Penny Seeds

Lots of people are cutting their budgets this year, and retailers are taking notice. Stores large and small are slashing prices to garner more sales. Some people are even considering buying no presents this year which is a big no for me. Just because you’re feeling a little pinched doesn’t mean you need to be a scrooge. Here’s some great budget friendly solutions to give you a great Christmas.

Start off by giving yourself a budget to stick to. How much do you want to spend on people? $10? $20? $30? Once you pick a number - don’t budge from it. Straying off course a couple dollars could soon turn into a couple hudred dollars if you’re not careful. Before you know it you’ve blown your whole Christmas piggy bank on two people.

Just because you can’t buy them something overly expensive doesn’t mean it can’t be something they want. There’s plenty of things I’d love to recieve for $5. For example my favorite t-shirt shop is having a massive Christmas sale, and they’ve marked down most of their inventory to $5, $10, and $15!

You could also consider making gifts for people if you’re crafty, or even sending them craft kits. Don’t think of do it yourself kits as being limited to just knitting, and scrap booking. There’s plenty of other kits out there for the handy man, and electronic geek too!

Here’s a list from Instructables with lots of cool homemade gift ideas that can all be made for very little money depending on what you have laying around the house. You can also venture over to the Make store, and pick up a wise assortment of DIY electronic kits. They have everything from beadwork to fully programable arduino kits for sale there.

Here’s some ideas to get you started!

Make Your Own Gift Basket $5 and up

You can put pretty much anything you want in here. Depending on what kinds of things the recipient likes! Jewlery, wine, toys, food, candy, dvds, cds, ect. You could buy higher end things or pick up everything you need from the dollar store even! Here’s some ideas for baskets.

Sweets - Chocolates or bake your own cookies, brownies, ect.

Dinner Basket - Bottle of wine, spagehtti, pasta sauce,and candles.

Movie Basket - Popcorn, DVDs, ect.

Beauty - Soaps, cologne, and lotions

Geeky - Comics, USB drives, software, and laptop accessories

Gaming - Playing cards, poker chips, and card games booklet.

Baking - Cookware, cookbooks, dry ingredients, and kitchen gadgets.

Create A Custom T-Shirt $11.00 and up

You can create a custom apparel item at Spreadshirt for your favorite person for cheaper than you might think! Be careful how many designs you add though as it can get expensive fast. Since they add each of those manually it adds to your costs. A single design is much cheaper, but can be just as good.

Pre-Paid Cards $10 and Up

If all else fails these are usually a good bet! You can get them for just about any service now a days, and they are almost always appreciated. Think about some of these types of cards!

Resturant cards

Pre-Paid phone cards

Starbucks coffee cards

itunes store cards

wii points cards

Online gaming subscription cards (Like World Of Warcraft, or XBOX Live)

There’s plenty of other gifts you can buy on the cheap too. Just because you can’t spend a fortune doesn’t mean you can’t buy your friends and family what they want for Christmas.

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It’s the best time of the year as far as I’m concerned! The holidays are always so much fun, but it can be stressful if you’re down on your luck this season. Never fear! there’s plenty ways to stretch your budget without sacrificing your holiday festivities. I’ve compiled some tips to help you keep that dollar going, and get more for less.

A coupon worth fifty cents may not seem like a lot, but those pennies add up believe it or not! I can remember going to Winn Dixie with my mother back when they had those triple coupon deals. The store manager could never figure out how he ended up owing her money. She’d pull out her coupon file, and always manage to make off like a bandit at any store she went to.

There’s plenty coupons available locally in newspapers, salepapers, in the stores, and on similar products. Though you can also get plenty savings online through different coupon websites! These can be printed off right from your printer, and brought with you. I always do a ‘coupon code search’ before I purchase anything, because there’s bound to be savings! I bought a beautiful Christmas tree at Joann crafts on sale, and got additional money off from a promotion. My friend’s mother wanted me to open her a stock account, and I found her a promotion that gave you $50 for free!

Eversave is a great coupon website for you to start with. They don’t require any registration or personal information from you either. Their page show cases the coupons they have available for you. Just check the boxes next to the ones you want, and print them out!

On my visit I found coupons for $0.60 cents off Pillsubry pie crust, $.60 cents off Pilsbury rolls or bread, $0.55 off Land O Lakes butters, $1 off Honey Suckle frozen turkeys, and $1 off Chex cereal! At the time of writing the featured coupon section has 10 pages so there’s lots more coupons available for you to use. There’s over $15 just in coupons you could use on your Thanksgiving table; plus more stuff too. There’s plenty other coupon sites too! How about some of these?

wow-coupons.com
family.go.com
afullcup.com

Omaha Steaks is offering 50% off an entire thanksgiving dinner just for clicking this link. If you’re a fan of their stuff you can get their dinner package featuring a 10 lb. turkey, 2x 12 oz green bean cassaroles, x2 14 oz scalloped potatoes, and x6 4 oz caramel apple tartlets! All of it for $69.99 as oppose to their normal price of $139.00. There are similar pre-made dinners locally available at places like Publix for cheaper. It’s a good option if you can’t do much of the cooking yourself. We did this several years at my house when I was younger. My mother’s poor health kept her from doing much cooking work, and this was a real life saver for us.

In Florida we have a lot of people here who have no family in the Sunshine State. If you know somebody similar then invite them over! Your invites can bring a dish with them to help you cut costs, and you’ll be doing something nice for somebody who may be having Thanksgiving alone. You can also ask your family members to help split the cost. If you have ten people coming to your dinner, and all of them put just $5 into a pot you’d have an extra $50 for your Thanksgiving budget. Since you’re doing all the work they shouldn’t be too grumpy over helping you out.

Probably the best way to save money is by making your own stuff though. Pre-made items are more expensive for the labor put into them, and if you make your own then you can keep that money for yourself. My family would always make home made turkey dumplings for Thanksgiving every year. They are always delicious, and you know what else? They’re cheap to make!

The reason soups, stews, and other items  cooked in mass quantities became popular is because you can feed an army with very little money. Now a days we’ve gone to buying these very easy to make dishes in cans, and are paying a lot for the privilage. I make an entire pot of dumplings (two batches) with one can of chicken broth, 2/3 cup of water, 5 cups of flour, 4 eggs, 2 teaspoons of oil and some salt. You can really make a lot of food for only a few dollars.

You can acheive similar savings with other popular dishes like cookies, pies, muffins, bread, rolls. If you’re not a champion baker don’t be discouraged. All of these dishes are super easy to make, and your guests will be impressed with your new skill. Make lots, because they’ll be sure to want to take some home! I brought three pans of chocolate chip, and pecan cookies to work, and not one of them made it back home with me. All of the above are fairly quick except for the bread, but only because of all the rising it needs to do. That’s okay though! Mix it up in the morning, and go do something else while you’re waiting. You can even make the dough ahead of time and put it in your fridge. Just get it back out, place it in your pan, let it rise back up, and pop it in the oven for a few minutes. This way you can have totally fresh bread on the Thanksgiving table!

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