You may remember that back at the beginning of December we were challenged by Shepherds Friendly to take part in a Christmas Saving Challenge.

The aim was to choose three challenges and to stick to them over the course of December to see if we could cut down on our spending and focus on saving some pennies in the run-up to Christmas. You can read our initial post here.

The Christmas Savings Challenge aims to help cull the needless day to day spends and save for festivities or within a savings account like Shepherds Friendly stocks and shares ISA. This challenge runs for four weeks and consists of three different challenges for each of the four weeks.

Some examples of these challenges could be:

• Making the most of ‘Black Friday’ deals
• Searching for Voucher codes for Christmas shopping (So, the saving would be what you saved on a purchase)
• Curbing your daily coffee and save the change for a mulled wine at Christmas
• Cancel any unused subscriptions
• Stash the cash- Putting loose change in a jar
• Creating your own decorations for the tree and your house
• Being resourceful with food and drink for the Christmas feast
• Making the most of Free and cheap days out and activities for all the family

We decided to choose the following three challenges:

• Putting loose change in a jar
• Using voucher codes and purchasing sale items
• Making the most of free and cheap days out

I was keen to get the whole family involved in our challenges – especially putting loose change in a jar. The boys kept a look out for random coins and both Mr H and I would empty out our loose change each day and I have to say I am rather impressed with how much we manage to collate over the four weeks!

Present shopping was a big one for us and I am really pleased we managed to save money on the boy’s LEGO sets that they asked for, for Christmas.

E’s LEGO set was on offer on the actual LEGO site itself where we saved £15 and we bagged M’s LEGO Train from Argos in the Black Friday/Cyber Monday deal and saved over £30 so we did really well on our first week!

For free and cheap days out, we took the boys to the local playground and park so they could run around and have a play instead of going to soft play. We also rented a movie through Sky in our second week instead of going to the cinema and we microwaved our own popcorn.

In the third week, I took the boys to the cinema on Friday after school as a treat because we had some voucher codes to use. We only needed to pay for one ticket, saving us £15. I also bought us a cup of Gummy Bears for £2 instead of shelling out for Pick’n’Mix. (£5 saving)

In the final week, I think we succumbed to Christmas madness a little with preparing our house for guests but we still remembered to save our loose change.

Overall, I am really pleased with how much we’ve managed to save over the course of the month. It just goes to show that with a little forward thinking and planning there is always money to be saved somewhere. We are planning some renovations to the house this year so every little bit saved helps us towards our dream home!

*This is a sponsored post, written in collaboration with Shepherds Friendly

Related posts:

The Christmas Savings Challenge with Shepherds Friendly Ways to be eco-friendly this Christmas A Christmas print from JR Decal The Dolmio #ThankGoodness Challenge