Get The Jump On Christmas With These Money-Saving Ideas

How soon is too soon to be thinking about Christmas? Different people have different opinions, but we think there’s no such thing as too early for Christmas planning… except maybe starting your planning for next year on this year’s Christmas Day! Planning ahead can help you spread the cost of an expensive time of year or save up for it ahead of time. We like to think of it as “year-round” you doing Christmas you a favour!

We’ve rounded up some of our favourite festive money-saving ideas to help you get a head start on planning for next Christmas, even as early as January!

Supermarket Christmas saver schemes

Most of the main supermarkets offer their own version of a Christmas saver scheme. These schemes allow you to squirrel away money over the course of the year. You can usually sign up from late December or early January for the next year’s scheme. Then, in November, the supermarkets will award a “bonus” to their Christmas savers, either as a voucher to spend in-store, or cash added to their Christmas saver balance. This could leave you with a decent wedge to cover – or at least help towards – the cost of your Christmas food shop!

Schemes and rewards vary by supermarket and may also change from year to year. So, make sure you ask next time you’re in-store, or search for your favourite supermarket’s Christmas saver scheme to find out how to get in on the action.

Year-long savings challenges

We all love a good challenge, don’t we? And, a money-saving challenge that you keep up for most of a year could help you save up for Christmas little and often, but leave you with a large sum of cash to spend in December.

Our favourites are the 365 day challenge, where you save 1p on the first day, 2p on the second, and so on all the way up to £3.65 on the last day, and the 52-week challenge, where you save £1 in week one, £2 in week two, and so on for 52 weeks. Sure, these challenges work best if you start on them in January. But, you can always adapt them or cook up your own challenge to save more in a shorter space of time if it's a bit closer to Christmas!

Shop the sales

Even though it can seem like there’s always a sale on somewhere, there are still big sales events that lots of retailers participate in throughout the year. Taking the time to plan what you’re going to buy, and for whom, well in advance means that you can take advantage of sales events over the course of the year to buy your gifts for next Christmas at lower prices!

The Boxing Day and January sales kick the year off and can be a great opportunity to stock up on discount stocking fillers and gifts for next year. Amazon Prime Day, which is exclusively for their Prime members, usually falls in the summer (although it was in October in 2020), as do end-of-season summer sales, which give you a great chance to pick up a few gifts at great prices.

But, the biggest opportunity for some bargain Christmas shopping is without a doubt Black Friday, which falls on the last Friday of November. This sales event, which seems to get bigger every year and now lasts a couple of weeks around the actual day, is a brilliant opportunity to buy everything from clothes to gadgets to holidays with big discounts. And, falling at the end of November, it’s close enough to Christmas that if you don’t like shopping too far in advance but do like the sound of a good deal, it can still work for you!