Countdown to Christmas – 20 Money Saving Days to Go

Make your own Christmas Decorations

Traditionally Christmas decorations were put up on Christmas Eve, and then 12 days of Christmas later, they were taken down again!

Now it’s more like 12 weeks of Christmas. I saw my first house lit up with ‘blinking’ lights in the windows on 23rd November! Who needs to be that early? Who needs to be first?

You can start now to make your decorations though, using any oddments of card, paper, glittery cards etc – just be creative with designs and material use – kids love this time of year, make it more special, more frugal, show them you don’t have to spend a fortune to have a great time, best of all its almost free, (you may need to buy some glue, glitter etc).

What ever you make, be proud of it – we are.

Countdown to Christmas – 21 Money Saving Days to Go

Nip off into the woods and gather a few stems of holly, with some nice juicy red berries still attached.

Using an old wire coat hanger, bent into a circle shape, wind the holly in and out around the wire circle until it’s all covered and leaves a nice hole in the centre. Wear gloves though if you want some skin left afterwards.

Great to hang it on the front door and it’ll last well into the New Year, I’ll be doing mine over the weekend, and the kids love it.

Countdown to Christmas – 22 Money Saving Days to Go

Back to the reuse / recycle box of stuff, bits and pieces that has been saved up throughout the year. This time to wrap some presents, ones that have been homemade or bought at the best possible prices.

Items of all shapes and sizes can be wrapped in any sized pieces and types of paper, (again all has been saved throughout the year), and a mismatch of paper can be made to look attractive so not to offend the recipient.

Gift tags can be cut out of old Christmas cards from last year, the kids love doing this every year.

Every year I pledge not to rush at the last minute to buy any old presents simply because I’ve run out of time and pay far in excess of what I wanted, and so far I’m on track not to do that.

Countdown to Christmas – 23 Money Saving Days to Go

Lighting up the Universe

Why waste money buying light up decorations, stick them on the ‘Outside’ of your house – go inside – and then waste even more money turning the power on so that you can’t see them!

People leave them blinking on and off for hours keeping the neighbours entertained for about 10 minutes and then annoyed for hours.

You cannot enjoy them yourself as they are outside and you are inside, unless of course you go outside and freeze to death just to have a look! Why bother?

What a total waste of money!

Countdown to Christmas – 24 Money Saving Days To Go

If you must send Christmas cards – make sure you send them early enough to use only second class stamps.

Making cards is a real treat and generally free, (best word in the dictionary), using stuff that’s been saved throughout the year (if you haven’t saved anything this year, make a new years resolution to do so). A great time can be had, especially involving the kids to keep them occupied.

If you need to buy cards rather than make them, look at the price first, you can get some really good ones for 20p – 30p, cheaper sometimes, and don’t forget to buy any for next year in the January sales (only if you won't make them for free!).

Spend Free Day – How did I get on?

On Thursday I succeeded in NOT spending any money – BUT the more I thought about it, the success was short lived.

Because I have to tell you that I actually failed in having a spend free day on Thursday after all – why?

The more I thought about it, the more I could see that it would be impossible not to spend any money on any given day. Yes you could literally not spend any cash – which I didn’t, but I did incur costs!

Costs were incurred for:

Gas – even I have the heating on now and then

Electricity – a light bulb (even an energy saving one) still costs money to use

Telephone – I had to make a couple of calls (even if your call package is inclusive, there is an enhanced rental price.

Petrol – I dropped some things off at the post office.

All these things need paying for, so I concluded that I can never have a totally cost free day, and having a spend free day doesn’t mean reducing costs necessarily; you will either buy something before or after the planned spend free day anyway. So you’re not actually saving any money!

So I suppose the only answer to saving money is back in a previous post:

Asking these questions:

Do I really need this product?

Will I use it?

Can I afford it?

Etc etc