How I Budgeted for Christmas 2020

Some of this is totally going to make sense, and some of this may seem totally outrageous. But I am all about being truthful and transparent on my blog, so here we go!

I did two things when planning out for the gift-giving season this year: Start saving in January, and my Amazon Prime card (I’ll explain this second).

The first thing I started to do was set aside a small part of my paycheck beginning with the first one I got at the start of the new year. I get paid every two weeks, so with every paycheck I got, I set aside $10 into my savings. Then again, two weeks later I did the same thing. By the time this has post has gone up, I’d saved just over $250 in preparation for this coming holiday season. Now, throw in a pandemic in there, and a move, I did have to dig into some of that to make ends meet, but I have been able to build that back up since my bills have exponentially decreased. Setting just $10 aside every paycheck was stupid easy. It just meant that I didn’t go get my favorite coffee every couple of days. Right now it’s just my husband, Benjamin and I, so spending for Christmas isn’t that expensive.

The second part of my savings for the holiday season is the use of my Amazon Prime credit card. Simple purchases like groceries, restaurants and gas earn you points to use on Amazon. On top of that, anything you purchase from Amazon gets you extra points. I have had a lot to pay off of my card. It was the first credit card I’ve ever had, and I did dirty with Uber Eats. Also a big reason as to why I am living with my in-laws - to finally pay off this card to zero. So for the last six months or so, I have been putting nearly every dime of my paycheck to paying off this card, which meant continuing to build my Amazon points. I’ve been tempted to use them throughout the year, but I persevered, and here I sit with $200 worth of points to use on Amazon. Now, I do not recommend maxing out your credit card and doing what I have done to prepare for Christmas, it just happened that way with our living situation. I would suggest the latter.

How do y’all budget for the holidays??? I expect I will have more kids in the future, so I’ll need some tips for more kiddos!

This is all for today!

Tootles,

~ Izzy