to not understand the argument that it is a good thing to buy Christmas presents 11 months ahead of Christmas onwards because it spreads the cost?

[Mintyy]

I must be spectacularly dense, as I just don't get it .

Please explain to me.

Over Christmas and January I have half a dozen birthdays.

1. For those that like something 40% proof as a gift, prices of booze usually go up nearer Christmas.

1. For someone who always likes a particular item then you can snap it up when the price is good.

1. You can hoard points all year. I will be using nectar and boots points and, to my shame, the points from father's Daily Mail. btw the points from the Daily Mail will cover Christmas Dinner and I still don't agree with their politics.

1. Christmas cards, Christmas wrap and decorations are on sale in January. Two years ago I walked into Matalan on Boxing Day and bought 14 long rolls of really good quality gift wrap for £1 each. A lot of it was plain gold or silver so I have been using it all year round as it will do birthdays and weddings etc as well.

1. If you keep a stash of emergency presents for those sudden 'shit I need to take a gift and I have no idea about this person' moments or if your kids are likely to be invited to a lot of parties then the stuff that is obviously gifts that they are trying to shift in January is a useful hunting ground.

You can actually save money rather than just spread the cost if you are careful, but some stuff does actually need to be bought nearer the time.

btw I hadn't heard of camel before - woohoo!

The summer sales have been, I got DD some beautiful tights and necklaces 75% off in Monsoon, Stocking fillers, also some face paints and other bits. As others said - buy classics in advance so colouring books but really special ones, colouring pens.....the prices on those may not rise but I know she will 100% like them. I tend not to buy faddy stuff but we did get sucked into Barbie.

We do not have millions of people to buy for either but at the same time, when living nearly hand to mouth any extra costs really make a difference. Also we do not have family spoiling the DC its up to us to make it really special.

I hoard points too. I didn't know you could get them from the Daily Mail. I must ring my Dad.

We hoard nectar points and get our xmas tree from homebase with them.

car boot sales for gifts? DD's best present last year was a fancy dress costume picked up at a boot sale, £2, worn it nearly every weekend this year.

There may well be amazing bargains in October November and December. Fine if you have oodles of money. But what if you only have just enough to pay your ordinary bills in those 3 months? What if you have more money coming in and less money going out in April May June July and August and September?

YABU Op it does make more sense to spread the cost out throughout the year. I do it for the dc's and dp. The two youngest dd's I bought their birthday and Christmas presents in a sale in March! B'days were aug and sept. I saved over half price and they will love them.
DP is a comic geek so I have to be careful with his things, there are a lot around but sometimes prices can shoot up before Christmas. I will look into this camel tracker thngymajig as that would save me even more.

I think I do save money as I have my lists for the next Christmas and I buy a lot of the stocking filler when it is cheap and use offers. I got one gift for £3 instead of £18 once. By buying early and remembering you don't have that mad panic in December and end up spending way too much.

AnaisHendricks They are on the bottom of the back page, you have to sign up online and then it is usually 10 points per weekday, 100 points on Saturday, 150 points on Sunday, sometimes there are codes to get double points or bonuses. linky

3900 points will get me a £10 Morrisons voucher, which is where I do my Christmas dinner shopping. I'll probably be able to get £40. They also do cashback deals and usually have an offer on for a cheap steam mop etc. I feel quite good as I am getting something from them regardless.

btw this Boxing Day I will be looking in to Matalan to pick up the clothes. They will be all summer/autumn but I will get the next size up for next year. DS is nearly seven so I don't need to worry too much yet about how current the fashion is.

I do understand your point OP, you don't understand why people would be unable to save money.

All those who've said 'what if an unexpected bill comes along and swallows up your christmas savings', well if you've spent as you go along, so not saved anything, then what do you do, go into debt? That's more expensive!

If you saved, you'd pay the bill, then have to have a frugal Christmas to stay in the black but you'd be in a position to do that and avoid over-spending.

If you can afford to pay council tax over ten months rather than twelve then the payment break helps a bit in the New Year. Well it did when I was working.

You still pay the bill, but the DCs/OH/parents have something to open. If our boiler broke down on Dec 1st, we'd have to not go out, compromise on Xmas dinner, etc. But everyone would still have presents. Maybe not everything they wanted, but they would have something.

LisaMedicus, thank you

You are assuming that people have all the money they need in December to buy everything they need for that month, when a huge number in fact, do not.

Its about cost but also its about time, I could not for instance go to toys r us, or john lewis, and get everything I need.

I need to have time for things to turn up, from lots of different places.

Agree with valium - lots of people have explained it pretty clearly. If you actually wanted to understand, you would have got it by now.

I'm with OP really. I have heard all the reasons but ultimately I'm not going to change my ways. We save all year (fixed amount each month, plus supermarket savings stamps ad hoc) and plan/spend in November/December. If I buy early I forget, or find something more suitable later on, and double up.

