Are you looking for great Christmas gift ideas?
Christmas shopping is here! The Christmas shopping season is known to cause emotional and financial stress. Emotional stress because it seems like you can never find the perfect gift for everyone on your Christmas list. Financial stress is caused because spending lots of money for the ideal gift has become somewhat of an axiom. Too many of us are stuck paying off debt because of gifts we purchased. I don’t want this to happen to you.
This is why I am here to share some Christmas shopping tips with you guys for this holiday season:
Look out for post-holiday discounts on great Christmas gift ideas.
First and foremost post-Christmas shopping needs to be kept in mind. Not only is Boxing Day the greatest day of the year because it is my birthday but there are major deals happening that day. If you happen to be seeing someone a few days after Christmas, you can easily pick up their gift later on. Why rush?
Watch your credit card usage.
This has happened to everyone at some point. You use your credit card to buy your friend a new shirt, you swipe again when you find the perfect gift for your Dad, and so forth. Fast forward a few weeks and January rolls around to smack you in the face with a nice fat credit card bill.
All of those small purchases have been tallied up and the result is a credit card bill that will take months to pay off. Watch your credit card usage. Keep note of every time your credit card leaves your wallet. Remember that Santa Clause has a pre-paid credit card. Even the best student credit card won’t help you when you’re in debt.
Have a list with a rough idea of what to get each person.
This is probably my biggest mistake every holiday shopping season. I walk into a mall without any idea of what to get certain people. As a result this means that I have no clue on how much money I will spend on each person. This also means that I wasn’t paying attention in the weeks leading up to Christmas. If you pay close attention you’ll know what to get every person on your Christmas list before you even enter the shopping mall. Yes I know Santa Clause has an unfair advantage over us because he receives a Christmas list from each individual person, but we still need to put the pieces together to figure out what to get everyone. You too can buy the perfect Christmas gift.
Set a reasonable budget.
You don’t want to be the cheap friend nor do you want to blow your life savings on gifts. I realize that Christmas shopping isn’t all about money but don’t let that be an excuse to get your brother a bar of soap. Set aside a reasonable amount of money and make sure that you try to stay within this budget. Santa Clause has an unlimited budget, you don’t.
You can easily find one of many great Christmas gift ideas without going broke.
When money was more of an issue, I would always give friends “inside joke” types of gifts. They would only cost maybe $15 to $20 dollars but everyone loved them a lot because of the sentiment. I won’t give any specific examples because… well it was college and they weren’t always very appropriate for public consumption.
Ah, Christmas shopping, the most dreaded of all holiday rituals (for me, anyway). Here’s the best advice I can give for making the holiday shopping a little less painless:
-Try to start a Secret Santa program within your family/group of friends/coworkers/any other group where giving may be required. Rather than buying a gift for all twelve of your cousins or for the fifteen people in your office, sway everyone into exchanging names so that you only need to buy one gift for each group. In one step, you’ve cut your shopping list down to a small fraction of what it would be otherwise.
-Agree to price limits on gifts. If you have a price limit for everyone on your list, you can more easily budget, and you’ll have more incentive to keep your spending under control.
-Make your own gifts. Probably much more of an option if you happen to be crafty (in a ‘I’m good at making things’ way, not a ‘I’m sneaky’ way), you could always make something as a gift for those on your list. (My fiancee went to a Christmas party for her ceramics club on Saturday, and fully half of the presents that were given out were hand-made; she got a cup from a girl she admired, and she just loves it.)
There you go, a few tips for making your Christmas shopping go a bit easier.
@Roger Man you are way better at this than me! I’m definitely going to copy/past this for a post next year.
Btw do price limits ever work? I always find that the person who sets the limit does it so that they can buy something more expensive and look like the best gift-giver of the group. Or maybe I’m just paranoid lol.