place an amount. For some reason however, the amount I actually spend is always way more than this amount. Part of the reason is because I fail to plan for extras, such as wrapping paper, Christmas cards and things like this.

If I stick with my savings plan, and have $1,000 saved for next Christmas, my wallet will not be affected. In fact, I really won’t even feel it. I think that this is a great way to save for anything. $20 a week is not a huge amount of money. For me, I think it is doable. After I thought this through, I thought about increasing my savings amount. The point of the additional money would not be for Christmas though. It would simply be a savings plan for the future. It could be used for retirement, or if I need to make a large purpose.

With holidays, or with any large purchases, if you save the money ahead of time, it makes buying something so much easier. There are no worries about where the money will come from. It will simply be there.