Creating a Holiday Savings Fund

Do you find that every January, you stare at your credit card bill and your bank balance in horror, shocked at how much money you spent in credit card billsDecember on presents, holiday treats, decorations, special outings and more?

The holidays can be a very expensive time of year, and many people tend to get carried away and sentence themselves to a January of barely scraping by.

However, if you plan ahead for next Christmas, you will be able to buy all of the presents you need without even batting an eye or seeing your bank balance dip even once.

How can you do this?

Create a Holiday Savings Fund

It’s quite simple. All you need to do is to open a new bank account the week after Christmas and set up an automatic transfer to pay a small amount from your paycheck into the account every week. The amount can be as small as $10 per week.

Now, $10 per week will seem like nothing to you and you won’t even miss it. After all, it’s less than $1.50 per day. It’s the equivalent of two cups of coffee and a muffin at Starbucks every week.

If you can buy things on sale when you go grocery shopping, you can easily shave $10 per week off your shopping budget without even noticing the difference. You will get so used to having $10 less to spend each week that you will forget it was even there in the first place.

It All Adds Up

However, if you stick to the plan and save $10 per week by next December you will have a fantastic surprise. You will look into your bank account and find $520 that you have saved up effortlessly over the last 52 weeks.

$520 is a big chunk of cash, and it will probably be enough to cover all of the Christmas presents for your family! The best thing is that you can splurge on your holiday treats without having to go into debt.

A Holiday Savings Fund is an easy strategy to save up for the holidays, and you will always have enough to make the season special!

Where to Hide Presents From Your Sneaky Kids

When your children know that there are Christmas presents in the house, they turn into little detectives leaving no stone unturned in their kid shaking presentsquest to figure out what they are getting this year.

However, you don’t want their curious prying eyes to ruin the surprise that you have planned for that special morning, so how can you hide the presents from your kids so that they will never find them?

Go High

If your kids are still quite little, you can use your height advantage to hide the gifts in a place that they will never look, such as the highest shelf in the closet. Push the gifts to the back and cover them with blankets or clothes.

Mobile Hiding Space

Why not try hiding the gifts in a duffel bag in the trunk of your car? If you don’t have teenage kids and you are the only one who drives the car, this is a great hiding place because you will always have the keys. When you are gone you won’t have to worry about sneaky kids because you will have the gifts with you!

Working Overtime

If you have an office with a locked door or a storage locker in your workplace, you can stash your secret treasures there. Your kids will likely never come into your workplace, so this is a perfect place! Just remember to take the gifts home on your last day before Christmas vacation!

Hide Them in Plain Sight

To really confuse your kids, you can hide their presents by wrapping them and putting them under the tree. However, so that they can’t determine what the gifts are by shaking them and weighing them, you will need to be clever and disguise them.

Wrap small gifts in larger boxes, and put heavy objects in to disguise the weight. Use oddly shaped boxes, and include things like jingle bells or rice that will make a sound when shaken. Your kids won’t be able to guess what the strange object is!

You can also leave off the names so that your kids don’t know which present is for whom, and simply write a secret code for yourself so that only you know.

Outsmart your kids this holiday season so that their burning curiosity won’t ruin the magical surprise!