This time of year can be full of joy, celebration, and festivities. For many, it can also be a time of worry, anxiety, and overspending—but, it doesn’t have to be! Check out these ten family-focused ideas for ways to start smart and save some money during this holiday season. Even if you can only try one or two of these ideas, you might become inspired to come up with a few more that work for your family!
1: Cash Counts!
Credit cards are often tempting when it’s time to shop during gift-giving season. The convenience of these cards can often backfire when the bills are due. This first strategy can help—a lot. Once you create a budget for your shopping plans, why not consider paying with cash? After all, with this approach, you can only spend what’s actually in your pocket. As with all forms of cash and credit, exercise care when carrying around a lot of cards or cash because safety should always be the first order of business.
2: Hold the Latte
Shopping, holiday errands, and too many events can mean a lot of running; this can lead to a skipped meal or two. It might also make the luxury of indulging in a supersized, foamy peppermint latte and a warm gingerbread cookie seem like necessities for survival. With lines, traffic, and too much to do, this feeling’s no surprise. It’s also no bargain. This tip can help.
By skipping these higher priced and higher calorie snacks on the go, it’s possible to save enough money to buy an extra gift or two! The price of such snacks can tip the scales at $8 to $10 dollars. Switching to a simple drip coffee and a granola bar from your backpack even just twice a week between now and Christmas, could result in an extra $50 to spend on gifts. Now, THAT’s a very sweet treat!
3: Quality, Not Quantity
These days, gift giving might more accurately be described as GIFTS-giving. In today’s high volume-based world, multiple gifts per person can be an expected norm. Instead of buying several smaller gifts per person, reverse it. Truly listening for hints about one special gift that might be at the TOP of your recipients’ wish lists. By thoughtfully considering, researching, and shopping for that nicely made red sweater for your aunt, for example, you can potentially invest the same money and give one longer lasting gift that she will wear and enjoy for years to come. Three smaller gifts at $15 each might not mean nearly so much as one beautiful $45 sweater.
4: Dollar Store Delights
Not all gifts need to be store bought or expensive. What gifts could you and your family create together? Could you bake and decorate cookies and then line a round foil pie pan with a home-made holiday construction paper snowflake? Top this treat with a festive, inexpensive dish towel from the local dollar store, and all that’s left to add is a card. The dollar store is a treasure trove for lots of economical gift-making supplies. Pick up a few plain ceramic coffee cups, write recipients’ name or initials in permanent marker, and tuck in some tea bags or candy. Why not buy plain ornaments at the dollar store and spend some family time decorating them with glue, odd buttons, dots of nail polish, and ribbon or yarn scraps? By making the decoration styles random, even kids will relax and discover there’s no wrong way to decorate a keepsake ornament.
5: The Gift of Time
Remembering that time can be more valuable than money is a great gift-giving strategy to add to your planning. What about creating some simple IOUs for friends and family? Volunteer to babysit, walk a friend’s dog, or bring in the trash cans for a busy neighbor during the winter months. CARPOOL or ERRANDS Certificates with no expiration dates could be a life-saver to a friend. The financial cost of these gifts is low, but the consideration and value to those who receive them can be high, if not priceless.
6: Trade-Ya!
Along the same lines as the IOU and homemade customized gift certificates described in idea 4, suggest to friends and family that you dream up a few TRADE-YA ideas. For example, if you can sew, offer to hem three pairs of pants in exchange for two ready-to-freeze casseroles. By choosing to trade activities that come easily to one of you but are a struggle for the other, everyone wins. This money-saving idea has an added bonus: TRADE-YA gifts set a wonderful example for kids. Beyond modeling that not all gifts are tangible, you can work together as a family to bring these special gestures to life for family and friends. Everyone can contribute. If you take a photo while you’re working together, you can give an inexpensive keepsake, too! Making memories is a great trade.
7: New Traditions
Sometimes, holiday traditions like pricey tickets for a holiday performance or feeling pressured to buy the expensive photo package of your kids on Santa’s lap can feel like mandatory expenditures. Why not choose more carefully this year, perhaps opting for only one tradition that costs money and introducing some new traditions that are low-cost or even free.
Pop over to the library or scope out a free, public-domain version of holiday story on your phone to create your own home performance by reading or even acting out a new favorite holiday tale. Each child can play a part, too. Don’t forget to take a photo or two! Look for tree-lighting neighborhood events, community center festivities, or invent new family traditions like taking a walk to see the holiday lights or inventing festive names for economical dinner ideas. You and your family will treasure these new activities especially if you come up with them together.
8: Location, Location, Location
While after the holidays is the perfect time to stock up on clearance decorations for next year, this year’s budget can quickly become strained with last-minute shopping for new decorations. If you pull out the box of old decorations only to discover that it’s less plentiful than you remembered, don’t despair—and don’t go shopping. Try switching up what you have saved from past seasons. Change a ribbon color, put those tattered pinecones in a different basket or flower vase with some crinkled tissue for color. Most of all, swap locations. By placing old decorations in new places, they’ll look new to guests, to your family—and to you!
9: Keep It Together for Happy Returns
Stay organized this season. Don’t tuck receipts and change in coat pockets or shopping bags. Instead, form the habit of putting every receipt in one central and consistent place in a big envelope labeled November and December Receipts. This way, if you discover you need to return a gift you purchased earlier, you can more easily make time to get your money back. In addition to convenience, keeping all receipts in one place lets you make fast tallies of what you’ve spent to date so you’re ready to pay the bills when they come due. Keep loose change in a bowl or cup nearby, too. You might even discover you’ve saved up enough pocket change to treat yourself to that one last peppermint latte before this seasonal treat disappears from the menu board.
10: Become a Sales Sleuth
At this time of year, it seems like every store and website is promoting a BIG sale, but be careful. Sometimes sale prices are not nearly so reduced as claims promise. Making enough time to research and check for best and lowest prices before you make bigger purchases can result in big savings. By comparing prices ahead of time, you are an informed buyer. Not only will recipients value what you buy, you’ll receive a real value, too. Spending more time ahead of time can save your budget big-time, too.
11: Say NO to SnowBILL Fights
After all the gifts are all opened, it’s quickly back to school at the start of the new year. It’s also the start of payback time as the bills come pouring in. Credit card debt is a serious matter and debt and interest payments can add up quickly. Be prepared.
Make your payback plan NOW. By calculating your budget, sticking to it, and planning out beforehand how long it will take you to pay down what you owe, you’ll feel in control and be better able to contain spending. By giving yourself a HARD Shopping Stop Date, you will limit those SnowBILLs—helping to prevent your interest payments from snowballing. Now that’s a great gift to yourself for the start of 2020!
Get Smart from the Start with FUTURES!
These ten ideas can help you stay on track during the holidays. If you want some more specific, easy-to-grasp-and-apply information about Personal Finance, check out the Personal Finance Strand of FUTURES: Financially Literate Kids for a Financially Literate Society™. This FREE, groundbreaking Financial Literacy Program has 29 different sections across the four strands. Each section begins with a detailed ready-to-use planning guide and is brimming with handouts and resources—including worksheets, charts, and other handy tools. This school program “travels” smoothly outside of classrooms, making it easy to introduce and weave in financial education topics in after school programs, home-school settings, and even around the family dinner table. In the late-night hours, turn worry time into learning time with FUTURES.
Early next week, look for Post 3, Hidden Holiday Budget Breakers, where we bring into clearer focus all of those fuzzy, forgotten holiday costs that can trip up even the most committed holiday budget planners.