Have You Started Saving For Christmas 2008?

The festive season has come and gone and hopefully all of you had an a enjoyable Christmas and New Year. This time of the year means different things to different people and we all celebrate it in our own way. All the gift buying and celebrating comes at a cost and one thing that I noticed was when it all came to an end people were talking about having spent more than they could afford. I too was one of those people that spent more money than I expected.

Most of the people I spoke to about their festive spending (including myself) hadn’t really saved anything or enough to carry them through the period; we all ended up dipping into our credit cards. This got me thinking about this years Christmas and how to save for it. There is better time than the present so the sooner I start the more I’ll save.

We are all trying to make a bit of money to live on and we also need to put away some of what we earn for retirement and other purposes. I signed up for the superannuation scheme that my employer offers but when it came to my personal savings I was a bit slow in jumping on the bandwagon.

Last year my wife and I opened up savings accounts for ourselves and our daughter. We chose to bank with RaboPlus (8.20% p.a. for their on-call savings account) a New Zealand online bank which offers really good rates; they also have a very good rating. Our RaboPlus account gives us the option of opening upto five special purpose savings accounts; we’ve just set one up as a Christmas savings account. I will be increasing the amout that’s been taken out of my pay check and crediting it into the Master savings account, RaboPlus will then directly debit the money from the Mater savings account and credit it into the Christmas savings account. It may seem complicated but it’s all worth it in the end. When I started direct debiting money from my pay check for investment purposes I wondered how I was going to get by, surprisingly I’ve managed just fine and I’ve learnt to live on whatever’s at my disposal. Let me warn you though, it takes a bit of discipline. Christmas is 11 months away and if you start saving for it now it won’t come as a burden but a way to show your family and friends how much you love them with a little something somehting. You might even end up with extra money to get yourself something too.