Do you save for your children's Christmas?

[OctoberMoon]

Hi,

Once again i'm starting to panic about Christmas. DD has an autumn birthday, plus she needs a new wardrobe of autumn/winter clothes. Then of course it's Christmas, and as well as Christmas presents I like to buy her a couple of special outfits, and they aren't particularly cheap.

I haven't saved again, as DP has a special birthday coming up early in 2014 and i've been saving for a holiday for that. I have, however, saved plenty on my asda savings card.

I am definitely saving from january for DD's birthday & Christmas. How do you do it? Do you put so much a week or month away? Or do you buy vouchers? Or are you like me and just buy what you can, when you can?

I budget and buy in advance. We've started buying non-perishable food bits with our weekly shop and put them away for Christmas, and we've bought some stocking fillers already.

We both save £10 a month throughout the year specifically for Christmas, which gives us a head start on Christmas shopping so we're not using all our October/November wages on Christmas. We like to have some leftover to treat ourselves too.

My mum used to put money away in some kind of Christmas fund thing, you saved all year and at the end of the year were given high street vouchers of the same value. It limited the choices somewhat (I buy online or from independent shops), but meant she didn't have to worry about having the money, and you can always find something for everyone with them.

We have a savings account after going massively overboard one Christmas (and that was before we had kids!). So its £30 a month but it might go up as DS2 is 2 this year.

I do buy bargains during the year and the money comes from our main account. I don't really total up what we spend, but when we book our Summer holiday we end up using the Christmas account and our holiday money (£70 a month, again this needs to be increased).

We've agreed that our presents to each other will take a hit, money-wise and go away each January for our anniversary.

They are just normal ISAs that we put our money into.