It is not too late to write out your Christmas budget for this year. Knowing your budget limits will help you figure out how much you can spend on each special person in your life without having to pay for Christmas for the first 6 months of next year (if you have ever put your Christmas gifts on credit cards, you know what I mean).
In the sidebar (and also here: Christmas Budget) there is a link to download a Christmas Budget spreadsheet. You can either use it electronically (my preference) or print it out if you prefer to use a pencil and calculator (my wife’s preference).
Here is how you use this:
1. Make a list of everyone who you need to buy gifts for.
2. Fill in what you plan to buy them, or fill in the amount that you plan to spend on that person. For example, my wife and I usually spend $100 on each other, so whether that is one gift or five gifts in the end it needs to add up to $100.
An important thing to remember is to factor in sales tax (there is a cell at the top where you can fill that in and the spreadsheet will automatically calculate what your purchase price needs to be in order to come in at or under budget). For example, if I budget $100.00 and buy a gift for $99.99, I will actually pay $106.99 after tax where I live. That puts me over budget by 7%. In the spreadsheet, you can put in your tax rate and see the budgeted purchase price. In this example, my purchase price should be $93.00.
Budget for spending on Christmas gifts
No, I am not getting my wife a Big Bertha Driver. That would be nice of me, though.
At the bottom you can also fill in Christmas related items, like how much your wife is going to spend on baking supplies for all of the Christmas cookies and treats she plans to make (surprisingly this can really add up).
If you are travelling, use the Christmas Travel tab. If you know you’re going to be travelling, these expenses shouldn’t come as a surprise, but for some reason they are easy to forget when putting together your holiday budget.
Besides budgeting, what else are you doing this year to save money at Christmas?
This is a great tool! Thanks for taking the trouble to share it. I’m sure it will help many people with their budgeting!