Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I bought gift cards for the local grocery store the one year for a few people. Whatever people's opinions on them, I'm sure they came in handy especially when the holidays demand extra food and money is tight. One lady bought me cat food for my birthday this year! I thought it was great as it freed up money for other things and that means less stress!
If you play it right, those Gift cards help with gas,
For example I go to Fred Meyer (Kroger) and sometimes during the month they have a 4X bonus points day or weekend. Buy gift cards then and get 4X the gas points.
In short Spend $250 and get $1K worth of gas points. You then get gas $1 off a gallon.
I plan of doing this with Amazon cards, but you can do it with most of them. I'm saving for a good computer so this will help. Spend $250 a month for 6 months and get cheap gas plus at the end, get a really nice whiz bang computer or other stuff.
I have it easy because we don't have kids and we agree not to spend more that $100 on each other and have convinced our in-laws that we don't want to participate in gift exchange. Christmas gifts are for kids IMO and we don't have any.
I know my sis-in-law got her feelings hurt to the first two Christmases - but after the second one I sat down and had a long heart-to-heart chat with her about consumerism and materialism and she finally understood and respected my position. I love her to death but she isn't happy unless she spends $1000 at Christmas getting everyone lots of stuff.
My Mom had been a big fan of this and every year she sends a small GC in the mail and I send her whatever Barbra Streisand's new CD is that year
Also - I work in a small office and we all agree not to participate. One lady always brings baked goodies for each of us and the boss gives out small Starbucks GCs.
The kids have moved out, we've moved to a smaller place, most of our extended family has died or lost touch---we've decided to simply forget the whole frigging mess
OK, I searched and didn't find a thread specifically for listing ideas or ways to save money around the holidays... so I apologize if there is already a thread out there. (I thought for sure there must be one.)
I did all my gift shopping yesterday for my immediate family (hubby, two teenagers) and managed to only spend $1.98.
Here's how I did this:
- Used up amazon gift cards I have been saving these up as hubby and I have received them over a period of time and chose products on amazon that kids want that also offered FREE SHIPPING. They each got a $70 gift that they have been eyeing and we know they want. Didn't cost us anything. These gift cards were given to hubby as "way to go" type incentives when he did cool stuff or went above and beyond at work, and also to me as a thank you for volunteering and also from my boss when I did good work (I won a national contest that made our office look good for the company).
- The kids phones were ready for upgrade and they have been asking for Android phones (they have had iPhones for two years and now realize that they are icrappy and want to switch back to Android). So, I logged on and found the same Motorolla Android phone that their dad has for 99 cents! It's normally a $350 phone. So I got them each one. (That's the 1.98 that I spent.) As a bonus, the data plan for these phones is cheaper than the data plan for the iphones - so we'll also be saving an extra $30 per month by switching back to Android phones for the kids. Sweet.
- Over the years our points have been building up at Gamestop everytime the hubby and kids buy/sell/trade games and systems. We've never used our points. So, we have something like 200K points. I used the points to buy some hoodies, t-shirts, lanyards, wallets, also google play and steam GC's, and etc.
- I recently renewed our Gamestop membership rewards card. To renew cost $14.99, but saved us $95. last year, so it more than pays for itself, not to mention all the free gifts we just got with all our points. But when you renew you get an email prompting you to go update your online account, so I did. While there I saw we had a message - buy two games get one free. Well, I asked hubby and kids to go through their old games because I was "cleaning house" and I took those games in and traded them for store credit. I also used some of our points to score a 50% increase in store credit in addition to the 10% increase you get when you use your membership card and an additional 10% increase we got for renewing. I used all that store credit to buy two games and then got a free game. So I got a $55 game for each of them for xmas. And I didn't spend anything (even rode my bike to the mall as it is just up the bike path from where we live. )
- I've been volunteering at a place in town that gives you a GC for a free laptop under $400 when you volunteer for a certain number of hours. I've received two GC's so far - so I got both teens new laptops. Of course, technically this wasn't free, because I did volunteer quite a bit... but it didn't cost any money at all.
So, now I'm trying to figure out free or frugal ways to get a tree, decorations, and other fun holiday stuff. Thought starting this thread might be a good way for us all to share ideas!
Very enterprising and savvy! I'm impressed!
But I can't help but wonder, wouldn't you come out ahead if you just got a job, and then paid for things on sale and maybe with coupons?
Very neat ideas...The Salvation Army is paying helpers to organize the Christmas for 500k city now but my local car repair guy has caused radiator problems after too many December oil changes so I just sit at home -- LOVE THE LOCAL MERRY XMAS!. There is no other transportation from here from suburb....
My growing nieces do like the Itunes gift cards from the credit card points.
But - for adults - Old fashioned Christmas appeals to me....Our church as kids said we had to celebrate Retail-mas to 'bring in more money'. Is nice time to start some new traditions... I'm moving soon to smaller town where I know no-one so may just be doing a sit-alone-day plus crockpot turkey breast for the week. Some of the family I need to avoid is aggressively working to position themselves into the holidays again so may do a Chinese place Christmas....
May transition to no Xmas gifts for the kids in next couple years (presently 10, 8 years), as the grands are so loaded the kids don't even see what someone bought them. Parents are raising them without a thought to anything else but gluttony so may just quietly make the statement of 'donation made in your name'...I'm sure I cannot get a message out over their parent's and grand's unpleasantness that keeps me away but the kids are being raised in the parochial schools with lots of JUDGMENTAL, HATER MINDED stuff anyway so no need for ethics lesson from me.
Don't have the funds to spend on gifts - at any time during the year. Relatives/friends are understanding, and if I had to buy gifts to ensure I made others happy, or to be accepted. . .then I guess they'd just have to scratch me off their list.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
