Passive Family Income » holiday shopping

Money saving techniques for holiday gifts

John S. — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 22:16:00 +0000

The holiday’s are almost here and there are just a few shopping days left until Christmas. My wife and I have finished making the majority of our purchases with just a few small items remaining on our list. We have tried very hard this year to reduce our gift expenses and have looked for any alternative to help us meet our goals. Overall, I think we have done an excellent job and wanted to provide some of our shopping highlights to my readers. Hopefully there are some tricks or tips that some of you can use for years to come. I know we will be looking for more and more ways to save money next year!

The following list are examples of how my wife and I were able to stay within our family budget while still purchasing gifts for the holiday season.

Store Rewards – Earlier this year we purchased our new dining room furniture at Cost Plus World Market. At the time we made the purchase, the furniture was on sale and the store was offering 10% off your purchase if you opened up a store credit card with them. To sweeten the deal, they also offered 0% interest for 12 months on your purchase and $15 in store rewards for every $300 you spent. We ended up saving a lot of money from opening up the card and also got $60 in store rewards. Just last weekend we used $30 of our store rewards to purchase gift items for my boss at work and a few other neighbors and co-workers. I didn’t really have these purchases figured in our gift budget, so using the rewards allowed us make these purchases. Without these rewards, we probably would have skipped purchasing gifts for my boss and co-workers this year.
CVS Extra Care Bucks – As I mentioned many times before, I love to shop at CVS. It is my favorite place to shop and get deals. A few weeks ago, CVS had some tremendous deals for a 3-day period over the extended Thanksgiving weekend. We ended up spending around $16 total and got back almost $40 in CVS Extra Bucks from our purchases. We have since used these Extra Bucks to buy several stocking stuffers for our children and a few other people. The $16 spent got us several household items that we will use throughout the year as well as $40 worth of stocking stuffers. Not a bad deal!
Gift Cards – I know there is growing concern about purchasing gift cards these days. Companies that are going out of business like Circuit City and Linens-N-Thins may not be able to honor their own gift cards anymore. However, there are still some safe ways to purchase gift cards for the holidays. A local outdoor shopping center in our area was selling gift cards last weekend for a 25% discount. These cards were good for the majority of the restaurants and stores in the development. By offering several options in stores and restaurants, you lower your risk of losing the value of the card. The nice thing about the deal we got was the 25% discount they offered for a one-day special. We purchased a $100 gift card for my parents to use, which cost us $77.50. There was a $2.50 card activation fee, but spending $77.50 for a card with $100 value is an excellent deal. The card will begin to lose value after 1-year but they should have no problem spending this money. In addition, we saved $22.50 to go towards other purchases and expenses.
Discover Rewards – Earlier this year, I opened up a Discover Open Road credit card to use exclusively on gas purchases. The card will pay you back 5% on gas purchases up to $100 per month. So, if you spend $100 per month on gas, you can get $5 back each month. A few weeks ago, I received notification that if you spent $200 on non-gas and auto maintenance purchases in the month of December, you could get $10 cash back. We are taking advantage of this opportunity and used the card actually to buy the gift card mentioned above, along with other charges to get to the $200 requirement. These opportunities are not always available, but when the opportunity arises, you need to take advantage if you can.
Citi Rewards – As most of my readers already know, I am a huge fan of using credit cards that pay you back in rewards. As I had mentioned previously, we redeemed several of our rewards that we had accumulated throughout the entire year to receive $150 in Target gift cards. Those gift cards have been used to buy many gifts for our children and a few others. The end result is that we got $150 in free money to use at a store that we like to shop at. This was actually planned by my wife and I throughout the entire year. We had a goal to build up the points on the card so that it could help us with our Christmas budget.

Those were just a few of the ways that we try and stretch the dollars that we spend. While those specific examples were just for this year’s holiday purchases, we use similar techniques throughout the entire year. I love to use the example I mentioned above about purchasing the gift card for my parents. We spent $77.50 out of pocket to buy the card. The end result was that we got a gift card worth $100 but at the same time we made a purchase on the card that would eventually get us another $10. So in theory, we will get about a $110 value for spending $77.50 along with another ~$130 or so on normal expenses. I would love to hear how others stretch their dollars.

What types of techniques do you use to stretch your spending?

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Attention Walmart – Shame on you!

John S. — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:15:10 +0000

photo credit: Stryker W@SPMy wife and I were up early shopping with all the other crazy people on Black Friday late last week. It has become a tradition for us to partake in these activities every year on the day after Thanksgiving. In the past, we have always stayed away from Walmart because of hearing awful stories of how people act when shopping there on this day. This year however, we decided to start our shopping at Walmart, as they had several good deals on items we were looking to shop for. We got to the store around 4:30 AM and there were already hundreds of people lined up huddled around pallets of toys and other gifts just waiting to snatch up everything they could get their hands on. Before the 5:00 AM deals began, I strolled around the store to check things out and to see how many people were actually in the store. I was astonished to see that down every major aisle, they had pallets and pallets of items with people salivating over them. It was really a sad and troubling picture and my wife and I should have taken this as a sign to get out of the store.

