{"id":92310,"date":"2025-10-20T10:04:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T10:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/92310\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T10:04:17","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T10:04:17","slug":"how-to-start-budgeting-for-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/92310\/","title":{"rendered":"How to start budgeting for Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While it may only be October, Christmas is about 10 weeks away , and with Christmas comes Christmas expenses.<\/p>\n<p>To get ahead of the panic buying and overall stress of spending, \u2018Mrs Money Smart\u2019 Kel Galavan joined Lunchtime Live to give some saving advice.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am a big fan of sitting down before everything kicks off and do a one-hour Christmas audit,\u201d she told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newstalk.com\/shows\/lunchtime-live-234859\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Lunchtime Live<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo, that\u2019s literally grab a coffee, grab a pen, grab a notepad and sit down for about 60 minutes and list out all the things you think you need to buy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMaybe wrapping paper, decorations, whatever, but I want you to see, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newstalk.com\/news\/if-you-havent-got-it-you-cant-give-it-how-to-tackle-the-cost-of-christmas-1793490\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">do you actually need to go ahead and buy them<\/a>?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ms Galavan said it is also useful to list out the things you don\u2019t need, particularly things that weren\u2019t used last year.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2120148\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/2A86CNB.jpg\" alt=\"Woman sitting at home on Christmas.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\"\/> Woman sitting at home on Christmas, Alamy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou probably may not need a new Christmas jumper if you\u2019ve a load already, or if you\u2019ve already stocking fillers from last year,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOr even there\u2019s a lot of food that comes onto our shelves this time of year that we don\u2019t need.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMost of us don\u2019t need, or probably won\u2019t even fully enjoy a vacuum-packed lobster &#8211; we don\u2019t tend to want those things and they often go to waste.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Alternatives to gifts<\/p>\n<p>According to Ms Galavan, if the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newstalk.com\/lunchtime-live\/christmas-spending-typical-family-spending-over-e2-3k-on-christmas-1780532\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">cost of gifts<\/a> is getting too much, it might be worth looking at alternatives.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThink of things that you could give somebody; an experience or a gift-free get-together,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo, that could be, instead of buying gifts for all your siblings, say, \u2018Look, can we just go to lunch?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLunch is usually less busy, people may have more time to do it, and it\u2019s less expensive than an evening.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ms Galavan said if people try to cut back on unnecessary subscriptions that they aren\u2019t using, it could help to save money to be used instead for the big day.<\/p>\n<p>Main image: Man with many bills or invoices and no money. Debt. Alamy 2024<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While it may only be October, Christmas is about 10 weeks away , and with Christmas comes Christmas&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[72,176,61,60,174,175],"class_list":["post-92310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}