I will save enough for Christmas 2014 by October.....

[KungFuBustle]

£2 bought in Tesco savings stamps today. I want £100 to cover drinks, puddings and veg.
£20 must be saved in Iceland vouchers for Turkey, sausages and bacon.
£200 cash for presents. I will put £20 into a tin a week.

I use Tesco club card points for fripperies for DS. Hoping they will do the double up again.

I must save £32 a month to be ready in October.
I only feed our family of 3 and buy presents for us and Grandparents.

What's your plan?

Every year I do:

(which is quite painless IMO)

I buy a money tin (you need to open with a can-opener. jars are too easy to pilfer from). I save all the £2 coins (aim for £4 a week. Some weeks are better ) . 2012 gave us £240 (I thought was was £200 but it was better last year than previous ones)

Sainsburys Nectar Points - especially the Double Nectar point coupons and extra points

I don't really shop at Tesco (too far) but I buy petrol there so we get Clubcard Vouchers (DH usually doubles up when there's an electrical offer)

Lists, Lists and Lists

And I plan to write in my calender exactly what I DON'T need.

I save £2 a week at asda and £50 a month with park for vouchers, I also empty my purse every Sunday and put in the change jar, I had over £70 last year doing this.

You can get the time for 60p in home bargains 70isa! They're what we use.

Last year we put our coppers in and DS saved the pennies he found on our walks in one. £36.

I fancy the look of Park desperate, I've always wanted a Christmas Hamper.

I don't have the hampers just the vouchers that you can spend in Argos, toys r us etc, because I run it I also get commission which I have in vouchers, it gives me an extra £50 roughly.
I might get one of those tins as dd is always after change and I do end up raiding the jar

I buy the tins in The Range (£1 each. We don't have a Home Bargains here )

Any loose change I have gets divvied up - 1p/2p/5p into big jar (must bag it up)

10p/20p/50p into Parking Money
£1 coins - DC Lunch Money

The £2 coins don't seem 'real' to me so I automatically save them. But I think everyone else has the same ideas, there aren't many about .

I do a lot of online shopping and use topcashback as much as possible which has given me between £70-£100 each year. I also use a credit card for food shopping (and pay it off each month) and can convert loyalty points to amazon vouchers which I then use for presents at Christmas.

I'm saving 50.00 a month each time I get paid. I am putting 5.00 a week a supermarket card (there are 8 of us at home so christmas food shop is a lot.)

I am also on week 2 of this hope I can stick to it. I was going to put a pic up but the posting thing has vanished. It's basically a pyramid saving jar you put a pound in the first week, the week after 2 pound and the week after 3 pound and so on and on.

Big fan of the saving tins too.

One tin is for the Christmas Tree - £1 a week in that one.

Another is for Christmas Treats like cinema, ice skating and Christmas takeaway - £2 in that one.

I used to do £10 a week on an Asda saving card but this year have decided to just do £50 at the beginning of every month. Once I have £200, I then move over to Tesco and do the same on their Christmas Clubcard Saver and do £200 there too.

Also save all of my Clubcard points until Christmas.

All of this covers all food, booze and presents and December treats.

As most of DC I buy for now ask for vouchers for cinema, iTunes, blinkbox and xbox points I was thinking of chucking one a month in my trolley when out shopping. They all have long expiry dates so I think I might start doing that a bit later on in the year.

I pay myself first, by having money diverted from my paycheque straight into the credit union at work before I get it in my hot little hands. I use that account for Christmas and holiday funds generally, and emergencies.

I buy €2 stamps in Dunnes Stores with whatever change I have, the weeks I do grocery shopping there. I aim to have at least 1 and hopefully 2 cards filled annually (this year, I ended up using it to fill a trolley for the local lion's club appeal as we weren't buying our own dinner, which was very well received and more than I would have spent otherwise).

And I throw all my coppers into a jar that I change in November! usually get a few tenners out of that too.

I save £100 a month, I put it into my online christmas account each pay day. I can't wait to start saving again

I don't really 'save' towards christmas per se but more buy bits and pieces throughout the year as I can't really afford to save any money each month as am already saving towards holidays etc and due to our house falling apart in this bad weather will need to borrow some money soon to get things fixed and so will need to repay that each month too!

I have an Indian wooden chest that I keep lose change of all descriptions in and I put all my Tesco and M&S vouchers in there too. This year I had £160 in all which paid for the extra food, though part of that was because I paid for some dental implants with my M&S card ( hope I don't need to do that again!) I save £56 per month to cover the presents and then do some ebaying in October for money for extras. Although I have a firm budget I like to feel able to go over for some people like my cousin who does lots for my mother.

Ive joined our local credit union and plan to nip in every tuesday to put a tenner in my account i should have 450-500ish to cover all christmas costs by end of november

Hello all, some fab ideas. I'm definitely going to find a can-opener-only money jar. I've set up a direct debit for £40 a month to go into a savings account as soon as I get paid. I was also going to start getting supermarket stamps, probably Tesco, just a pound or two a week. This year we did well with buying presents from Tesco clubcard points, doubled-up and Nectar card points to spend in Argos.

Christmas 2014 is going to be tougher for us for many reasons so we need to get organised now!