The added pressure of making room for holiday gift-giving in a family’s budget can be very great. {That’s why homemade gifts are so great.} With mortgages, utilities, and average living expenses all vying for their place in your budgeting, you may have trouble finding room for luxuries like gift giving. Alternatively, you don’t want to be known among your family and friends as being the one who ruins the fun of gift giving for everyone. Participating in holiday gift exchanges is a fun party of any holiday celebration. Why should you miss out on the good times?
Before you resign yourself to giving up all of the fun that comes with gifting, consider utilizing one of several gift giving strategies in your holiday plans. By controlling the costs of your gifting, you can enjoy the best of the holidays without suffering the after-effects of overspending.
Draw Names
One of the biggest drains on a gift giving budget is often large groups. For instance, in our family, exchanging gifts with each of the adult brothers and sisters can become quite an ordeal. Why not suggest that you draw names and assign each member of the group the responsibility of shopping for one other member? Now, you’ll have the time to really select an appropriate gift for everyone on your shopping list. I’ll warrant that other people in your family will be relieved at the shortening of their shopping list, too.
Set A Spending Limit
If the idea of not getting a gift for each of your friends and family members appalls you, there is another way to keep your holiday budget in check. You can always opt to set a spending limit within the group. If everyone is on the same page regarding their gift giving budgets, no one will be caught spending an amount that can be conceived as too frugal or too extravagant. Now, the focus will be more on finding the best gift you can at a reasonable price.
Just Limit The Giving
Finally, one other way to keep the cost of your gift giving within the confines of your budget is to simply focus your gift giving upon specific parts of your family. Some families may opt to give gifts from one branch of the family to another. Giving family gifts allow you to shop for all of your relatives without spending too much. Another popular option is to only give gifts to the children in your family. After all, part of the magic of Christmas is watching children enjoy the revelry.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Buy early.
I’ve already got about 1/3 of my Christmas shopping done.
At work, definitely put a spending limit on any secret Santas or other gift giving things.
Definitely
Some go nuts and then make us frugal types feel cheap. Then, there’s no motivation to even participate.
I agree with Getting Out of Debt….a photo album is a great gift! And you can get really slick pre-made photo-books by uploading your photos to Winklfash. They run specials every couple weeks if you sign-up for their mailing list.
Creating a photo album or buying a beautiful photo collage and filling it up with pictures is also a great idea. Where can you get the photos? Umm, their facebook account!
Baked goods and plants are also great frugal gifts.
I like the idea of limiting the number of people you give to. I think doing something nice for half the number of people is better than giving subpar gifts. Picking names is one way, or picking a few names each could help. That way you won’t feel weird only getting one present and everyone will still feel special even if they’re not getting 20 gifts.
Great ideas. At our family Christmas party the adults bring a white elephant gift and the children exchange gifts like they do at school Christmas parties, no more than $5. Also, each family brings a appetizer dish. It is always a lot of fun to see what people come up with for the white elephant gifts and what delicious food they bring.