Tips on Saving Money for Christmas
No matter how hard people try, there never seems to be enough money to do everything they want to do for the Christmas holiday. Between buying gifts, making meals, buying decorations, shipping costs, travel expenses and all sorts of other expenses, Christmas can almost be a depressing time of year for some people simply because they cannot figure out how to save up enough money to cover costs.
Do not despair friends, there are manywaysto save up money during the year in order to have a merrier Christmas.
- Eat at home. Stop eating at restaurants and fast food places as often. Try cutting it down to only once or twice a month, and then watch the money you save start adding up. For example: if you spend $20 per dine-out, 3 times a week, that is $240 a month. If you stop going out to eat, you will save upwards of $2400 by the start of the Christmas shopping season!
- Drink coffee at home. You can buy your favorite coffee at the grocery store and brew it at home. By eliminating a $5 cup of coffee every morning on the way to work/school, you can save upwards of $110 a month ($5 X 22 days)! Over the course of 10-11 months, you will have an extra $1100-1200 by the time you want to start preparing for Christmas. That is not a small figure, people. Who knew you spent so much on that morning coffee? If you spend more than $5 per cup of coffee each day, then you will save even more.
- Stop smoking cigarettes. This one is not about the health risks (that is for a different time), this is solely a financial aspect of smoking. If you smoke one pack a day at $5 per pack, then you spend $150 a month. If you quit buying cigarettes and save that money, after 10-11 months you will have $1500 by Christmas time.
- Stop buying movies. This may sound rather silly, however if you are like many other people and have to stop by the bargain DVD bin every time you go shopping, then pay attention. Here goes: if you go to the store an average of once a week and end up buying a couple of $5 dollar DVDs each time, then you spend about $40 a month on movies that you can probably see for free any time online. If you stop buying these DVDs and save the money, after 10-11 months you will have upwards of $400 saved up for Christmas. This is an eye-opener because these figures are based on the bargain DVDs, if you buy new releases, then you spend even more and can potentially save a lot more for Christmas.
For those of you that do not buy coffee on the way to work, eat out or smoke, there are still little things you can cut down on in order to save money like walking to work/school on nice days (saves gas money), cut down on electricity use, recycling, and even cutting down on the little extras like cookies or candy. If you just sit and think for a little bit, it is highly likely that you can come up with a list of ways you can save some serious Christmas money.
These are just some of the easy ways you can save a lot of money for Christmas. By simply eliminating some of the frivolous purchases, you can end up having a very merry Christmas next year!
