christmas (shopping) time is here

Well, Jeff and I decided to hire a monitrice for labor support, which means that we will be paying out the $600 I'd planned to have on hand for Christmas to her next week.

It's a good thing I've been keeping up with my freebies & deals off and on since I can sure use them now for Christmas.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I realized I didn't want to spend too much time on them anymore, since it just encouraged me to spend money on things I didn't need. So, I developed a system that is working for me -- it doesn't take much time at all & it doesn't keep me focused on things. My goal is to be able to provide the vast majority of my Christmas gifts for free & fill in the edges with under $200.

So why am I posting about this? Because I know many of you who check in here somewhat regularly have told me recently that you need to cut your Christmas spending this year. By posting what I do and what has come of it so far, I'm hoping you can see the benefits to spending a couple hours a week to keep your financial stress level down at Christmas time.

By now, you've probably noticed all the sites under "Deals & Steals" on the right side of this blog, right? Well, about twice a week, I open up my Firefox and I click each one of these links to open into a new tab. I do it all at the same time & then work my way through the tabs to see what's out there.

The first stop is the Absurdly Cool Freebies site where I almost always request something listed. Using this site, I am close to filling Sofie's stocking, which we do each year. This has probably saved around $25 on stocking supplies for her. I also stay stocked on plastic storage bags, maxis, random food samples, reusable tote bags, and other small things that come available. Just today, I requested a stainless steel water bottle, similar to the Klean Kanteen, but unbranded. Since that has been on my list to get for myself for awhile, I'm excited to see if I receive that one!

I have a special email account set up for freebies. Mine is nothing tricky: freebies@server.com. I have another email account set up for coupons & deals. It's also nothing tricky: couponsanddeals@server.com. If I think a company is going to send me coupons or offers, I use the latter. If I think I'll get nothing but spam from them, I use the freebies account.

I continue to click through the rest of my open tabs & open a new tab on anything that sounds good, so I can review it. The initial step is just to work through the sites & see what's being offered. After I check everything out, I click through the tabs I've opened, quickly scan the page & product, then fill out my info if I want the item.

Some sites ask you to confirm your email before they will ship your freebie. I've started using my iCal program quite a bit, so I have scheduled a morning in each week to scan my freebies account for anything that needs to be confirmed. This takes less than 5 minutes, but writing it in on my calendar ensures I won't forget to do it. I will also do a rebate on an item I either need or could use for Christmas, so I use my iCal to record rebate deadlines too. Sometimes companies send out coupons for a free purchase. I love these! $5 off a $5 purchase are very common & I can almost always find something useful for the $5. (I recently received one for KB-Toys and used it for modeling clay.) I will enter the expiration date on the coupon into my iCal so I don't forget to use it.

Entering things into iCal means that when I walk away from the computer, I can forget about this stuff. I just check iCal at the beginning of each week to get an idea what's coming up, or I set up alarms on very important tasks (and doctor's appointments, meetings, etc.).

So, after I've filled out any online request forms I'm interested in, I plug into my printer & print any coupons I've discovered or rebate forms I need. Then I'm done. It takes about 2 hours a week & actually does pay off, especially for gifts.

Now what would probably be most helpful is to list out some things that I've stockpiled already (for free or nearly free, of course) and things that I'm expecting before Christmas:

The Body Shop Body Butter & Lip Butter (my sister's recent birthday present)
Custom photo book from Shutterfly (Sassy's Christmas present)
8 x 10 photo from Walgreens (grandparents' Christmas)
Board game (cousin Christmas)
Slipper socks (Sassy Christmas)
Dog treats/bones/food samples/dog tag (Sofie Christmas stocking)
Reusable tote bag (Christmas gift bag for MIL)
Tea samples (Christmas gift basket)
Chocolate samples (Christmas gift basket)
Kohl's gift card $10 (Christmas gift undecided)
Target gift card $10 (Christmas gift undecided)
Walgreen's gift card $8 (Christmas gift undecided)
Free photo cards (birth announcements)
Christmas cards ($2.00/30 cards)
100 free photo prints (to put inside Christmas cards)
Crayons, colored pencils, markers, sketchbooks (Christmas gift undecided)
1-year subscription to ReadyMade crafting magazine (gift for myself!)

I've started a gift box downstairs to stash all the gifts. It's already come in handy for birthdays, like my sister's recent one.

What has probably helped the most for Christmas time was to reduce our list. This alone has made an enormous difference. We cut out all same-generation giving, so no more sisters, brothers or cousins. Aside from our own nuclear family, we only give gifts to our parents, grandparents & close children in the family, like nieces & nephews.

And although I know lots of people love to go out on "Black Friday" to get good deals, I absolutely hate it. The crowds & the traffic & the whole mess are rarely worth the savings for me. This year, though, I'm breaking my no-shopping on Black Friday tradition to go to Half-Price Books for several promotions they are running. They are offering a free $5 gift card to the first 100 customers, which might even get me up at 6:30. Why is this promotion more appealing to me than others? Well, there are certain children on our list that I enjoy buying for, but I'm always looking for options besides plastic Wal-Mart toys. Traditionally, I've bought these children catalog toys from Hearthsong or Magic Cabin. Since we can't afford that this year, Half Price books will probably offer some great options.

I can assure you that the one thing that will not happen this year is to put our gifts on our credit cards. We've done this in years past & we always regret it. So we'll be looking for the joy in other places this Christmas besides under the Christmas tree, because it looks like the space under the tree at our house will be pretty bare. I think that's a good thing.