With your Christmas preparations, starting soon is the key to saving money. If you leave your shopping to the last minute, not only do you have to face the 23rd December high street chaos, you’ll miss out on the excellent deals that many retailers offer early in the festive shopping season.

It’s incredibly easy to overspend at Christmas – doing your utmost to make savings where you can is the best way to avoid a festive hangover that lasts until that January paycheck finally arrives.

Here are our top four festive money saving tips:

Join a no-present pact

Do you ever find that your friends and relatives buy you Christmas gifts you don’t want? The sort that are used once on Christmas Day before being relegated to a dusty top shelf for a few years and then eventually given away to a charity shop?

We’re sure that most of us have been in this scenario at some point.

Joining a present pact is a great way of avoiding giving and receiving more than you need.

Not only will this save you money, it will also go a long way to reducing your environmental impact at a time where we buy and receive plenty that just ends up going to landfill. It can be a liberating revelation to admit to ourselves that others don’t really need ‘gimmicky’ Christmas gifts and neither do we.

Keep a Christmas present list

For people who don’t enter into your no-present pact, writing a list will give you a clear idea of what you need to buy. As well as avoiding traipsing through various shops by giving you a precise idea about exactly what you need, it means you won’t overspend by ‘panic-buying’ gifts at the last minute.

Keep an eye out for sales and bargains

Even when Black Friday and Cyber Monday have passed, there will still be opportunities to grab an amazing deal. Although starting your shopping early has its distinct advantages, keep an eye out for retailers who may bring forward their January sales into December in an attempt to beat any pre-Christmas slump. Sale signs usually start to go up as they get worried about shifting stock. It’s also worth getting savvy about which days stores (on the high street and online) change their Offer of the Week – Monday and Thursdays are often favourites.

Send your cards second class

Even small savings add up to make a difference. As the saying goes, ‘look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves’.

A standard first-class stamp now costs 67p, whereas a second class stamp costs 9p less at 58p. If you send 50 cards out at Christmas, this will add up to a £4.50 saving. This might not sound much, but trimming your Christmas spendings down in plenty of places will add up to a substantial amount.

Whatever you’re buying this Christmas, being thrifty never hurts. Thinking carefully about your choices and starting early are the easiest ways to make savings.