holiday shopping

Countdown to a Frugal Holiday: Decorative Lights

November 30, 2009
By

So what are the chances that you began decorating your house for the holidays right after Thanksgiving? I know that many families go out and get a tree once the turkey is eaten and the dishes cleaned, and if you’re one of them, here’s some food for thought: one of the biggest energy hogs at the holidays is your holiday lights. In addition, these lights can pose a fire risk.

So let’s say you’re in the market for new holidays lights: here are four ideas that show how going green with your holiday lights can save you green:

  1. For starters if you want to dispose of your old, broken holiday lights, did you know that you can recycle them like you do your CFL light bulbs? Why not take them to Ace Hardware, which will accept traditional, incandescent holiday lights for recycling between November 23, 2009 and February 15, 2010. Participating stores will also offer discounts on the purchase of new energy-efficient LED light sets for consumers who bring in incandescent lights for recycling. Local Ace Hardware stores are partnering with Lights For Life, a non-profit organization that recycles the used lights and sells the copper components to raise money for children with cancer. Last year, Lights For Life collected nearly three tons of lights.
  2. If you do end up buying new holiday lights–with a discount at Ace or at another store–consider purchasing LED holiday lights. (A new GE Holiday Lighting Survey says that pre-lit LED lights are the lights of choice this holiday season.) According to the Alliance to Save Energy, LED (Light Emitting Diode) lights have a bunch of “green” benefits. They use 10 times less energy than incandescent mini-lights and 100 times less energy than standard bulbs, they last more than 50,000 hours, and you’ll likely not to have to replace or recycle them for a long time since they’re virtually indestructible. Here’s the part I like: if one bulb does burn out, the other bulbs will stay lit, so you can easily replace only the bad one.
  3. To further maximize holiday lighting savings, use timers to limit light displays to no more than six evening hours a day. Leaving lights on 24 hours a day will quadruple your energy costs–and create four times the pollution.
  4. On the safety side, be sure that you use indoor lights, well, indoors only and lights designed for outdoor use outside the house only. I know–it sounds like a no-brainer but many people make this mistake, and that’s how fires start. According to Underwriters Laboratories–the folks that put that “UL” on safe electrical items–indoor-use only light strings are marked with UL’s green holographic label. Indoor or outdoor-use light strings are marked with UL’s red holographic label.

I love the look of twinkle lights and wish we could have them around the house all year long. But after writing this post, at least I have a better idea on how not to blow my frugal budget by using the wrong lights or leaving them too long.

Share

Tipping in Today's Economy

November 24, 2009
By

Last year I chose not to give out tips to the individuals I normally would have tipped at the holidays–trash collector, postal service person, newspaper delivery dude–as a way to save money. I even avoided getting a haircut–or getting my kids’ hair cut–near the holidays so I wouldn’t have to add in a big tip to the 20% I already give.

Seems I wasn’t alone in being somewhat Scrooge about tipping last year. According to the Consumer Reports National Research Center, during the 2008 holidays, fewer people than in the previous year tipped their newspaper carrier, barber, mail carrier, hairdresser, manicurist, and garbage collector.

I know I thought the economy was bad last year, which is why I cut back–and felt guilty about it, for sure–but I’ve got to say that I feel like it’s worse now. In fact, another Consumer Reports survey conducted in October 2009 shows that the downward trend might continue: 26 percent of Americans who usually tip or give a gift to a service provider said they would spend less this holiday season than last. (Gee, what’s less than zero?) Just 6 percent said they planned to spend more.

Wondering what other people spend on tipping?

Fifty-eight percent of people tip their house cleaners (who can afford to keep a house cleaner?), averaging about $50 or an equivalent gift per tip.

The people tipping their manicurist (again, do your nails at home) give $10 whereas pet-care providers get $25, down from $30.

Most other people give tips of anywhere from $10 to $40 to their child’s teacher, the mail carrier, lawn-care crew  (not gonna comment….) and garbage collector. I know people who live in apartments have doormen and superintendents to worry about tipping, too.

If the tipping budget is tight this upcoming season, Consumer Reports experts recommend saying thanks with a card or a homemade gift. I think baked goods are always welcome though with the trash collector, I might just hand out $10 to each guy–I wouldn’t want to encourage them to eat any cookies if they can’t wash their hands first.

