Bite-Sized Insights: Close to Two Thirds of Parents Start Holiday Budgeting in January

No matter your income, budgeting is a life skill that all parents need to master to run a household. For this week’s bite-sized insights question, we asked parents about three key areas of family budgeting – for the back to school season, Christmas and family holidays. Take a quick read of this week’s bite-sized insights to find out what parents are saying about budgeting in 2022.

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We asked our Insights panel of parents to tell us when they start budgeting for certain family budgeting events and here’s how they answered:

Any other thoughts on budgeting? Comments from our panel members included:

“I know everyone hates seeing things in the shops months before the actual “holiday” but I find it a great reminder! As soon as I see the Easter eggs then I start looking up Easter events. I hate waiting last minute for anything! So I do buy stuff as soon as it’s available, like Christmas jumpers etc. but then I check the sales afterwards and buy the next size up for next year and store them away. We’re very lucky that we have cousins of younger ages so always remind the parents NOT to buy the fancy Christmas dresses or jumpers as we have the barely even worn ones from last year, which helps others save money! I think a lot more needs to be done with free cycle and second hand selling websites as you can find AMAZING things there for practically nothing.”

“For my daughter’s communion I bought the dress almost a year in advance, as she had spotted one that she liked. I spent the next few months buying bits and pieces so that I wasn’t spending a lump sum all in one go and did the same when shopping for the rest of the family.”

“Have the year planned in January as we also have a family wedding, milestone birthday and son’s communion this year so spending will be tight. Trying to ensure best value all round.”

“I have budgeted out for 2 kids’ birthdays in June and September since the beginning of the year and started a savings pot for them. A family wedding abroad is taking the majority of our spare cash budget this year. Have been saving/paying for that since last summer.”

“I normally set aside some money each week into a Revolut vault as June and December have a lot of Birthdays in our families.”

Actionable Insights on Family Budgeting:

For the Christmas season, communicate and get offers out earlier. It might feel odd to be talking about Christmas in summer time but our findings show that over 10% of parents start their budgeting, planning and research around this time. Tap into this early planning to get your brand front of mind with useful planning related content helping parents with this research stage.
If you are concerned about being accused of doing seasonal advertising too early, why not go direct just to parents much earlier? Target your marketing and communications only to parents, using parent-specific media and your own channels, rather than going on mass media. Focused messaging to this target audience at the right time has the potential to turn them into early advocates leveraging their network.
Get under the hood of what parents are thinking to understand how you can also leverage their network and word of mouth. What are parents thinking about your brand, product or service? Where are they finding out about you? What is their network telling them and what are they telling their network? What would activate them? We can help with this.