Have You Started Saving For Christmas?

Photo by Tina Vanhove on Unsplash

76 days left until Santa arrives. How ready are you?

I went outside this morning to drink my coffee and shivered a bit. For the first time this fall, I could have used a sweater. That made me realize just how close Christmas was.

Am I ready?

I started stashing some cash away each paycheck for Christmas. Last year I had no money and my spirits were in a dump. Since Christmas is my favorite holiday, it killed me emotionally. I vowed not to let that happen again.

Problem was, I didn’t start stashing money away until June. So the answer to my question is, no, I’m not ready.

Every paycheck I give myself a spending allowance. I put a set amount into savings, and then I split what’s left over into four plastic baggies:

1. Projects- We bought our house and property a couple of years ago, and had to gut the inside. The outside was a jungle so we’ve been slowly chipping away at taming that. But, the list of what we still want to do is endless, so this fund helps pay for that.
2. Emergency- Last year we went through two hurricanes. Hurricane Sally was a cat 2 when she directly hit us. We went without power for over a week. We learned quick that in order to survive another storm like that, we needed at least 20 gallons of gas on hand as well…