Share

Countdown to a Frugal Holiday: Layaway Plans

November 23, 2009
By

For the next month, I’m going to be writing a series of occasion frugal living posts that fall under the heading “Countdown to a Frugal Holiday.” In each post I’ll highlight one way that you can save money this holiday season. I figured in today’s economy, we can all use some new ideas to stretch your dollar further–or reminders about tried-and-true methods for getting the most bang for your holiday buck.

This year it seems like a lot of consumers are going to be keeping their credit cards in their wallets and paying with cash instead–at least that’s what the National Retail Federation has found in its recent surveys. In fact, a whopping 71% of us plan to use cash or debit cards to pay for holiday gifts. That’s great because it means folks will be shopping within their means and they won’t be entering into 2010 heavy in debt.

An old-fashioned method of shopping within your means that has come back into fashion is the layaway plan. (I wrote a blog post last year about what to expect when using layaway.) A handful of stores have reintroduced this concept, where you put money down on something you want to buy–and then you pay in small increments until you’ve paid the entire price for the item and then you can take it home. In today’s “I want it now” society, this concept seems downright archaic, but it’s an excellent way to keep yourself on budget.

I started seeing commercials for K-Mart’s layaway program a few weeks ago. In addition to K-Mart, you can expect to find layaway programs at the following stores, too:

Is layaway something you’re considering to keep yourself on budget this year?

Share

Frugal Holiday Traditions

November 17, 2009
By

Sears just released a new survey about family traditions at the holidays. Its sentiment was really sweet, which is why I’m highlighting some of its findings in this blog posting:

  • During challenging economic times, 90 percent of Americans become more focused on celebrating family traditions as well as creating new ones
  • 18 percent of Americans plan to develop new traditions, such as using a grab bag or secret Santa approach to gift giving (I would love it if my family embraced this idea.)
  • 25 percent are buying an artificial tree rather than a real one. (We made this decision two years ago when we came to realize how much money a live tree costs. Plus, if your town doesn’t have a Christmas tree recycling program–and you have no place to mulch the tree–it just ends up in a landfill.)
  • 43 percent are asking their guests to bring food to the festivities so costs are shared (love the potluck approach)
  • 63 percent are setting spending limits on gift giving.

What about you? What kind of traditions are you creating or keeping this holiday season?

Share

4 Ways the Recession Will Affect Holiday Shopping

October 20, 2009
By

Holiday spending is expected to be down this year, like it was last year, according to the National Retail Federation. That’s no surprise to me from my own unscientific survey of holiday shopping healthiness.

Usually by this time of the year, I have been booked for a holiday shopping media tour. In years past I’ve been the holiday spokesperson for major organizations such as Bank of America, Game Crazy and the Boxed Chocolates Manufacturer’s Association. This year, I’ve had a few offers but at bargain-basement prices. Um, that may work in the retail sector but not in my business.

But speaking of the retail sector, website PriceGrabber.com just came out with its Holiday Forecast Consumer Behavior Report. Survey data reveals that the state of the economy is shaping new trends in holiday shopping. And from the retailer’s perspective, things don’t look so great. Here are the four ways the recession will likely affect holiday shopping this year:

1. Consumers are cutting back.
Fifty-three percent of shoppers plan to spend less this holiday season than they did last year. I know that last year our big holiday shopping splurge was a Wii for the kids; I doubt we’ll be as extravagant this year!

2. Shopping starts earlier to ease the impact of holiday spending.
Twenty-two percent of Americas plan to start their holiday shopping in October. In past years, Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) has been the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season. This year, consumers are planning to start their holiday shopping long before Black Friday. Sounds about right to me–if I see a holiday bargain now for someone on my list, I’m likely to buy it now, too.

3.Gift lists are being trimmed down to manage budgets.
Last year I held off tipping the mailman, UPS guy and trash service dudes to keep my budget in line, and I felt guilty about that all year. So this year I’ll be adding them back onto my “to give” list. But a few of my “kid” relatives are all grown up, and it might be time to slash them from the gift list to save money. I won’t be alone in trimming my list;  57 percent are not purchasing gifts for acquaintances.

4. Consumers are using more money-saving techniques.
This year, in order to meet holiday spending budgets, more consumers are utilizing money-saving techniques for their holiday shopping. In fact, half of all consumers (50%) are planning to shop at discount or outlet stores this year, while only 43 percent did so last year. Hey, if I can find my gifts at the Marshall’s, TJ Maxx and Goodwill stores of the world, I’m good with that.

What about you? How are you planning to change your holiday shopping plans this year–if at all–to save money?

Share

Considering a Christmas Club This Year?

