Now is the time to start planning for Christmas

LIKE the nursery rhyme says Christmas is coming and all too soon for many. The goose might be getting fat, but a lot of pockets are not. What’s in them is shrinking all the time. The budget also is sure to take more out of them when we could be doing with someone putting a little into them. That’s wishful thinking.

So the only way is to prepare and try to soften the financial impac t of Chris tmas. In that respect we could do well to adapt the old tried and trusted way that served so well our parents and generat ions before them.

That is to save, and put a little away each week to break the back of the much greater expense that Christmas imposes on households and individuals. In a word budgeting is how to tackle Christmas.

You put away what you can weekly or monthly or at whatever interval it suits to buy what you need and want to have for Christmas. It is a method that shopkeepers and businesses are all too ready to assist with, facilitating customers to place deposits on goods and pay for them in instalments.

The popular name by which this is known is a club, with a lot of customers doing this all the year round. However, Christmas is probably the single biggest drain on households and everyone’s income.

So why not now ease the burden and enrol with your local shops and stores in their Christmas Clubs and put what you can away to make Christmas manageable and not the

big crush on your money when it arrives.

It’s simple and can save a lot of heartache when you discover in the days just before Chris tmas that you just haven’t the wherewithal to do your Christmas shopping and buy the toys and gifts that in your mind you were going to get for your children and loved ones along with friends.

There’s plenty of time to avoid that embarrassment and at least do your very best to make it a happy and joyful Christmas for those who are precious to you.