save money for Christmas presents

... a plan to get out of debt, and to grow some savings. I’ll use $ for christmas from this fund so it’s not an entirely separate account or anything, but it’s a pretty strict budget. I guess the next step is to figure out how much I’ll spend on pressies.

Steps toward saving money for Christmas:

1) Open an interest-bearing Christmas club account as soon as I return from vacation.

2) Make regular deposits.

3) Budget for Christmas presents according to how much money I’ve saved.

4) Watch “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” without a sinking feeling over my pending credit card bills and/or overdrafts.

5) Wake up on December 26 no worse for the wear.

I’m a waitress, so I started saving all of my change in August. By the time Christmas rolled around, I had almost 200 dollars in change to spend for Christmas!! This year I’m going to start saving right after Christmas. It was so easy, and even if you aren’t a waiter or waitress that change can really add up!!

Really, Christmas comes the same time every year and I’m tired of it “sneaking up on me” without having any money saved for Christmas presents.

What I want to do in 2008 is to put a little money every month into savings. Even if it was $20 to $30 bucks, which we surely blow every month on something frivolous, that would be plenty comes Christmastime.

I need to start putting back money for Christmas presents. I usually have good intentions about doing this, and then I don’t. I don’t want to put everything on credit cards.