‘Tis the season to be…
I know. Christmastime is over and there’s probably nary a carol left stuck in your head. Until now.
You’re welcome.
While there’s a good chance this next season is all about being grumbly over the gray weather as we all wait for spring, I’m actually using it as time to get ready for next Christmas. It probably seems way too early to be thinking a year ahead or getting my fa la la on.
But Christmas can be a huge expense, and this past year is the first time we paid for it entirely ahead of time….without dipping into savings or any sinking funds.
There’s a secret, and that secret isn’t that we stopped giving gifts.
We still gave gifts. Hundreds of dollars worth of a gifts, actually. These gifts were in-season, on-trend (I see you with that sassy black and white polka dot umbrella that you wanted, Mom!), and based on wish lists. We purchased them from popular stores, and we even included gift receipts.
The reason that Christmas went so well for our budget was because I spent last year thinking ahead, but I failed to blog about it until it was too late for anyone else to replicate. So now that I’m gearing up for another year of a financially stress-free Christmas, I thought I’d share my plans.
Credit Card Rewards for Christmas
I play around with travel hacking a bit, but our schedule isn’t flexible enough to make it really worthwhile. That’s why I’m more than happy to stick with our Discover It card and a Bank of America card. I dedicate all of the cash back rewards to our Christmas fund, and I pay attention to the rotating 5% categories. I don’t always max out the full cash back, but I am so pumped that grocery stores are 5% cash back this quarter with Discover. It’s one of my very favorite rewards!
RELATED POST: Upping Our Grocery Bill – Manufactured Spending with Discover Cards
If there’s nothing helpful or appealing with the Discover category, then I switch over to Bank of America to snag an extra percent or two cashback on groceries and gas. It doesn’t make me rich, but it doesn’t have to. Last Christmas, I ended up with about $400. That went a long way!
Shopping Extensions and Apps
Online Shopping Rebate Extensions – It actually shocks me that there are people in the world who shop online without using online shopping rebate portals. While how aggressively Ebates advertises, I’m surprised that more people don’t use it. I do, and I finally got around to downloading the extension so that I remember to use it more often. The best discovery for me was that Book Outlet, my new source for mega-cheap classroom library books, is an Ebates partner.
When stores that I normally use aren’t on Ebates, I’ll check out Cashbackaholic to see if BeFrugal or Mr. Rebates partner with them. But if it takes more than a few clicks, I’m not that interested. We’re committed to making this Christmas stash simple; not creating a part-time job out of it. Anything that we earn from Ebates or other online shopping rebates goes straight to our Christmas fund. Thanks mostly to Ebates, we tossed in about $75 this past year.
Mobile Apps – I pretty much have them all: Ibotta, Checkout 51, Fetch, you name it. If I can scan my receipt and earn dollars or gift cards, I probably do. I also have Shopkick and Receipt Hog on my phone.
RELATED POST: Using Ibotta for Some Extra Holiday Jingle
The biggest gold mine for me this past Christmas was Ibotta. We tend to gift a lot of consumables, and for our family and friends that largely translates to alcohol. (Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas, indeed!). Ibotta is really generous with their alcohol rebates. They’re usually high amounts (think $3-$5+) and they can be redeemed from any grocery store or liquor store. When it was all said and done, we had just under $200 from mobile apps to spend on Christmas.
Final Thoughts on a Financially Stress-Free Christmas
While this strategy doesn’t remove all the stress from Christmas, it does cut back on a lot of it. The best part is that if we build up a big enough stash, we can cover all of our gifts and any extra Christmastime expenses. A piping hot chai latte already tastes like Christmas in a cup; knowing that it didn’t cost anything extra makes enjoy in the middle of the holiday hustle that much better.
So Tell Me…Do you have a sinking fund for the holidays? Do you use any of these tricks? Are you planning ahead this year some other way?
