Tips To Save Money on Christmas Shopping

It's the best time of year and the most expensive time of year. We are all excited about the Christmas season, but we still have to worry about our budgets and how much we can spend on all those gifts. Christmas shopping can be joyous and stressful, but with a few money-saving ideas you can have a great shopping experience with out breaking the bank.

150 Surefire Ways to Save Money this Christmas

If you have no decorations at all, buy them close to Christmas when they go on sale.
Buy decorations after Christmas at 75% below the original price and store them for next year.
Save your kid’s (or grandkid’s) holiday crafts and artwork from school every year. After a few years you will have a home full of free and meaningful ornaments and decorations. The kids will feel great having their work displayed and appreciated, while you save big on Christmas decorations.
Instead of waiting for a few years for the artwork to pile up, round up the kids and get together to make your own ornaments and decorations a few weeks before Christmas. This is also a great opportunity to tell them family stories or share your view of what the Christmas spirit really is all about.
A cheap way to decorate: pop some popcorn and string it to decorate your tree and house. Add cranberries for some color if you like.
Decorate with free things you can find in Mother Nature: use pinecones and acorns. This also makes for more environmentally friendly decorating than the (expensive) plastic pinecones you can buy. If you live in the city, how about spending a family day out in a forest sometime before Christmas and collect a few pinecones to decorate your home with? Your travel costs should be far less than you would spend on decorating otherwise. Less environmentally friendly, but you can also spray paint your pinecones gold and silver for an extra festive touch.
After Christmas, buy an artificial tree that will last you for years. They will go on clearance as soon as you are done unwrapping presents.
There are endless decorations you can make yourself with items you already have in your home. Browse the internet for nice Christmas craft ideas and you’ll be surprised. There really is no need to spend a penny on decorations this Christmas. Here is an example: make a (mini) Christmas tree out of a paperback.
Make decorations out of items you would normally throw away.
Use empty boxes and cans, wrapped in Christmas themed paper, as decoration. Stack them in a corner or on a table for a festive look. You can use cereal boxes, or boxes you pick up from the grocery store.
Use fiber optic decorations: fiber optic trees are very energy efficient. Most of them use only one light bulb in the base of the unit to light the entire decoration.
Limit the time your Christmas lights are on for. If you wait to turn them on until it is dark, and turn them off before going to bed, you are using a lot less energy.
Put all your electricity powered decorations on a timer to limit the ‘on time’ to a maximum of six hours a day.
Turn off the lights in the living room when the tree is lit.
Decorate with candles. Going back to old times and using candles can cut down your December energy bill.
Drop a tea light candle in a cleaned out glass mayonnaise or jam jar. Tie a red or gold ribbon around the neck and you have a nice Christmas decoration. You can go further by nestling the candle in sand, nuts, or (Christmas) candy.
For outdoor light strands, use the ones that are wired in parallel. When one bulb blows out, the rest still works and you don’t need to replace the entire string.
Use smaller light bulbs that have lower wattage to save on energy.