Worried about budgeting for Christmas? Prepare your wallet with these simple tips

CHRISTMAS may still seem a long way away (unless you’re one of those people who’s already counting down the days!), but it pays to start planning now.

Last year, families spent around £820 on Christmas typically, previous research from VoucherCodes.co.uk and the Centre of Retail Research suggests. Many households will have put their Christmas on credit - but with some planning ahead, it may be possible to build a pot of cash and make savings here and there which will stop you forking out more than you need to. If you’re visiting loved ones this Christmas for example, booking travel tickets ahead could help to ease the costs.

Sarah Coles, a personal finance analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, says: “Around one in three people end up putting Christmas on credit, which can prove expensive. Given that you have a bit of time until Christmas, you can use the opportunity to put some cash aside, and use a few cunning tricks to boost your Christmas savings, so you can celebrate this year without breaking the bank.”Here are Coles’ 10 top tips for building up a money pot for Christmas... into a savings account as soon as you are paid each month, so you’re not tempted to spend your Christmas savings. There are a number of approaches you could take. Some banks allow you to round up each spend to the nearest pound and save the rest, while some apps regularly take small sums of cash from your current account and put them into savings for you.

The idea is that they’re so small, you don’t miss the money, but large enough to add up. This doesn’t have to involve a major sacrifice, but if you were to drop a family takeaway once a week, a daily coffee, and a drink after work on Friday, you could put aside an extra £200 a month, which would boost your Christmas savings nicely. Once you’ve established your savings strategies, you’ll have an idea of what you can afford to spend: This is where you start - not the big list of things you ideally want to buy. If you don’t have enough cash to cover the wish list, you can then decide either to cut back on each gift, or chat to people you know well enough and agree not to buy for one another this year. Who knows, they may be just as relieved by the idea as you are.