The sun is out (most of the time), the weather is warm and the living is easy. It’s the perfect time to start thinking about the winter holidays!

If you think I’m crazy, hear me out. How many times has the holiday season crept up on you and caught you off guard? How many times have you been unprepared for buying/preparing gifts for everyone on your list? You could eliminate a lot of stress and save a lot of money by starting to think about the winter holidays now. Here are some tips for gradually preparing yourself:

Budgeting

Unfortunately, the money we use to purchase presents doesn’t just pop out of thin air when the holidays roll around. Wouldn’t it be nice, however, if when the time came to play Santa Claus, you already had money set aside for that specific purpose?

If you don’t already have a “holiday fund,” now is the perfect time to start one. Just like you would do with an emergency fund or travel fund, set up a special savings account where you put away any extra money you have for each paycheck. Even if you put in $50 twice a month starting now, you’ll have close to $500 put away by Christmas.

Start a Coin Jar

In addition to your separate savings account, start throwing any spare change in a jar labeled “holiday fund.” Every little bit will help, and you’ll know that your spare change is going to a good cause each day.

Make a List, Check it Twice

Get a list together now of the people you wish to buy for. This will be helpful to you for a handful of reasons:

1. You’ll be able to start fishing gift ideas out of these people now instead of scrambling blindly at the last minute.
2. Start compiling appropriate gifts as early as possible.
3. You can weed out those you don’t intend to buy for early on. Start thinking about groups that you can suggest the idea of Secret Santa to. Setting up a Secret Santa kind of gift swap early will ensure that you don’t spend money on a gift for a person that will be involved in the swap anyway.

Shop Seasonal Sales

As you probably already know, certain items are cheaper in stores during certain months. For example, in the month of August, you can find deals on things like swim suits, linens, and computers. If any of those things would be on your “to-buy” list for the holidays, you may want to consider shopping the sales now.

Then when the fall runs around, you can take advantage of seasonal deals then. Just keep an eye out for Tip Hero’s monthly guide to what to buy each month!

Get a Head Start on Homemade Gifts

I feel like I find myself in the following situation every holiday season: I end up frantically knitting scarves for some of the people on my list. But no matter how early I start (which is never very early, I admit), I never have the time to finish. Because of this, I end up going out and spending money on gifts for people who should have gotten a homemade gift.

It may be strange to start making gifts for the holidays now, but planning ahead could save you a lot of time and stress when December rolls around. Here are a couple of articles with some homemade gift ideas for you to start thinking about:

28 Homemade Gift Tutorials
75 Frugal Christmas Gift Ideas

Create Price Alerts

If there’s a certain gift that you know you’d like to get for someone on your list, start bargain hunting now! You have plenty of time to make sure you score the best deal on that item. Here’s what Trent from The Simple Dollar recommends:

You can use tools like FeedSifter to sift through the internet feeds of websites that list bargains related to what you’re looking for – like, for example, Amazon Gold Box. Then, put that FeedSifter feed into a service like FeedMailer so that whenever a deal pops up, you receive an email telling you about it.

Then sit back and wait. The exact deals you want will pop into your email inbox as they come up. Easy as pie.

Freebies and Free Samples

With free samples abound on the internet, you truly can get something for nothing. Keep up to date with which companies and merchants are sending out free samples and don’t miss out on completely free things.

Then all you have to do is sit back and wait for freebies to be delivered to your home. Save all of the free samples that you get from now until the holidays. They can make for wonderful, free stocking or gift basket stuffers!

Sources: The Kitchn, Billeater and The Simple Dollar

Photo credit: Sarah Ackerman and Just Ordinary Us