According to the America Research Group, US shoppers expected to spend an average of $929 on end-of-year holiday gift spending in 2016. That’s up significantly from the $882 they’d planned to spend in 2015. And an Orbitz.com study said the average price for holiday season airfare was $435, with hotel costs being $180 each night. That’s a lot of holiday spending!
If you struggle to save up enough money to pay for holiday expenses, or worse, you go into debt for them, this article is for you. Today I’m offering up a few of the things I’ve done over the years to save money and lower my monthly spending. If you put just a few of these suggestions into action, you can easily save up enough to pay for the November-to-January gauntlet of travel and spending.
BONUS: if you keep doing these things, you’ll save tons of money in the long term too. Keep it up in 2018 and beyond, and you’ll lower your spending rate while increasing your savings rate. That’s the way to win the personal finance game.
So here’s a list of things you can do to lower your monthly expenses for the next five months, plus how much you might be able to save. Do everything I recommend below and you are looking at a potential savings of more than $1,000 by the time you are unbuttoning your pants from eating too many Christmas cookies and eggnog. And an extra $1,000 will make paying off those credit card bills (promptly, in January) a whole lot easier, won’t it?
One Time Actions To Save Indefinitely
- Call your cable company and ask them for a better deal – I’m not even asking you to change your service here. Just call them up and tell them you think the price is too high, and ask if there are any better deals available. The last time I did this, I saved $42 per month just for asking! I didn’t threaten to leave or reduce what I was getting. I just asked. If they say no, look around for a deal elsewhere and tell them you are planning to switch. It’s amazing how fast a new price can appear.
- Switch to a family cell phone plan – until last year, I thought I had a pretty good cell phone plan. I was paying a bit over $70 per month for unlimited data, more minutes than I needed (with rollover), and iPhone service. Then, I finally convinced my family to go on a family plan. I’m now paying $35 for unlimited everything, still with an iPhone. That’s right – I got more, for half the price, simply by switching to a family plan. And your family plan isn’t limited to your immediate household. We have six people living at three different addresses on this plan, and the carrier knows about it and is fine with it. So if you aren’t on a family plan yet…what are you waiting for?
Hmmm…$42 + $35 = $78 saved each month, or $390 by the time you are baking those cookies. Good start.
Find Frugal Alternatives
- Rent a movie from Redbox instead of going to the movie theater – if you do this once each month, you’ll save somewhere between $5 and $12 per person. In my current location, Redbox movies cost $1.50. The movie theater costs $10.75, for a matinee. In case it doesn’t come across, I think that price is…well…ridiculous. I love going to movies, though, so I still pay for it occasionally. But only for movies that I think will really benefit from being seen on the big screen. Otherwise, I can wait. My TV is big enough.
- Borrow books from the library – let’s say you’ve already learned not to purchase full price books at a cost of $10-$20 each. Instead, you are using Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program at $10 per month. Well if you use the library instead, your monthly cost is $FREE. That’s my favorite price. Plus, the library has more than just books. You can also check out movies (beating the Redbox price!), download eBooks, check out CDs, and a lot of other things. Plus most libraries these days seem to be part of a network, so if your local library doesn’t have what you are looking for they can usually get it from another location. If you haven’t checked out your local library lately, get on it!
- Make your coffee at home – I know you know this. I know that you know that I know you know this. Look, giving up your daily latte isn’t going to get you to a life of champagne wishes and caviar dreams. But you can deck out your kitchen with some really good coffee and an assortment of flavored creamers and fancy brown sugar crystals for considerably less than buying a cinnamon-almond-milk-mocha-frappuccino every day. You can even buy some whipped cream at the store – I think the organic can from Whole Foods is like $4. If each homemade coffee comes out to $1, which would be kind of a lot for homemade, you’re still saving $3ish each time. At 20 weekdays per month, that’s $60 you could save each month.
Let’s call that another $10 + $10 + $60 = $80 each month. Plus the $78/month from before. $158 per month is $790. Almost enough for the presents!
Make Room For The Presents
- Have a garage sale – at my last garage sale, I made well over $1,000. I was selling quite a few larger items, so I don’t expect you to necessarily make this much. But I bet you could make a few hundred.
- Complete a no-spend challenge – have you heard of these? They are very popular in the personal finance world. The basic premise is, you make a commitment to not spend any money for a certain amount of time. Alternatively, you might do an open-ended challenge where you see how long you can go without spending money. Usually certain categories of mandatory spending are exempted, such as rent/mortgage, car payments, utilities, etc. But you would commit not to spend money on things like eating out, buying clothes, and buying fidget spinners. If you are interested in doing this, here is some info:
If you make $300 at the garage sale and save just $30 per month from the challenges, you are looking at another $450 in your pocket. Plus the $790 before….that’s $1240! And we haven’t even scratched the surface on ways to save (including less holiday spending in the first place!).
There are plenty more ways to lower expenses that I’ll talk about in future posts, but this is a good start. If you can do some or all of these things and set aside the savings until December, you will be in a much better position for holiday spending.
Leave a Reply