Saving money on gifts

Birthdays, Christmas, Anniversaries, Weddings all have one thing in common besides being special times of the year in a person’s life.  They are usually associated with either the act of giving or receiving a gift.  If you aren’t careful, buying gifts can hit your budget hard.  When you are one person and have to buy birthday and Christmas presents for 8 nieces and nephews the costs can get crazy.  Making homemade gifts, unless you are really good at it and have had lots of practice, can be just as costly.  But if you are a planner and a budgeter, you can get a head of any unforeseen costs. 
 

• Prepare ahead of time – you know when most of these costs are going to hit.  Plan when you are going to have your biggest hits and work your budget around this.  For example, you have a $300 budget for your husband’s birthday.  Spread the costs out a few months.   

• Open sinking funds – a sinking fund is a great way to help you dedicate a certain amount of money each month that will be used for specific purchases.  A Christmas club account is a sinking fund.  You put in a certain amount each month so you have enough money to do your shopping at the end of the year.  We use sinking funds for just about everything.   
• Shop after the holidays – and I am mostly talking about Christmas here.  Walmart has all of their Christmas stuff, including their seasonal gifts (fragrance baskets, silly kid’s toys, etc) on sale for 50% off.  I get all of my nieces and nephews Christmas and birthday presents for the next year on December 26.  I spend $35 for all of it instead of over $70 if I were to buy it later.  And they are good gifts.  Disney princess, and other name brand items for next to nothing.  I can’t make them something that cheap.   
• Have an “I want” spreadsheet for you and your spouse – what this is exactly is a shared spreadsheet that you tell your partner (or whoever) exactly what you want.  How does this save money?  Well instead of getting those awesome hills you want, you ended up getting pair of house shoes that you will never wear.  You will get/be getting things that are wanted and will be used, not wasting money on things that no one would buy for themselves.  Google spreadsheets is a great thing, because you can share them between each other and update whenever you want.  We started using this because Aaron thinks that I am hard to buy for.  He loves that he can get me exactly what I want, down to the size and color.