Every year, weeks before the holiday season is over, I begin suffering from a hangover.
It’s not caused by excessive consumption of champagne, hot toddies around the fireplace or spiked punch at seasonal parties. Rather, weeks before the final bills roll in, I’m already wincing at the financial costs of Christmas.
It starts with the gifts for three adults and three children. Toss in the long-distance shipping costs (I’m about to discover just how much it will be to ship a 10-pound entry-level telescope to Canada …) and it’s enough to throw my discretionary spending budget out of whack for months. There’s gift wrap and ribbons, and a few smaller gifts for friends close at hand, and the costs of baking for other friends.
Before I know it, my spending for December has outstripped that in any three-month period of the year. And that is the case even though I’m not budgeting for any travel and I’m not hosting a big turkey dinner as I have done in some past years. In the case of the latter, I could easily rack up another $300 to $400, depending on the number of guests and the menu. Surely there must be a way to have a thrifty Christmas, without ending up feeling like the Grinch?
I can’t be alone in this. After all, Americans spent about $602bn on Christmas and other holiday merchandise last year. Gallup’s most recent poll of US adults found that respondents are prepared to spend an average of $720 on gifts this year, up a bit from last year’s level.
So, my New Year’s resolution is to embrace strategies that will boost the odds that Christmas will make me feel less financially frazzled by the time the last chorus of “Auld Lang Syne” dies away.
And I’ve even found a few that I may not be able to embrace myself, but that others might find useful.
The most important strategy is to plan ahead. This is the crucial bit of advice for pretty much every part of our financial lives, so why not the holidays as well? I remember laughing at my mother when she bought what I think was probably a hundredweight of giftwrap featuring Santa and his reindeer. That was in about 1982, I believe.
We may be sick of seeing the stuff, but she gets the last laugh: more than 30 years later, she still has some unused sheets, and because she stores it away with all the other unused or recycled gift-wrap in a plastic container for 51 weeks a year, it has neither faded nor crumbled. Inflation-adjusted, I suspect her cost basis is approximately five sheets of giftwrap per penny.
That may be extreme advance planning, but I can start drawing up lists of stuff that I know I’ll need this time next year, and start shopping for them on New Year’s Day. That could range from gift cards and wrap to those specially-made gift boxes of soap or even gloves, thick socks and similar seasonal stuff – like small items that won’t spoil, aren’t likely to go out of fashion, are always good for an extra gift and often are steeply discounted in January sales.
All year, set aside a few bucks each week dedicated to gifts. Depending on whether or not your bank charges fees, this could be something formal – a savings account for this purpose alone, from which you arrange for $10 a week to be transferred automatically from your checking account, and to which you can deposit the loose change we all accumulate at the end of every two or three weeks.
Alternatively, go the piggybank route – just make sure that there is some incentive for you to leave it there. If you leave it untouched, you could end up with $600 or $700. Sure, it’s sleight of hand, but I’m going to bet that it will feel less painful if all the bills don’t hit at once.
Something that I already try to do, with varying degrees of success, is to spread out my purchases over the course of the year. If I’m at craft fairs or traveling, I’ll look for interesting or unique items that might be inexpensive but distinctive. These make the best gifts.
When you’re giving to adult family members and friends, you have a lot more options. Give friends with young kids a book of vouchers good for free babysitting so they can escape for a date night. Put together an album of photos that you’ve taken over the years. Offer up an hour or two of your professional skills.
Make a batch of shortbread cookies; it’s probably cheaper than buying them, and it will be more fun. Add the recipe to the gift. (Mix ¾ cup soft butter with ¼ cup white sugar; work in 2 cups of flour. Roll it out; cut out the cookies with a cutter and bake for 20 minutes on an ungreased baking sheet at 350 degrees. Add multicolored sugar sprinkles in the last 5 or 10 minutes for some extra pizzazz.)
Many families who are getting together for the holidays already have discovered the joys of limiting gift-giving – and avoiding the knick-knack trap – by making every adult responsible for giving only a single gift to one of the other adults, with the name often chosen at random. No more need to rush around buying a half-dozen gifts; instead, you can concentrate your imagination and resources on picking one excellent gift, boosting the odds that everyone will end up with something they need and want. There’s no reason to limit this to families who are spending the holidays physically in the same place, either.
Recycling plays a role, too. Last year’s holiday cards make great gift cards (scratch another expense from the list) and some can be turned into cool tree decorations, too. Hang on to last year’s gift wrap. A lot of the ribbons can be reused, and even if the kids tear the paper apart, well, run it through the shredder and use it as filler for gift bags instead of pricey tissue paper.
You can even get together with friends and neighbors to recycle everything from Christmas tree decorations to gifts. Every household seems to have a stash of items that just never got opened or played with, or that have been lying around ignored all year. Just arrange a swap meet – and swear everyone to secrecy about the origins of the “new” gifts.
Holiday travelers are accustomed to higher fares for traveling on peak days. Now it seems that airlines are boosting extra fees for checked baggage, as well. So, if you are traveling over Christmas, try to book as far in advance as possible and aim for those days likely to be less traveled, like December 24th or Christmas Day itself. An early morning flight on the 25th may still get you to your destination in time for the festivities and save you a bundle.
Still, if there is one epiphany I have while formulating my thrifty holiday resolutions, it’s the need for balance. If getting caught up in the commercial frenzy that is Christmas is a bad idea, so, too, may be frugality for frugality’s sake. Watchwords for holiday spending should revolve around words like “thoughtful”, as much as “thrifty” or “careful”.
