Christmas Shopping In July: Secret 5-Step Guide (ANYONE Can Follow)

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Do you wanna discover the secret of a stress-free holiday shopping? Holidays without debt, crowds and trying to wrap everything in a weekend? Christmas Shopping in July will change your life and create merrier holidays.

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Hallmark created Christmas shopping in July. For some, this means the excitement that Christmas is six months away, sharing heartwarming holiday flicks in the middle of the summer, and even releasing keepsake ornaments every July.

But I have to tell you, Mamas, while you enjoy the fireworks and eat the barbecue. Start your Christmas list & shopping in July!

Before you roll your eyes or even think to yourself, “Yeah, right, I am trying to survive the kids being out for school!”

I want you to stop for a minute and think about these questions:

• Have you ever had to use credit cards or go into debt during the holidays?
• Does the thought of wrapping a million presents two days before Christmas annoy you?
• Do you like shopping in the vast crowds, dealing with snow, and the bitter cold?
• Do you ever get stressed out during the holiday season? You know you should be enjoying the festivities with family and your kids.
• Do you have tons of gifts to buy and are short on time every year?
• Do you miss out on deals because you don’t have the money during Black Friday?
• Ever run into “OUT OF STOCK” for items you are looking for?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then keep reading.

When I was a single mom, money was tight. When I got married, bought a house, and had more kids, life was/is nonstop, and money is delegated to a multitude of things.

I adopted the practice of starting my Christmas shopping in July over ten years ago. It has evolved over the years, though.

Have you ever walked into Hobby Lobby during July? By the end of June and beginning of July, they have already put out a good majority of holiday stuff. I am talking about wreaths and ornaments on shelves.

Heck, go to your Walmart. Do you see the bright yellow clearance tags and swimsuits on discount? The regular clothing racks already display long-sleeve shirts and pants.

These are the preparatory retailer signs that the time is now. Start your Christmas shopping early.

Create your Christmas Shopping List

(Step 1)

The first step is to put together your Christmas shopping list. You want to get an idea of how many people you will be buying for.

It also helps to take a review of your money situation and the total gifts you will need.

Don’t forget to include the extras, such as office gifts, teacher gifts, or anything other than family.

You also want to evaluate how many people should receive gifts and whether this fits your Christmas budget.

Creating your Christmas list should include some basic information on each person, like “What do I want for Christmas?” so you can refer to your list often when shopping—record information like children and their ages, clothing size, or any other information related to them.

This list should also help you keep track of the items you bought, track what you have wrapped, etc.

Have you ever lost presents because you can’t remember where you hid or lost them? Have you ever overbought because you can’t remember what you did get and found an awesome deal? You may find this printable Christmas shopping list I created handy to keep you organized.

Creating your Christmas shopping budget

Depending on their household income, most people spend between $400 and $800 on gifts each year. Dave Ramsey says you should spend no more than 1% of your income on gifts.

You can start by taking money out each paycheck like $20 to 40 dollars and save it for larger ticket items towards the end of the year. This is the power of starting your Christmas shopping in July. You can save money by finding deals or you can save money because of the benefit of time.

Be realistic with whom should be getting gifts, the spirit of giving doesn’t mean going into debt.

Here are some guidelines I use. Typically,, those over 18 from extended family members do not get gifts from us. When I do give, we like to give one practical gift and one fun gift as general guidelines, anything else is extra. We also want to stick to a dollar amount per person to be sure things are fair.

Once you know your budget or your savings plan, it’s on to the fun part.

Bargain Hunting Begins

(Step 2)

Now that you have your shopping list and gift ideas down on paper, it’s time to get started and go shopping.

Begin your Christmas shopping in July and keep your list handy during shopping trips. Check out the clearance aisles/deals online at your favorite stores.

Target clearance items are usually tagged with red stickers. They will have end caps of clearance items. You will also find specific racks and aisles with markdown inventory. See my must haves I use in my Target store front.

Walmart loves to use huge yellow balloons to mark clearance. They have racks and dedicated aisles, too. I have found deals using the Walmart app, and the price is sometimes lower than presented in-store.

JCPenney has fabulous deals right after the 4th of July. Clearance items are 70% off. They promote special deals, extra savings, and coupons in July.

But don’t forget to check out your discount stores, such as Burlington Coat Factory, Marshall’s, Ross, Nordstrom Rack, and T.J. Max.

In these stores, you are bound to find extraordinary deals.

Remember to be cautious when buying certain items, such as items that may need to be returned until closer to October/November.

Everything has a return policy time frame. When you purchase the items, be sure to review the return policy and the number of days, such as 30 days, 60 days, or 90 days.

Harvest the power of Amazon Prime Days

(Step 3)

If you are new to Amazon Prime, let me explain why this is a must for your early Christmas shopping.

This year Amazon Prime is on July 8th & 10th. This means on those days Amazon will release new products and place selected products on discount or sale for prime members only.

Amazon Prime is a membership option with many benefits. You get free two-day shipping, two-hour delivery for a fee through Prime Now, streaming music and video, and other cool stuff.

