This is a paid collaboration with Emma App.
Getting ready for Christmas helps make everything flow easier. Less stress, less fuss, more happiness and merriment. Keeping on top of your finances is an integral one of those Christmas preparations.
Christmas money can be hard to come by and even harder to hold onto. Paying out for presents, festive food and all those little extras can soon add up. You don’t have to spend a lot of money at Christmas in order to have a good time but if you are doing festive spending, manage it well.
One of the ways to ensure your money is well managed ahead of Christmas, is by downloading the Emma app. As seen on Forbes and The Financial Times, Emma is a Budget Planner and Money Management app which helps you cancel subscriptions you don’t use, avoid going into your overdraft, track your debt and ultimately save you money.
You can manage all your accounts in one place whilst setting budgets and making money goals. Amongst other exciting features, you can receive daily balance notifications and get smart reports about your finances. This helps you plan, prepare and save. Download the Emma app today.
Whilst you’re doing your Christmas preparations, think about what food you need. Remember that the shops are only closed for a day, with most shutting u shop early on Christmas Eve and the majority opening on Boxing Day. Make sure you have enough milk for cups of tea, but don’t go over the top stockpiling stuff. You’ll likely overbuy for your Christmas dinner anyway so there will be leftovers. Cut back on food waste by simply doing a bit of meal planning.
Being ahead of the game with gift preparation is important. As well as budgeting to buy the presents in the first place, you need somewhere to hide them away from prying eyes and snooping noses whilst also giving yourself plenty of time to wrap them. Don’t worry about buying expensive wrapping paper and never buy it at full price. If you can hold off, most retailers start to discount wrapping paper a few days before Christmas. That’s if you didn’t buy any in the January sales for this year. Brown paper is just as good and added a traditional feel to the gifts under your tree. It’s going to end up in the recycling anyway.
When you prepare for Christmas, you spread the time taken over the weeks prior to the day itself. This is much less stressful than trying to do it all in the week before Christmas Day. I’ve written before about saving money for Christmas throughout the year so you have a fund to use when Christmas present shopping comes around. A little bit of planning here and there, getting on top of everything you need to do and making sure you have a handle on those purse strings as well as an eye on your accounts is definitely a good thing to do. Without Christmas preparations, you can end up being stuffed just like the turkey on your dinner table. The saying goes fail to prepare, prepare to fail. No one wants a failure at Christmas.
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