Christmas is a word that has a similar effect to the word wedding. It seems when you add either of those words on to something the cost increases.
The only advantage to Christmas over the last few years is there is now more market competition for items such as food and gifts, which means more deals are to be had over the festive period.
Even if you are on a debt-free journey or just trying to cut your outgoings, you can still enjoy some amazing Christmas food this year.
Personally, I look to buy items that can be spread over multiple meals too, so saving money as it feeds us for more meals. Saving money is not always in the simple form of getting things at a reduced price, it is also in other forms such as making food spread a little more.
The perfect example of this is our turkey, every year we get a turkey that feeds 4-6. It can easily feed us as a family of 4 over 3 meals, potentially 4. Starting on Christmas Day, we have turkey with all the trimmings, packed out with lots of delicious vegetables. This time of the year is the perfect time to get your vegetable intake up, as the supermarkets go to battle with the offers on the price of vegetables. Take advantage of this to make soup throughout the festive period too!
On Boxing Day, we have leftover turkey in ciabatta with cranberry sauce and cheese for lunch followed by a cold buffet and fresh salad for dinner!
Then there is usually leftovers for a turkey curry, the day after Boxing Day. By this day though I will be honest, we are probably at our limit when it comes to turkey! It is also a great idea to make your own treats for the Christmas period too, this slow cooker Mars Bar fudge looks divine!
I always start my Christmas food shop in November too, so I will start to purchase jars of pickled vegetables in the build-up to Christmas 1 at a time. This just spreads the cost a little for us.
Another thing I do with the food shopping is to save up my Tesco Clubcard vouchers till this time of the year, it might not equate to much but if we can get our pudding for free effectively, its money saved! We tend to have a little leftover that we can put towards some treats too.
Christmas to me is my favourite time of the year, it is the magic of family time and no work just brings us all back together to enjoy the time away from everything. Although we are on this journey, it doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy ourselves, we just need to look at the way we do this to make sure it works best for us.