This means amazing deals and opportunities for you. It allows you to start your Christmas shopping in July and keeps your budget on point.

If you don’t have a membership but want to take advantage of the special deals. You can join Amazon Prime for a free 30-day trial. That way, you can experience the awesomeness and savings with no strings attached.

You can sign up for a full month and cancel at the end of the trial. But take it from me, mama, the Prime membership is so worth it.

Most importantly, you should set a calendar reminder and use the Amazon app to get updates on Prime Day. To do this, go to your settings, then notifications, and turn on personal notifications.

Finding the deals on Amazon Prime Days for Christmas

Once you are in your Amazon account, you will want to begin watching for new items and exclusive deals for prime members.

A great tool for keeping track of items you are searching is the list tool. Amazon allows you to save items to a list. You can then monitor those items and check in on the price adjustments as they happen.

To access the list tool in Amazon, click “account/list,” then “your list,” then ” create a list.”

To take it a step further, on the Amazon app, you can find an item and click on “watch this deal” to get updates on when it goes on sale during prime day.

Remember, members will get a sneak peek at items/deals before they go live. However, these items could also have limited quantities.

I make/use lists, and I also use a Chrome extension called Honey. By using Honey, you can get price change alerts. Honey is the best tool for finding coupons and codes to save you the biggest discount. The amazing part is that Honey tracks the history of price changes, too! It is so great that you even earn points, which turn into what they call gold. You redeem this gold for increments of $10 gift cards.

Speaking of gift cards this year on Amazon Prime they are giving away tons of opportunities to earn gift cards as well.

Like a $10 gift card for signing up for the Amazon app and another $10 gift card after you make your first purchase. You can install Amazon assistant and get a $10 gift card off your next $50 order. And more $10 gift cards by reloading your Amazon gift card balance or shopping at Whole foods.

That is free money, ladies!!!

Prepare for Black Friday in July & Cyber deals

(Step 4)

Now that Amazon Prime Day has passed, you have created your list and made some purchases. Be sure to record them on your Christmas shopping list.

You may also want to keep a receipt keeper like this to stay organized.

Christmas shopping in July is not only about Amazon Prime deals. You can also find Black Friday deals. That’s right, you read that right—Black Fridays in July.

So here is the scope: Hop on over to BlackFriday.com, and you can see live deals already happening in July. This year, stores like Macy’s, Target, and Dell will have deals going, offering shoppers an alternative to Prime Day. There are many more places, too.

Some retailers will advertise their deals, and some will not. BlackFriday.com has created an awesome list of retailers and items.

Let the Christmas shopping continue, with shopping holidays

(Step 5)

The following holidays are your next game plan for getting excellent deals for Christmas. The object of the game is to do shopping before Christmas has even arrived while saving a great deal of money.

One of the best things you can do is know when seasonal items go on sale and watch for those sales. I love shopping for things off-season and find actual savings when I do this. I like to shop for winter items in the middle of the summer. If you want a great list of the best time for specific items, you can find that U.S Money news site.

Tax-free weekends

If you are new to tax-free weekends, they are when a temporary reduction or elimination of a tax is given. Not every state participates in the program, so you will want to be sure to verify that your state does.

You can do this by checking out the list of states here.

Labor Day Sale

As we near the end of summer, you will want to watch for Labor Day sales. While this weekend is not the most powerful of the sales, you can still find some great deals.

Columbus Day

Columbus Day is the last official sale before Black Friday begins. You can still find deals on clothing, shoes, beauty products, and home goods.

But what about the actual Black Friday?

All right, so you have already done a lot of prep work. You already have a gift list. You created a list on Amazon and know the budget you are working with, so prepping for Black Friday will be easy now.

Black Friday deals are amazing. But as the internet has changed the way people shop, Black Friday has also changed. It now has Cyber Monday and Cyber Week sales.

You can also shop the Black Friday ads and check out this beforehand.

Black Friday is in November, which is around the time you should be about 80-90 percent done with your list.

Black Friday online is the best if you get online at the best times. Retail history used to have people camping outside store parking lots days before. Those days are long gone. While you still might find a few people do this, you are a busy mama, and who has time for all that?

You may need to sacrifice a little bit of sleep. But if you are strategic about shopping online, you will enjoy the sales. So grab some coffee or tea, your blanket, and your laptop, and watch for when the sales go live online.

Wrapping it up

Once the last gift arrives at your doorstep and you have finalized your wrapping, you can sit back and enjoy the holidays.

Review your gift list, wrap any necessary presents, and label all your presents.

You will want to review your total out-of-pocket cost and your receipts.

You will find that the entire month of December is a month of joy. Enjoy festivities, lights, decor, and hot cocoa.

You have all your gifts purchased and wrapped. If you find stocking-type stuffer items, those can be fun to shop for in December, just because. The stress is gone, though.

Think of fun things can do now with all the time you will have during the holidays.

Do you have a Christmas shopping strategy? Do you choose vacation/destination gifts over actual gifts? If so, let me know in the comments below.