We decided to stay and split up to see if we could get any of the deals we came for. As soon as 5:00 AM hit, it was total chaos and mayhem in the store. People were pushing and shoving to get their hands on anything they could. Toys were flying over shelves because people near the pallets were throwing them back to others waiting with shopping carts. As soon as this started happening, I actually began to fear for my safety, so I tried to make my way back over to my wife. You couldn’t even walk down an aisle because there were shopping carts blocking everything. I even saw two ladies fighting over a comforter set that was on sale. My wife had been waiting for a different toy item and had actually been pined up against a shelf because people behind her were pushing and shoving to try and get up front. She finally made her way up to one of the items and picked it up, when a lady grabbed it from her and took off. To make matters worse, she actually knew the lady. She was the mother of a classmate from my son’s preschool! When I got to my wife, she had tears in her eyes and was very upset. Thank goodness she was not physically injured, but emotionally she was a mess.

After calming my wife down, we noticed just behind us a grown man was pushing a lady trying to take a Barbie Hot Wheels ride on toy from her. This lady had been waiting in line for hours to get the toy, and was fortunate enough to get one. The man had rushed the line and was in such a craze that he tried to steal it from her right in the store in front of hundreds of people. Fortunately, security was called and the man was escorted out of the building. The store manager then informed people that it was not their job to figure out who got in line first and that they could not control what other people did. I say – SHAME ON YOU WALMART!!! I could not believe my ears at what the manager of the entire store was saying to us. He was actually promoting this type of activity, not trying to prevent it.

We finally got out of that store, and vowed never to return to Walmart. After we went to a few other calmer and more controlled stores, we went home. It was no surprise to me later that day when I found out that a Walmart worker actually died at a different store, because shoppers trampled the employee when the doors opened. It is very unfortunate and concerning to me that people have to act this way just to save a few dollars. I am very ashamed that we decided to stay at the store and was part of that mess. I feel for the family of that victim and unfortunately witnessed a similar frenzy at a different store.

I have often questioned some of the ethics that Walmart uses. Most of the time, I have chosen to ignore them, as Walmart typically has the best deals available. But this time was different. This time it got really personal to my family. I couldn’t imagine what would have happened if there was a fire in the store. It took us 20 minutes just to get to the exit and that was without any mad rush out the doors. Fortunately we got lucky, but the frenzy inside was enough to disgust me. I don’t know if it was different this year because of the economy and how people were reacting or if it is just a human instinct to act this way. Either way, I cannot consciously shop at Walmart any longer.

Did you witness these types of behaviors in your shopping experience?

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Unexpected Holiday Gift Purchases

John S. — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 13:14:12 +0000

photo credit: edwardlegerA few weeks ago, my wife and I planned out the list of family and friends that we were going to buy gifts for this holiday season. We decided to cut out gifts for each other which knocked $250 off our budget. It’s a lot more fun to buy for our children than each other anyways. We also decided to cut out my sister and her husband and my wife’s brother as well. This saved us another $100 from our budget. We also decided that we would reduce the amount we spent on our parents and children this holiday season which will save us another $100 – $150. Grand total, we are cutting out almost $500 just from last years expenses. A lot of this cutback is a result of the economy. The other reasons for the cutbacks are because it is time to focus more on the children and not so much on the adults for the holidays.

Just when we thought things were going along well with our budget, we hit a couple of snags. My wife and I are the kind of people who feel awful when someone purchases us a gift and we don’t give one in return. Maybe we shouldn’t feel this way, but we do. We would rather give than receive. A few months ago, I had a conversation with my sister about buying gifts for the holidays. They have a new baby girl this year, so I suggested that we only spend money on the kids this year and cut out the adult gifts. I also tried to tie her down to a budget to spend (as she can get carried away at times) and thought that I was successful. Come to find out, she has spent a lot already on our two boys and has actually purchased items for my wife and I. When I found out the news, I wasn’t too happy but my wife and I are sticking to our guns this year. We had an agreement with my sister and her family about gift purchases and we are sticking to it, as hard as it may be.

The other situation is a little harder to deal with. We have become good friends with a couple down the street who have two young boys close to our sons ages. The boys have all become close friends as well. We recently found out that these neighbors are purchasing gifts for our boys for the holidays. Now, we don’t believe these are extravagant purchases, but we were not expecting this. My wife and I are now compelled to shop for the two neighbor boys to return the favor. This is a very nice gesture by our neighbors and one that we appreciate, it just can make for a difficult situation when you are trying to stick to a budget. We are now going to add back $50 to our budget so we can pick up some gifts for these boys.

Both of the examples above pointed out unexpected gifts that we had not planned on. In one case, we decided to stick with our budget and not return the gift. The other case involved children and we buckled a little with our original plan. It can be very hard trying to decide what to do when you are faced with these types of situations.

How do you handle unexpected holiday purchases as the ones I mentioned above? Do you give in or do you stick to your budget?

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.