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Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

4 Ways to Make Money for Christmas Presents this Year

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You may have started with the best intentions.  You didn’t want to go in debt to pay for Christmas presents, so this year you resolved it would be different.  This year you’d set aside money every month, so when November came, you’d be able to buy Christmas presents with cash on hand.

But then, you’re car broke down and the repair was more expensive than you thought, so you had to dip into your Christmas savings.

It happens.  Sometimes Christmas is only weeks away, and you don’t have money to pay for the presents.

Don’t worry.  There are still ways you can make money to buy presents for Christmas.

Consignment Shops

4 ways to make money for christmas this year
Make Money for Christmas Presents

Do your kids have clothes they’ve outgrown?  Do you or your spouse have clothes in the closet that you don’t wear anymore?  Why not take them to a consignment shop?  When the shop sells your clothes, they’ll give you a portion of the sales price.  Or, they may just offer you a flat fee upfront.  Either way, it’s money in your pocket for items you weren’t using anyway.

Pantry Challenge

Take a minute to go look in your freezer, refrigerator, and cupboard.  Chances are you have a lot of food there, probably more food than your family will eat in a week.  Why not have a pantry challenge?

There are several ways you can do this.  One idea is to just take a week off completely from grocery shopping and just eat up what you have in the house.  If you normally spend $150 a week for groceries, that’s $150 you now have for Christmas gifts.

Another idea is to do a pantry challenge for a month.  That doesn’t mean that you don’t buy any groceries for a month.  Instead, it means that if you normally spend $600 a month for groceries, try to mostly eat up what you have in the house.  Give yourself an allowance, say $200 for the month to buy perishable essentials like fruit, veggies, milk, etc.  At the end of the month, you’ve saved $400, which you can use for Christmas presents.

Credit Card Rewards

If your credit card offers cash back rewards, start saving that money now.  You won’t make a lot this way, but you can use that money to help supplement your Christmas fund.

Swagbucks

Swagbucks is an online search engine.  You use it just like other search engines, but you’re sometimes rewarded with Swagbucks.  Earn 2,200 Swagbucks, and you can get a $25 Amazon gift card.  With diligent effort, using Swagbucks every day and doing other activities as well as meeting your Swagbucks daily goal, you should be able to earn enough points for the $25 Amazon gift card in a month.

If you need money for holiday presents, a pantry challenge will give you the most reward for your effort.  However, the other three strategies will help you make additional money.  By combining all four strategies, you may have enough money to purchase your gifts in cash.  Take some effort now, and you won’t have to go in debt this holiday season.

What other strategies do you use to raise money for Christmas presents?

 

A Two-Step Approach to Preparing Kids for a Giving Holiday: Part Two

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The holiday season will soon be upon us.  If you find yourself stressed out every holiday season by financial and time demands, now is the time to decide that this year will be different.  Now is the time to decide on a giving holiday. Not only will you benefit, but your kids will as well.

Last time we talked about teaching your kids to give during the holidays, and this time we’ll talk about the second part of creating a giving approach to the holidays–teaching your child to have reasonable expectations for presents.

Years back, the holidays weren’t simply a time to get-get-get.  As a girl, I loved reading Little House on the Prairie, and I was always amazed by how delighted Laura was by the simple presents she received.  One year it was a tin cup and an orange.  Another year it was a corn cob doll.  Now, our kids receive oodles of presents and still demand more and are disappointed when the present opening is over.

Preparing kids for a giving holiday part 2How to Set Reasonable Expectations

If you’re the parent of older children and you previously gave them too many presents, you might sit down with them well before the holidays and let them know that they won’t be getting as much this year.  You can explain that you want to focus more on giving rather than receiving.  Plan on some resistance, but if you hold firm and continue to treat holidays this way, your kids will adapt.

If you’re children are younger, you can start the tradition of a simpler Christmas now.  Your kids may express some resentment as they age and see how much their peers are getting, but if it’s your family tradition, they will likely understand.

How Many Presents to Give

You and your significant other will need to decide what works best for your family.

Some families decide on a dollar limit per child and don’t go over that amount.  This is the way that my mom always handled Christmas for my brother and I, but she carried it a step further and made sure that we each got an equal number of gifts, too.

Other families say that Jesus received 3 gifts from the Wise Men, so they give their kids 3 gifts for Christmas.  Another take on this is to give your child 3 specific presents–something they want, something they need, and something they’ll wear.

In our family, we are blessed with grandparents and godparents that give our children many presents.  So, we buy our children very little for Christmas.  The one time we did buy our kids a lot of Christmas presents, they simply received too much.

Finally, some families take an extreme approach and don’t exchange presents at all.  Instead, they donate all the money they would have spent to charity.

If your children are already used to lavish holiday celebrations, scaling back may be difficult, but it’s not impossible.  First teaching children to be givers and then scaling back may help ease the transition for your child.

How do you determine how many presents to buy your child?  Do you worry about going overboard with gift giving?

Original photo credit: Theresa Thompson, on Flickr

A Two-Step Approach to Preparing Kids for a Giving Holiday: Part One

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While you may not want to think about it yet, the holidays are right around the corner.  The commercial machine is cranking into gear.  My local Costco already has rows upon rows of Christmas presents for kids and Christmas trees and wrapping paper. . .Soon, there will be endless Christmas ads on television for all the latest toys and electronics your kids will beg for.

Each year, Christmas seems to become more and more about spending money and over consuming.  If you’ve come to dread the holiday season and the gimmes that come with it, now is the time to plan a different type of holiday.  Now is the time to plan a giving holiday.  Make a plan now, before the holiday is in full swing.

You can take a two part approach to this.  Part one is to allow your children to have an opportunity to give.  Part two is to reduce your child’s expectations for the gifts they will receive at Christmas.

Preparing Kids for a Giving HolidayToday, we’ll be talking about part one.

Strategies to Allow Your Children to Give at Christmas

While it’s nice to get things for Christmas, giving is also nice.  Well before Christmas starts, sit down with your kids (if they are old enough) and discuss how you’d like to give of your time.  If they’re still young, say under 5, you can just start a new tradition of giving of yourselves during the holidays.  You’ll experience very little resistance from the little ones.

Put in time.  One way to give, especially if you’re on a tight budget, is to give of your time.  You could volunteer to work in a soup kitchen or to help assemble thanksgiving meal baskets at your local church.  You could go through your closets and donate excess clothes or other items.

Give your money.  If you have more money than time, you can give your money to help make the holidays better for another family.  You could pick a name from a giving tree that pops up in December.  (The post office often has one as does Whole Foods and other grocery stores.)  Take your child with you to buy a present for the child in need.

Or, you could donate to a charitable organization like World Vision.  Look through the catalog and either choose to sponsor a child or to make a one-time contribution.  Let your child know how the money will be used and help him to realize how much more he has than the family of the child who will be receiving the money.

Another organization, Samaritan’s Purse, has a giving project, Operation Christmas Child.  You fill a shoebox with simple toys and school materials for a needy child.  This is a nice project to do with your children, and you can give without spending a lot of money, if your money is tight.

If you want to get away from the consumer driven holiday season, know that you CAN have a different kind of holiday this year.  However, you’ll need to start now and take the first step–teaching your children the importance of giving at the holidays.  Next time we’ll talk about the next step, adjusting expectations.

What’s your favorite way to teach your kids the importance of giving during the holidays?

Original photo credit: Theresa Thompson, on Flickr