Budget for Xmas

MSE_Martin

Just a quick note. I hadn't seen this thread. I've now deleted my version and will be linking to this one on Christmas Budgetting from the tip instead.

martin

nicki_2

For those of you who usually end up in a mad dash at Christmas I'd like to recommend a site. It's American based but I've found some great ideas for gifts, some to make and some that can be assembled from things that you already have in the house (like a "Student Survival Kit" made with excess stationary, basic rations etc). There's also information about a Yahoo group that has lists of "101 clutter free gifts for ....". I love it there!

I'm currently following a "holiday Grand Plan" which is a major deep clean plan (based on an American home but can easily be adapted for here in the UK) that started at the end of August. It's great fun to find all that clutter that you'd forgotten about because you shoved it in the back of a cupboard/box. Personally I'm using this plan to have a clear out and I'm selling the clutter on Ebay to make money to buy gifts from Ebay

Then there is another plan which is purely Christmas preperation (take into account that American's celebrate Thanksgiving so the plan is arranged to have everything done by then) .

I personally use a combination of both plans and have managed to have organized and "kept to budget" Christmas for 4 years now with only one "hitch" one Christmas (Not a problem though, nor am I complaining. It was an un-expected death in the family 2 weeks before Christmas which resulted in the budget being blown and £300 being put on the credit card to pay for car hire on no notice.)

There is also craft ideas, recipes and very busy forums!

Anyway the link is http://organizedchristmas.com/index.html .

It's a spin off from http://organizedhome.com (which I've posted before) and run by the same lady, but a different team of moderators

tru

Thanks Nicki, I've added those to my favourites ;D

Petree

dont know if they still do them, but you used to get saver cards, you know a pound for a stamp, a card etc... well you used to get £5 free if you had 100 stamps etc... so if your gonna do the major one day christmas shop then goto the machine, get rid of all you change etc.... and get a fiver for spending what you would anyway. This might work of your weekly shop, might be worth checking out?

16011996

will have to have a look for that petree, i remember my mum doing it at kwik save years ago. ;D

MSE_Martin

There are many xmas saver schemes - in fact im planning an article comparing them and seeing if any are 'maniputable - i think tesco is

Martin

16011996

oooh, will look forward to that. ;D

nicki_2

I'm using Asda's Christmas Savers card. ATM all I'm doing is rounding up my weekly shopping amount to a round figure e.g. 15/9 shopping came to £22.59 so I put 41p on my card so that my shopping came to £23 exactly, it holds the queue up slightly but usually I'm still trying to put my shopping in the trolley as I work out how much I want to put on the card

As of my shop this morning (£0.45p added) I have a total of £40.81 on my card - not bad considering that I only started in August ;D . I'm using this to buy "Xmas clothes", alcohol as gifts for people who are getting it and treats. I'm also going to give it to "him-in-doors" to pay for my Xmas gift this year and telling my daughter what I want - I might even give them a shopping list as he's hopeless - last year he bought me a double DVD of Robbies Williams concert, as much as I love it I would have prefered a dressing gown which I have been asking for for 4 YEARS NOW ::) It wouldn't be so bad if my birthday wasn't 21st January so he could get me a dressing gown in the sales or even give me the money to get one for my birthday instead ...Men, you've got to love 'em!

Petree

Gosh, great minds think alike eh!
About to start uni on saturday so will be looking out for all the vouchers i can get!
Good christmas gifts are giving a skill, i make 'apparently good' ceramics so i give people these filled with things which are appropiate to them.

My friends about to start a medical degree so she's getting one filled with cut up jelly babies and i bought her a sphygmometer which will be in a wooden box another friend made, etc.... using your skills!

Also if you have a particularly nice plant, cut a chunk off, hormone root it and stick it in a nice pot with some fresh soil and it should have rooted ok by christmas

my last tip Ebay! Try searching for any number of things, you wouldn't believe whats on their, my grandfather needed some Hg (Mercury) for a clock with it in the pendulum, of course being super toxic its hard (read immposible) to get in shops, but its there on ebay, i worry about the legality but hey he not gonna poison people with it.

HTH

Petree

Lucie_2

Oh gosh - Christmas! My money saving tip - go on holiday! Honestly! It saves us a fortune. We don't bother with a tree, decorations, extra food & drink or get any of the stress. Prezzies for the extended family are delivered before or shortly after christmas & we have so many turkey dinners at various work parties that we don't miss it. Usually we take 1 or 2 small presents on holiday to open, but the holiday is our main present. Plus the bank holidays mean you generally only have to take 3 days annual leave from work instead of a full week.
It's much more relaxing, you can avoid all those relatives you don't really like & if you go skiing (like we do) it's incredibly festive.

NB - we have no kids, it may be slightly different if we did. There has always been families sharing our hotels at christmas who say once they're tried it, they're never staying at home again!