Day 4: Tips/Tricks to a Budget Friendly holiday season

Day 4: Tips/Tricks to a Budget Friendly holiday season




I do think that is a great idea, a budget friendly holiday. We don't really have one but, a holiday budget, but I try to spend wisely. First of all let me clarify it is not that we do not have a holiday budget because we are sleeping on mattress of money. I have not been involved in a holiday savings program yet. I always mean to but never quite get it opened. I guess that could be tip number 1.

1. If your bank has a Christmas saver program open one. If they don't have one you could set up something yourself. I am going to try to take this advice myself.

2. Buy throughout the year. This is one I almost always do. This year I did not and regret it now. I look for great sales, clearances, closeouts. You can find better than black Friday deals.

3. Another thing I do is use cash or debit. If you don't have it you can't spend it. This year I even got one better. I got a new discover card the other day and I am making money shopping.



My husband ordered it for me and picked out the picture on the front. I love it.

4. Make a list of who you are buying for and what you got them. This is especially important if you have many kids. We try to give them around the same number of gifts. If I wasn't paying attention and well over bought for one kid it I really would have to go back and spend even more on catching up the others.

5. It is easy to get caught up in the whole gift giving/receiving aspect of Christmas but remember that is not the reason for the season. Focus on your family it is so much more important. If you give children to many gifts they are overwhelmed and the gifts become meaningless.

Today is also black Friday a great day for deals. So did I go or did skip it? I could not resist. I felt a burning in my heals. I spent two days going through fliers. I looked over deals in 4 states. Am I crazy, or smart. I also live where you can jump from state to state in a half an hour or so. I ruled out a ton of stores. Thanks to many store having sales on Saturday I saved a few for tomorrow that are also offering Saturday only deals. I talked some ideas over with my father asking his tech advice and he find who had the best deal on the item, it was not the lowest price but the most for the money. I came home with some great deals. I have no regrets with what I bought. To make it better the store were awesome today. I did not go early I went at noon. I let the first rush go and then hit it myself. I had no problem parking even at wal mart. Target was the worst but they have a Starbucks in them so two reasons why everyone was there. There were plenty of cashiers no long lines. Again surprisingly at wal mart I walked right up to the check out. I don't do that on a normal day! Two stores I stopped at were sold out of the items I came for but being in the afternoon I was not upset about it and just moved on. Maybe they will still be on sale tomorrow and maybe restocked. We will see. I hope tomorrow goes as well.

As for my favorite purchase I can show you now was this Santa count down. I saw him a few weeks back and thought he was just darling. I was pleased to find he was 40% off. He would be cheaper tomorrow but he was the only one. Him and a snowman that was almost as cute. So I figured it was worth it to me to pay a little more and get him. I gave him to the boys and they love him too. Smiley has been playing with the blocks I see this as a possible battle. For Halloween I made the kids a pumpkin countdown. Each day they pulled off a piece of pumpkin shaped paper that had a event for the day a counted down the number. They really enjoyed it. I really hated finding pumpkin pieces everywhere. So ta da we have a non messy, countdown that is darling and we get to use year after year. The poinsettias .98 at Lowes.