Old fashioned holiday saving...

Have you tallied up your Black Friday sales purchases yet? Planning on shopping on the highest grossing day for retailers, Cyber Monday?  What about a budget?  If your like most shoppers this time of year its easy to get carried away in the frenzy of deals and overspend.  With the recession a lot of consumers have changed strategies and started using only cash, that way when its gone you stop spending and don't end up with that dreaded January bill from your credit card company.  A great way to have some extra cash for the holidays is the Christmas Club, a tried and true method of saving that was devised during the Great Depression and is seeing a resurgence of use.  Its simple, you put away a little bit of money every month starting in January and in October or November you can take it out for your holiday needs.  If you save as little as $10.00 a week starting in January and go through October you would have $420 at the start of November.  You can earn interest compounded on many of these types of accounts as well because you are not allowed to withdraw your funds until a specific date for the holidays, its kind of like a mini CD.  Some Banks and Credit Unions offer these accounts (be sure to ask since its usually not advertiesed), but if not you can also consider short term CDs that will offer a higher yield than your general savings account will, the down side is that you may need a higher amount down to open an account for a CD than a Christmas Club account. 

If you run into a problem finding a bank that offers a Christmas Club, or the CDs terms are too high consider opening an account with a group by pooling your money together. If you require that two signatures are needed to withdraw any funds it would cut down the temptation to take anything out early. Its also fun at the end of the term to get together with that group of family or friends to get your cash, have a little lunch, get caught up and then shop together to kick off the holiday season with a smile.

Another option that is super easy is simply saving all your ones over the year and then bundling them in groups of $100.00.  This is something that my husband and I do at usually at the end of the year we have between $500.00 and $600.00 for shopping or a vacation.  Its fun to watch the cash grow and the bank will convert it to larger bills for free when we are ready.  You don't earn interest but because its so easy we both do it every time we shop with cash.  My husband laughs because I don't call them One's any more, I call them "Fun's".

I hope you all have a relaxing Saturday!

C.Q.