I found myself in a Scrooge-like mood several Decembers ago. We seemed to have the perfect storm of end-of-year costs coming at us — flights to visit my family, gifts for the holidays, flood insurance renewal, annual homeowner’s association fees — and it sucked the fun right out of the holidays. I was so stressed. I hated that all this “adulting” was ruining our winter.
Advertisement: High Yield Savings Offers
This is a pattern for us that repeats each December, too. Bills always skyrocket at the end of the year, right when we’re supposed to be merrily hanging mistletoe and joyfully giving gifts to our loved ones. Luckily, in the midst of my Scrooge-ness, I woke up to the fact that I could change the holiday season (or at least future ones) for us by planning better.
Read More: Do You Know How Much Americans Spend on Christmas?
The three following holiday money-saving strategies are ones I’ve experimented with over the last five years, and ones I can confidently say have changed our holidays for the better.
Strategy No. 1: Shop Year-Round
Confession: I start shopping for next holiday season in the after-Christmas sales. I’ve been doing this for years, and it means instead of scrambling around in early December, trying to fulfill gifts for over 25 loved ones in my life, I get to leisurely find the “right” gifts for them throughout the year.
Usually, by the time December rolls around, I just have a handful of gifts left to purchase, instead of a sleigh-full. I can’t tell you how much stress this one strategy has taken off of my plate.
Related: 40 Ways to Save Money Over the Holidays
Strategy No. 2: Change Our Retirement Account Strategy
Since the last two months of the year for us stretch our cash flow to its limits, I decided to give us some much-needed relief by prepaying our retirement contributions.
Each year, my husband and I contribute the full amounts (currently $5,500) to each of our Roth IRAs for a total of $11,000 annually. But, instead of spreading that out over 12 months ($11,000/12 months = $916/month), I spread it out over 10 months ($11,000/10 months = $1,100). This gives us two months of breathing room, where an extra $1,100 is sent back into our cash flow. Talk about an infusion of cash when we need it the most.
More on Switching Things Up: 11 Unorthodox Retirement Strategies That Actually Work
Note: Look into dollar cost averaging before you decide if this is the right shift for you to make.
Strategy No. 3: Use an Automatic Savings App
I was skeptical when I first heard about automatic savings apps. Like, really skeptical. I can be a bit of a control freak when it comes to my money, and to be honest, it worried me that an app would be taking money out of my account in denominations I didn’t pre-approve.