R. Asks | How far in advance do you start saving for the holidays?

Happy Wednesday, everybody! How you doin'? I'm tired.

This week's question was inspired by all of the holiday beauty sets that started appearing over these past couple of weeks—it is still summer, right?

How far in advance do you start saving and planning for your holiday season shopping? (That includes gifts for others and holiday splurges you might make for yourself.) Do you have a special system for keeping track of the funds?

In 2014 I made a separate savings account with the boring name "gift fund"—every month I put a bit of money aside in it to be used for holidays, birthday gifts etc. So thanks to that I'm saving a little bit for gifts year-round, but I still always find myself overwhelmed when it comes to my wants—there are so many pretty things that come around the holidays that nobody's going to buy for me but me. Obviously I can't purchase every single thing that looks awesome, but giving yourself a gift or two during the holiday season isn't so bad, right? So I just set up yet another savings account called "fun fund", hahaha. Now what to spend it on....

On a related note: If you don't care about financial planning at all but have been paying attention to the holiday collections, I'd love to know what's on your wishlist! Nosy nosy me.