Christmas spending cutbacks?

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-22-1999
Christmas spending cutbacks?
5
Thu, 11-11-2004 - 11:37pm
With all the upcoming holidays, certainly there must be one or two items that we can cut back on.........AND STILL ENJOY THE SEASON! Can you think of anything that you can eliminate or skimp on that really won't make a big difference to the enjoyment of the holiday but may make a difference in your effort to eliminate debt? For instance, are you going to not buy any more decorations this year and reuse and enjoy the old ones? Will you put a few less light strands on the tree? Can you skip a course at dinner with the family? Will you just buy gifts for certain people and drop a few people off the card list? Maybe not buy a whole new outfit for the office party?

What ideas do you have?

Littlesbigs

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-19-2004
Fri, 11-12-2004 - 10:32am
Last year I cut back by getting my family to agree to only buy gifts for the kids, and I had very minimal decorations (only lights on the tree, only thing on the walls was taped up holiday cards).

Photobucket

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-06-2004
Fri, 11-12-2004 - 10:55am
Buy the $5. xmas cards instead of the $15. a pack, hand deliver some of your cards. If you can cook good, cook several cakes, slice them up, put on throwaway platters and take to some friends or neighbors instead of buying stuff for them. Give of yourself. Just a couple of thoughts. Donna
Avatar for cl_phocid
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 11-12-2004 - 12:39pm
I'm attending a "cookie bake" this year.

All my best,
Danni

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Sun, 11-14-2004 - 9:30pm
Let's see.. we've gotten most of the family to agree to giving only to the children. And then on top of that, we've decided we're *not* buying gifts for our own children. They will be getting tons of great stuff from grandparents, and they don't really need anything else. They have too many toys anyway, and items that we really feel we want them to have (a bicycle, for instance), we generally get for them over the course of the year as we find extremely good deals on them. I think they enjoy things more when they *don't* get them all at once. To add to that, their birthdays are in January and February, so it seem like overkill to buy them stuff just because it happens to be Christmas.

For family members I've been collecting picture frames over the course of the year at yard sales. When I see frames for sale, I tell the owners that I will take any of them that they are willing to part with for fifty cents. By November I have a hefty trove of them. I have prints made of some of my favorite pics of the boys, and these make great little gifts for grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. (If you haven't been collecting at yard sales, you can get frames at the dollar store.)

For social gatherings with friends, I have planted the thought well in advance that we should do exchanges of gifts with the limitation that all items must either be used or home made. This has gone over very well--I suspect others feel the same way we do about overspending at Christmas.

We will have very few decorations this year because this is our first year in a real house, and I don't have enough for the full house. Next year, however, we'll have plenty because my plan is to go out a few days after Christmas and buy lights etc. at deep discounts. For this year, my children and I have been collecting pine cones and branches in the woods to put around the house to add a festive air. We keep our eyes open for bright berries to use too.

We are very fortunate in that I have a small freelance income that we do not include in our budget, so we will actually have a few hundred dollars we *can* spend at Christmas, but I hope to come in *well* under that number and send the rest to debt (or savings, or a new stove! LOL).

Blessings to all,

Heather

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-20-2003
Mon, 11-15-2004 - 12:08am
We are not buying any decorations and using what we have acquired in previous years. We will be using all of our wrapping paper that was left over from last year. We are spending WAY less on everyone this year. I think it will still be MERRY though.


Edited 11/15/2004 12:10 am ET ET by iwannabsahm