Well that was fast! We’re only weeks away until everyone else is in full-blown Christmas planning mode. Luckily, we’re way ahead of them. I’ll start off by saying, if you celebrate, try to enjoy Halloween this week. There’s no need to rush so quickly to Christmas that we don’t take the time to enjoy all of the other activities this season. That being said, I picked up my first few pieces of Christmas decor for this year on Friday and then I watched the first Countdown to Christmas premiere on Hallmark Channel on Saturday, and by this morning most of my emails from retailers were holiday related, so I’m one to talk.

We’ll get to gift guides, decor, party planning, and holiday outfits during the next few weeks, but first we need to discuss the logistics, right? There is a two-pronged approach to tackling the holiday season. You need to know what events to plan for–are you going to any Christmas parties? Do you host for the holidays? Are you anticipating guests staying with you? Etc. etc.–in order to know how to spend your budget, or even to make a budget in the first place.

THE SCHEDULE:
You can do this in your holiday planner or on a family calendar, or even in your phone’s calendar system; write down all of your upcoming events. The compulsive side of me likes the idea of color coding by event on my monthly layout (for example, if it’s a party without a gift aspect, but I still want to bring my host a gift—blue, a party with a gift for charity or white elephant—orange, hosting overnight guests at my house—green, and hosting for a party or get together—red & so on) and put more details on my weekly pages. That way I know what type of goods I need to have on hand. Obviously you could just write the specifics with all of your details just once, but this is another way to organize. Do whatever works best for you. Once you know what events to plan for, you can get an idea of who your gift recipients are.

THE BUDGET:
From there, it’s as simple as writing out a list. You might think that coming up with an overall budget first and then allocating who gets what part of the pot is best. Or you may come up with recipients and then decide how much to spend on them. If you’re on a limited budget you might opt for the former, but even if you don’t have a budget, you’ll still want to see how your money is spent during this time.

I like to do a combination of both. I give myself a specific budget for my immediate family and compare what gifts I want to give them with the lists they gave me to figure out how to purchase the most thoughtful and exciting gifts. This is usually where I spend the most money. For families, friends, co-workers and people who service my home and life, I’ll find the gifts I want to give them first and then determine if it makes sense. For example, if I find a gift I want to give my cousin that costs $100, I’ll then add up all of the cousins I need to shop for. If my eight cousins will all receive the same gift, $800 may seem like too much one year and just right the next, but the important lesson is that I will have considered this prior to purchasing these items instead of realizing this at the last minute. On the other hand, spending $100 on a gift for my mother may seem like a great deal, and even one of her smaller gifts. As I mentioned earlier, we’ll start discussing gift guides soon, and in them you’ll see my solution for problems like these.

Additionally, I’ve seen quite a few people rely on the Dave Ramsey envelope method, or at least some iteration of it: you take a certain budget for each person or event and put that amount of cash in an envelope to use. Or you may have heard of people who use this time to earn points on credit cards, which can be a great option as long as you have the money and plan to pay them off.

Here’s a tip: I found The Christmas List in the App Store and it’s a great option to keep track of the shopping, wrapping, and mailing of all of your gifts. I love that you can organize recipients by groups, then assign a budget for each group and for each recipient. Alternatively, type in the gifts you’d like to purchase, or just the budget you’d like to spend and then add items as you find them. Additionally, I suggest you write down in the notes section whether your gifts were purchased by cash or card, and because there is a lengthy list of stores on the app you can annotate where you found the best price or availability on a gift before purchasing it. Then keep a log of which gifts have been purchased, wrapped, and delivered.

Lastly, I’m not much of a DIY-er but I have been testing recipes much more this time of year. You can make two batches and freeze one for later. Start doing that more and more, and eventually (as long as you mark the date you made it and seal it appropriately) you’ll have plenty on hand in case someone shows up unexpectedly and you need to give the gift of cookies at the last minute. If you’re not much of a baker but you love DIY crafts, now is the time to start sourcing your materials and creating a schedule to work on your projects.

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Have a safe and fun Halloween!