The following is a guest post from Laura at A Goddess of Frugality. Thanks Laura!
Holiday Challenge
The holidays are coming up sooner than we all think. Last year, I challenged myself to spend $100 or less out-of-pocket for 9 people. This year I am shopping for 10 people. I am going completely crazy by reducing my cash budget to no more than $80 out-of-pocket. However, I hope to spend about $250-$300 when all is said and done. Confused? Here is the plan:
I will use websites where I earn credits online and cash those out for Amazon gift cards. I have Amazon Prime so I can ship the gifts for free. I estimate I can earn about $100 between now and mid-December. I will also utilize another site where I earn points to earn gift cards and obtain two $25 gift cards by December. I plan to give one gift card as a gift and use to other to shop for a gift. Finally, I do a lot of product and book reviews on my blog so I can cover another gift or two with a review.
This year I also plan to enter some giveaways on other blogs and if I am lucky enough to win, I would love to keep my cash budget to top out at no more than $50. A girl can dream, right?
Crystal’s Comments: I sometimes use the cash back rewards we earn using our Discover to trade in for discounted gift cards. The gift cards are then used as the gift or to buy the gift I had in mind for specific people. Altogether, we usually end up spending $25-$50 per person at Christmas, so we budget for $500 and spread that out as I find gift ideas September through early December…
We wanted to avoid the extreme gift giving in my family so we implemented a Secret Santa system for all the cousins. Once all of our kids are old enough (and wont fight) we will change that over to a Yankee swap.
Adam,
That is a great idea! Unfortunately, our family is spread across the country so it isn’t a very viable option for us.
I’m using my cash back rewards for a lot of presents!
I’ve been saving up all of the gift cards that I’ve earned through Swagbucks. I hope to pay for most of Christmas that way! You have a lot of other great ideas that I’ll have to try as well!
Michelle,
This is the best use of cash back rewards in my opinion:)
Tonya,
I love Swagbucks!
If you can do that it’s pretty amazing. I will spend more than $100 for just my wife.
I know you can do it! I am hoping to be around $100 this year. I know I could do it lower with all the Amazon codes I have saved up this year and rewards I have earned, but my husband always goes on a last minute ‘But I wanted to get them this’ spree that I haven’t been able to stop him from doing!
I haven’t figured out what we are doing for Christmas yet. Hopefully it is pretty low key this year so we can put more money toward my girlfriend’s student loans.
Sean,
Always good to keep the wife happy:)
Samantha,
Amazon codes along with a Prime membership (student and mom memberships are free for limited time frames) makes it so easy to keep a low budget Christmas!
Lance,
Paying down debt is a gift in itself in my opinion.
We use our cash back rewards for the year for all the birthdays and holidays that happen in our family between October and December, and there are many! We actually wrote about it as yeaterday’s post on our site!
This is a great idea. I too have a small budget this year. I need to get more active in sites to earn gift cards.
That’s a small budget for so many people, but great if you can do it.
Mrs. POP,
I will check it out!
Jamie,
It definitely pays off to earn the cards.
Kim,
I am determined:)
We are actually drawing names this year since everyone’s budget is so small, hehe. There is no way we could get gifts for everyone in the family. The only person we are blowing the budget for is my son
Good luck with your challenge!
Hubby and I are trying to save money too! So my plan is to go through cashback sites for my online purchases and wait for sales too. We’re hoping we wouldn’t need to spend a lot but there’s just too many people to give gifts to. Thank God we’re having Secret Santa at church so we wouldn’t need to give gifts to all our friends there.
We don’t do Christmas gifts and instead invest time with people we love and care about. Then the money we would have spent on gifts goes to charity. It’s a nice take on Christmas.
Ashley,
Little ones make it hard to stay within the budget:)
Isis,
Secret Santa helps cut down on the amount of gifts to buy.
Jenna,
Love the idea of no gifts. Once my 13 year old is an adult, I think I may do this!
Thanks to cash back & reward sites, I will pay nearly nothing for Christmas this year. Which going from 2 incomes to 1 is extremely helpful.
I wish I could be as dedicated as my mother in finding sales. Her secret to Christmas shopping is to buy things cheap (think 90% off) throughout the year. Then she saves them for Christmas gifts, but shopping like this takes a bit of patience and time to find the perfect deals.
Nice post Laura!
I’m just wondering about Amazon Prime, does it include free shipping to Canada?
My teen is usually pretty expensive to buy for, and this year is no different. This year, she wants her own laptop…guess the iPad she took from me isn’t good enough. I know I can’t get away with under a $100. I will cash out all my cash back sites and use that towards Xmas. When I do – I will be sure to go through cash back sites for my purchases, use promo codes when I can, charge all my purchases on my MyPoints credit card which will start rebuilding my My Points acct, and then I will pay that account off with my debit card and earn points to cash in on something I want on the Visa Rewards site. Of course – I buy nothing unless it’s on sale to begin with unless I have no other option. It’s all like a revolving door from year to year.
Household Budget Geek,
Apparently it does not but it does include shipping to Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.
Susan,
I am also sticking with the motto (for my youngest who is the only one who still receives more than one gift), something you want, something you need, something to wear, and something to read.
Christa,
Yes, it does take a lot of patience. I don’t like shopping all year (I don’t have the storage room). This is part of the reason I save up Amazon and other gift cards.
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A woman with a solid plan! Awesome-sauce:-)
[...] did a guest post recently over at Budgeting in the Fun Stuff. In the post I mentioned that I plan to spend $80 or less out-of-pocket for Christmas this year for [...]
[...] year’s holiday challenge series began with my guest post at Budgeting in the Fun Stuff. My goal for this year Christmas spending was to stay under $80 out-of-pocket. Guess what? I did [...]