Christmas planning sheets

The two sheets that do the real work

The budget and the present planner are the only ones here that change what Christmas costs, and they both have to exist before December does.

The budget has seven categories on it, because the money almost never goes where people think it goes. Presents are the line everyone watches. Food, the tree, the cards, the stamps, the crackers, the three separate days out and the fortnight of small treats are the lines that quietly add up to more than the presents did.

Write the planned column in November and then leave it alone. Filling it in as you go turns a plan into a receipt.

Why the present planner has two money columns

Budget and spent, side by side, for every single person.

The gap between those two columns is the whole point. Most people do not overspend on one dramatic purchase, they overspend by eight pounds at a time across twenty people, and a sheet that shows both numbers in the same row is the only way to see that happening while there is still time to stop.

The two circles at the end are for got it and wrapped, which sound trivial and are the difference between a calm Christmas Eve and a late one.

The advent calendar comes in two versions

The blank one is twenty four boxes with lines in. You fill it in yourself, which is the better option if your December has a lot of fixed things in it already.

The filled one is the same grid with twenty four activities printed in. Nearly all of them cost nothing: make a paper chain, read a Christmas story, walk round and count the lit up houses, pyjamas all day, choose a toy to give away. That is deliberate. Twenty four bought treats in a row is one of the quieter ways December gets expensive, and small children genuinely do not rank the free ones any lower.

Swap any of them. The sheet is a starting point rather than a rota.

The countdown chart suits the youngest

It is a tree of twenty four circles, numbered from the bottom of the trunk upwards, with a star at the top for Christmas Day. Colour one each day.

It needs no reading, which is why it works for children who are still too young for the advent calendar, and the shape means they can see at a glance how much tree is left.

Where the letter goes

Royal Mail publish an address for Father Christmas and a last posting date every year, and both are worth checking rather than assuming, because the date moves and it is earlier than people expect.

The sheet has the greeting already written and lines underneath, which helps a child who can write a bit but stalls at a blank page. There is a space at the foot for their name and age.

Printing these without regretting it

Everything here prints fine in black and white. The colour is decoration and the sheets carry no information in it, so greyscale costs you nothing except the colour.

If you want the children’s end of Christmas rather than the parent end, the Christmas crafts and colouring pages are the other half of this, and the guide to Christmas without overspending is where the argument behind the budget sheet lives.