October 1, 2009
By

kmart_sears_christmas_club_cardI got my first real job at age 15 and opened my own real savings account that very same year. One of my co-workers at the card store where I worked told me about the Christmas Club that she joined at the bank. She would deposit a certain amount of money into this special savings account every time she got paid, and then by the time Christmas rolled around, she had enough money saved up to buy her gifts.

I never got around to opening my own Christmas Club account, but I was intrigued recently when I heard that Sears and Kmart had reintroduced the concept of the Christmas Club. Like the bank-based Christmas Club of years ago, these retailers allow you to put money aside for future purchases to be made for the holidays. Here are two things to keep in mind if you’re interested in this Christmas Club concept:

  1. If you active your card between now and October 31, Christmas Club card users will earn a three percent reward – up to a maximum of $100 – based upon the value they have on their Christmas Club cards on November 14.
  2. And speaking of November 14th, that is the last day you can add funds to your Christmas Card account. Why that date? So it gives you plenty of time to cash in and go shopping at Sears or Kmart!

Best of all there are no fees associated with the Christmas Club program, and the amount on your card never expires.

Here’s why a Christmas Card–or a self-created Christmas Club account through your bank–makes sense this year. According to a recent survey (from Sears and Kmart), the troubled economy has Americans worrying about their finances more than ever before.  Nearly six in ten (58%) are more concerned about how they are going to pay for their holiday shopping this year than they were last year.

Here are some other highlights from that survey:

  • More than half of Americans (56%) say they plan to save money for the winter holidays this year.
  • Nearly one-third (32%) of these folks already started stashing away some funds
  • Another 38 percent plan to start saving cash in August and September (hope they made that goal).
  • Nearly three-quarters (72%) plan to do things differently this holiday season, whether it’s spending less on gifts (57%), shopping at more affordable stores (53%), or planning and setting a shopping budget ahead of time (49%).
  • 33% of those who plan to do things differently this year say they plan to use their credit cards less this holiday season

Despite these dire economic times, one priority has not changed: Americans’ generous desire to give gifts. Seventy percent admit they’d like to give gifts to more people, but think they might not be able to afford it.

Does a Christmas Club–or Chanukah Club or Kwanzaa Club–make sense for you this year? If so, tell us why and how.

Share

Holiday Shopping on a Shoestring

September 22, 2008
By

Attention K-Mart Shoppers–well, and all other shoppers. It seems like it’s going to be a shoestring shopping season for the 2008 holidays. At least that’s what some experts are predicting, saying that the small increase in holiday spending in 2008 will be the weakest since 1991. And guess what? Technically, our country was in a recession in 1991.

I know that many people are afraid to utter the “R” word, for fear of a market collapse or utter financial chaos–wait, that’s already almost occurred in the past two weeks–but for frugal shoppers like us, this could actually be good news.

For one thing, if retailers sense that a soft holiday-shopping season is about to occur, you’ll start seeing discounts sooner rather than later. My guess is that, like last year, you’ll have holiday items out long before Halloween, to entice us to shop.

If you’re on a budget, spreading out your shopping over a longer period of time may be the smartest thing you could do–especially if you’ve seen your retirement and savings portfolios get cut in half in recent days, or if you were hoping extended credit might get you through the holidays.

With that in mind, here are some of my tips for getting through this holiday-shopping season on a shoestring:

* Think rebates this holiday season.
I know that most people find rebates to be a total pain in the butt, but my guess is that in order to lure more shoppers into stores, you’re going to see more rebates emerging this fall. And while you usually have to jump through hoops to get a rebate, take the time and jump those hoops. I mean four out of 10 of us don’t bother filing for rebates, meaning we never collect rebate money that could have been ours.

Many retailers are actually making it easier for customers to complete rebates by moving the operations online. Case in point: when we recently purchased my new MacBook, we took advantage of Apple’s promotion that we could get a “free” iPod Nano with the purchase of our laptop. It was “free” because we could file online for a $199 rebate, the cost of the Nano. We did that, and the check arrived about five days later–giving us a “free” Nano that we can use as someone’s Christmas present this year. Similarly, I purchased a cross-cut shredder at Staples that came with a rebate. Through the Staples Easy Rebates site, I am now eligible to receive a $30 VISA gift card, which I plan to use when doing holiday shopping.