Planning ahead can really do so much! Brace yourself for shock… I have never used a rebate website But, we never buy anything anywhere online except Amazon. And we use Amazon Smiles to donate so… ebates/ibotta wouldn’t do anything for us. It’s an amazing way to use those funds though! If only the whole country had your foresight and determination Penny.
I love that you use Smile 😀 That’s so kind, and I bet you make a real impact if you only shop with them!
I love these ideas, and I think I got the idea for 2019 (based on one of your old posts), to save all of our credit card rewards for this coming Christmas. Because Mr. ThreeYear puts all of his travel on our Barclay, we end up getting over $1000 per year in credit card rewards. So my goal is to save those up to be our Christmas fund money this year. Christmas is always stressful because I spend so much, so I’m hoping with this plan it’ll be way better, and keep me more in budget, this year!
Yes. And then we can stress about other things! BUT NOT MONEY! 😉 Ha!
I love that you wrote this in January! So much good advice isn’t implementable in late November when people start talking about this. I have a google calendar reminder to talk to my parents about reducing the amount of Christmas gift giving this February (and yes, pretty much all the blog posts I read in November agreed about this being the correct timeline).
To answer your question, yes to Discover points, and Amazon points (we have the Amazon card, we also occasionally earn points by agreeing to have something shipped later). For us, the cost is mostly in travel, but we did manage to shave $300 off it this year, which was pretty cool.
I have also never used a rebate website… but I only buy things online on Amazon as well. I have used mail in rebates from liquor stores and never actually got a rebate back, so I stopped trying.
That’s so frustrating that you haven’t gotten the rebates back. UGH. In my waste of time couponing days, I learned a lot about rebates (the mail-in kind!). They’re basically designed for us to fail. The smallest detail that gets missed, and they can just toss them. So frustrating!
Love these ideas!
I’m a simple soul. I just put $50/pay into savings and it adds up over the year. At the end of the year – voila! $1,300.
Christmas is sorted.
🙂
Sinking funds are so great! We do this for our cars. We hope to not come anywhere close to the amount we have saved, but it makes trips to the mechanics a lot less stressful!
Yaaaas!!! Credit card cashback all the way!
We 100% funded Christmas with cashback rewards. We’ve done this for the past two years and it’s AWESOME. It’s like saving for Christmas all year round.
It took us a while to be able to do this, of course. After paying off our debt, it was much easier to afford nice gifts for the family. If you have the luxury of using a credit card and paying it off every month, it’s an amazing way to save for the holidays.
I was actually contemplating trying to scoop up a checking account bonus and doing something similar. That’s the big advantage of a regular 9-5 that has auto deposits!
Hey I really the cash back idea and using it for your Christmas gift. I have the Costco Citi card and I receive my cash back rewards check next month. I might want to look into saving it for Christmas gifts. Never too early to plan!
It made a big difference for us this year to not really worry about the money at all this past Christmas. It’s my two prong plan of attack — we’re trying to cut down gift exchanges (the ones done out of obligation!) and fund it this way!
Great tips! You really think ahead and I love it.
Thanks, Deb! Only because I got tired of playing catch up. It was always such a bad feeling come January when the bills rolled in. Even if I knew they could be paid, it just never felt like a great start to the year!
I love the idea of using cashback rewards for Christmas and thinking ahead of time. Thank you for the idea! We are friends with a lot of people all about travel rewards, but with the little one we don’t plan on traveling anytime soon. I have Discover It and Bank of America credit cards too. You must be pretty on top of it to pay attention to the cashback categories with Discover. I am on top of a lot of things, but that always slips under the radar. I think that’s why we go to the Citi card for the consistency of 2% cashback.
Also, I am one of the people blowing your mind about my lack of knowledge regarding Ebates and Shopping Apps. You’ve given me a task to investigate! I’ve heard about Ebates from podcasts, but I thought there’d be a learning curve so I was procrastinating… No excuses now!
Great tips! I use our Costco cashback each year towards Christmas gifts. Mr. Tre does our grocery shopping now and loves Costco, so that usually means a good check from Costco just in time for Christmas 🙂