Tell us your best practices for Christmas shopping!

Coach Natalie

Now that Christmas season is officially upon us, we'd love to hear your best practices for shopping! Do you buy stuff throughout the year or do you do all of your shopping at the end of the year? How do you save money for Christmas to make sure that all expenses are covered? Where are your go-to places for shopping? Do you prefer in-store or online shopping?

Please let us know by commenting below!

SRC54

I send cash.  That's it.

DannyB

We put aside a certain amount of money each month for birthday and Christmas giving.  I used to transfer that money to a sperate savings account to keep it safe from our routine spending.  With Simplifi I can leave that money in a checking account and see it accumulate via a Savings Goal and see the money separated out of our balance in the Simplifi Accounts table.

If we come across something we think would make a good Christmas gift during the year we go ahead a buy it and stash it in a closet.  But most Christmas shopping happens during November and early December. This year we and our kids and their spouses are doing a Secret Santa and each of us will buy a gift for one other. My wife and I buy something for each kid, spouses, grandkids and each other... thus the year long saving! 

We do a mix of brick & mortar shopping and on-line shopping. We don't have any particular go-to place but we do make sure to make some purchases at locally owned stores and businesses.

Ulysses

1) Make a new note in your favorite note taking app.  Call it Christmas/Birthdays.  (Alternately you can use Contacts on your phone for this purpose.)
2) Type in names of people you give stuff to.
3) Whenever you come across something that you think might be of interest to someone, add it under their name in the list.

For expensive things, add them to a slickdeals/3camels alert so you get alerted if they go on sale during the year.

To do: actually budget for gifts

DannyB

@Ulysses the slickdeals/3camels is a great idea!

Flopbot

ALL our accounts are in Simplifi.  I’m the one who keeps Simplifi up-to-date.  One problem we’ve run into in the past is that I’d have to log into my wife’s Amazon account to track down Uncategorized transactions and in so doing would spoil the surprise.

To keep my OCD side satiated, at least till after Christmas, I created a temporary category called “Christmas Gifts - For Me? (Confirm AFTER Christmas)”.

TommyMac

I use "Qapital" to take a bit of money out of my paycheck ever pay period so I have plenty for Christmas.  I have a category called "Christmas" and tags for each kid (and wife) so I can report on them, and I have a Watchlist item called "Christmas" so I can keep an eye on overall spending.  

What would be great is if I could turn a report into a watchlist item, so I can have a Watchlist with multiple selections such as Category "Christmas" and Tag "Child" to keep an eye on what I am spending per kid, not just overall.

DannyB

Hey @TommyMac

My wife does all that keeping track of how much we spend on each kid, grandkid and spouses... the only problem is that tends to balloon our Christmas spending 

So are you thinking of a watchlist with sub-watchlists kind of thing?  You could create a watchlist for each kid (and wife) to keep track of spending.  Or you could create a tag for each kid (and wife) and then in reports you could Breakdown: By tag and then Filter for your Christmas category.  That should give you a report of your Christmas spending by person.