* Use unused gift cards whenever possible.
A year ago I explained how we had created a gift-card wallet. This “wallet” is a central place where we keep not only all the gift cards that we’ve received as gifts but also any affinity cards we have for stores or punch cards from various eateries, where when you buy 10 water ice, you get the 11th free–stuff like that. If you still have gift cards lying around from the last holiday season, try to use them first when buying gifts this holiday season. This approach makes sense for two reasons. First, you will avoid spending your own cash on gifts. And second, some gift cards start to lose their value or start incurring a “maintenance” fee if they aren’t used during a certain period of time or if they sit idle for a year or more. So in order to avoid having either penalty occur–leaving you with less money to spend on your gift card–cash those gift cards in.

* Cash in credits, cash back and other “points” to pay for shopping excursions.
These days just about everyone I know has a credit card that does more than let that person charge purchases–by using the credit card, that person is earning credits for future purchases, points for vacations or cash back, in one form or another (check or gift card). We have one such credit card that let’s us earn gift cards that we can use for grocery shopping but we can also cash in our points for gifts cards to retailers like Lowe’s and The Gap. Credit cards like Discover send you cash back based on your spending, and other credit card companies have similar programs. If you’ve got one of these cards, when was the last time you actually cashed in your chips, as it were, and took advantage of the money you’d earned? If it’s been awhile, I would recommend taking some time now to figure out what kind of extra money you might be able to get for holiday shopping in the coming months.

* Buy “new” items in used environments.
I’ll bet that this year, more people will be doing their holiday shopping in off-beat places where they kind find nearly new or gently used items for the special people on their list. I’m thinking stores like Plato’s Closet and Children’s Orchard, both of which stock gently used clothing for kids and teens, and even Goodwill, which now has an online component to it called Shop Goodwill. I mean, recently my tween daughter found a brand-new Aeropostale skort at Goodwill–the tags were still on it–for $5. It would have sold for at least three times that in the store.

If you have book lovers you need to buy for, keep in mind that many libraries have book sales with donated hardcovers and paperbacks, many of which may never have even had their bindings cracked. So you can get books at a can’t-believe-it price, and you’ll support a good cause–your local library.

* Go couch diving for loose change.
We have a terrible habit in this house of leaving money in our pockets. I think it’s because so many cashiers these days hand me back my change with the coins sitting on top of the bills. (When did it become acceptable to do that?) Instead of handing me the coins and then the bills, I have no time to put the change away in my wallet, and I usually just shove it in my pocket. Which then leads to our laundry room (namely the dryer) becoming a treasure trove of “found money”. Or we have a terrible habit of remembering to empty our pockets at night, onto the top of a dresser, but then we sweep all of the loose change into a random drawer. That means that at any given time, we have a lot of loose money floating around our house. That’s why, every few months, I try to spend an hour or so hunting down the change and then counting it up. Since it’s been awhile since I last counted our change, I decided to do so this past weekend. And in about 40 minutes I was able to come up with $86.44. I rolled most of it so I could bring it to the bank for bills. Any chance you’ve got loose change hanging around the house that you can collect, count and then use for your holiday shopping? Why not give it a go?

Do you have other frugal holiday shopping tips up your sleeve? If so, I’d love to hear them. Post a comment to share with the “class.”

Share

Christmas in July

June 26, 2008
By

My mother in law has this annual obsession of shopping for the holidays soon after we’ve just put away our winter clothes. Usually by August she’s done with her Christmas shopping, and come back to school, well, she’s working on her Christmas cards. Naturally, this drives all of us in the family a little nuts, especially when she buys gifts for my daughters based on what they liked last spring. As you know with preteens, what was hot in spring could be so “not” come fall. Well, at least she’s good about including gift receipts.

This year, though, I’m thinking I might just become more like my mother in law and start my holiday shopping super early. That’s because if the economy continues to tank, I’d like to get my shopping done while I can still afford it. I’m having a great 2008 as far as my freelance business goes, but who knows what the second half (which starts July 1st) will bring?

Turns out I’m not alone in wondering about the second half of the year. Some retailers are already worried about holidays sales, and not because they’re running Christmas in July specials. They’re afraid that with rising gas prices and everything else going up in price, that by November, everyone’s wallets will be all tapped out.

I guess there’s another way of looking at this dire forecast–by November, maybe there will be amazing sales all over the place to entice shoppers back into the stores. If so, then perhaps I shouldn’t start my shopping so early and take a wait-and-see approach to these holiday bargains. Then again, I’m not a big gambler. I think from here on in, if I see a good bargain on something I think someone on my holiday list would like, I’m getting it.

Hey, anyone know where I can get a good deal on a Wii Fit?

Share