Cards and wrap are definitely a January purchase though as they don't go off or cease to be suitable.

I think it comes down to what you think Christmas presents are for. We exchange tokens really, so there isn't the pressure to spend lots or get a particular thing. We also don't have eleventy squillion people to buy for (fifteen, including ourselves).

But if you don't have enough coming in in nov / dec to cover Christmas presents, you don't have enough for a broken boiler or other large bill either. If you haven't saved anything because you've blown all your potential savings on gifts throughout the year, you will go into debt to pay the bill.

What that's actually about is prioritising Christmas jollity and largesse over sensible contingency savings.

Not saying everyone's doing that, most probably plan for contingencies too, just pointing out how ridiculous the 'but if you've saved for Christmas and then a bill comes in you'd have to pay that instead' argument is. Yes you would, and it's better to have money to pay it than lots of fancy gifts but no heating. It's about your priorities, admit it.

As for 'cannot save because money burns a hole in my pocket' wtf? Learn some basic financial planning and grow up!

I get the spreading of effort and catching bargains arguments. Can't save or actually need the savings for something else are just excuses for financial irresponsibility though.

What no-one's explained and what I think the OP is getting at, is the psychology of being unable saving money.

Sorry 'unable to save'

I expect the op understands now.

I save in an ISA but not for Xmas (house deposit/emergency fund).

Last year we put all our £2 coins in a pot and then changed them for an amazon voucher, that worked quite well, but this year we agreed to shop locally more instead - and that's another reason to shop more now - apparently the local independent stores do relatively well at Xmas but it's throughout the rest of the year that they struggle.

For me shopping early is really about the bargains (in terms of finance anyway - also due to social phobia so don't like malls in December) BUT the key thing here is not to just get stuff just because it's on sale! You have to plan and choose wisely.

My DCs are staggeringly predictable in terms of what they love - they really love their simple, mainstay type toys and have no awareness of fads (or if they are aware, as I guess yr2 DD could be by now, they simply don't care), so it's easy to plan well in advance and get the things we've carefully chosen if they go on sale throughout the year. If they don't, then I'll get them nearer the time anyway because it'd be worth it to get something they love, but may as well save money when I can.

Same for DH really. Geeky t-shirts are always a winner so I choose one quite early. The Lego game I mentioned in an earlier post had been on my wish list for several months before it suddenly went half price - it is Hobbit themed, DH will actually squeak with excitement... he's not suddenly going to go off his lifelong favourite characters in the next few months :o

We love Christmas; have loads of family traditions and I cook and bake a lot. I also like to wrap my presents so they look all the same, with a different theme every year.

All this takes time and effort so I buy as early as possible and then I can spend the whole month of December doing all those things and enjoying it

I just think some people make too much fuss about Christmas and buy too much stuff! Why not save £30 or £50 a month towards it? If money is tight, why buy for friends' children, teachers, neighbours etc? My cleaner gave me a Christmas present once and I was so embarrassed!

I know for certain that millions of those huge tins of chocolates will be bought "for Christmas" and will be finished by the end of November, only to be replaced at least once. I hate that people are being conned into over spending.

I know you will accuse me of being bah humbug about it all but I do wonder about priorities sometimes.

I'm well aware, BTW, that this may all change as my DCs get older. Sadly they can't be immune to peer pressure/advertising forever :(

So I guess then I'll change my shopping strategy and leave much more of it til later.

I completely get about needing to spread the cost. There are two things that in practice would always go wrong for me.

One is that people have this really annoying habit of either changing their mind about what they want, or even worse, buying it for themselves in September. There are some people that like stuff that you can repeat, like bath stuff, but it's different with a specific toy, or book, or DVD. So I worry that what I get will be superseded. Or, as others have said, forgotten in a cupboard somewhere.

The second thing is that not having quite enough money does stop the madness a bit. I like Christmas but I fight every year to keep it reasonable. As a child we had very simple Christmases and when I was a young adult I remember having a £5 limit per person because not all of us could afford to do more. I don't think it occurred to us to make it a higher limit by spreading the cost over a whole year. Christmas was a seasonal thing and you only spent on it what you could afford that month.

So I do wonder a bit about whether we would all have just as much fun if we didn't spread the cost, and just spent maybe two months worth of "spare" money, ho ho. And I know that for some people, two months spare money isn't a lot. That's kind of my point- if money is tight, what are we all thinking, saying that all our spare money for more than half the year ought to go on this one thing?

So not sure how U the OP is.

Though will also say, when DC are little I can also see completely why people bargain hunt and snap things up at good prices. It is less easy when they are older and what they want is much more specific and individual to them (and therefore keeps changing...)