It’s Christmastime, and our wallets are feeling it. But you know what? We don’t want the narrative to be that Christmas breaks the bank any longer.

We want to write a new narrative. One where we know how much we’ll spend on Christmas (and might even make more than we lose?!).

So today, we’re covering:

✅ 10 Ways to Save On Christmas
✅ A Realistic Take on Holiday Budgeting
✅ 3 Strats for Making $$$ at Christmastime

Bon appétit! 🧑‍🍳

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It’s easy to let our spending get away from us over the holidays. Here are some ways to keep it in check (and maybe even come out positive):

This is an awesome way to save some cash. Sites like Sams Club, Card Cash, and Costco have amazing gift card offers for discounted prices.

Here are some examples:

We hadn’t heard of it until this year, but the Four-Gift Rule is an interesting philosophy for gift giving. You give your kids no more than four things each:

Pretty interesting, honestly: a lot of the time a parent’s gifts to their children end up falling into a mix of those four categories anyway.

Choosing intentionally to follow the rule can help keep you on track for your spending goals, though, and also forces you to choose the gifts that you really want to give your children (while providing them with a solid amount of variety!).

Alright, this one’s fun. A lot of people buy real Christmas trees each year. They hate driving out in the cold and strapping the tree to the top of their car. Heck, even the people who buy fake ones don’t like having to transport them home.

That’s where you come in! If you have a car with a large trunk and collapsible seats (or just racks on top of your car), why not post on Facebook and Instagram that you’re doing a Christmas Tree delivery service this year? $40, and you’ll drive out, get the tree, and deliver it right to their doorstep. The best bang for your buck would be if you can knock out 2 or 3 orders at once.

There are plenty of other holiday-themed ideas: gift wrapping service (only if you’re actually good at it), gift shopping service, snow shoveling, dog walking in the cold… the opportunities are out there. Just make sure it’s actually worth your time (here’s how to calculate whether a side hustle is worth it).

Everyone’s heard of this, but not enough people actually do it. This is one of the best ways to cut Christmas costs not just for you but for all your extended family members.

A Secret Santa Exchange is where everyone in the family (or friend group) draws a name from a hat, and that person is the only person you buy a gift for that year. That’s it.

Imagine: instead of buying a gifts for your parents, your siblings, and maybe even your nephews and nieces, you could just buy one gift and be done. Even better, everyone else is buying just one gift too, so there’s nothing to feel guilty about!

Here’s a way to make some extra cash this holiday season. If you’ll be staying in town and know anyone who’s traveling but has pets, you can offer to pet sit for them.

A lot of the time this only involves driving by to check on their cat or dog a couple times a day, feeding them, and then leaving. But the earnings are often pretty rewarding.

You could easily make $150-200 pet sitting for one family for a week. If you were to find 3 or 4 people in need of pet sitting, though, you just made $600-800 in a week! That would cover most people’s entire Christmas budgets, as long as they…

We know, we know, it’s tough to stick to a budget at Christmas. But here’s our case for choosing a spending limit and not budging on the budget:

If you aren’t able to spend much on Christmas this year, don’t! You don’t have to feel ashamed or worried what others will think. They would feel worse if they found out you overspent because you were worried about their opinion of you.

And if you have expendable income to buy lots of Christmas gifts with, it’s still a smart idea to set a budget and stick to it as a practice of discipline in our opinion.

Just don’t do it! Only use cash you have in the bank this Christmas. No, you won’t be able to buy as many gifts, but that’s because you’ll be spending within your means.

We don’t even recommend using credit cards and paying them off to capitalize on the rewards; but if you insist, just make sure to immediately pay the card off so you don’t end up forgetting and carrying a balance.

Always fun. Instead of spending a million dollars at the movie theater on Christmas day, why not just host a cozy family + friends Christmas movie viewing? You can make hot chocolate, bake cookies, or even drink some wine (and it will STILL cost a fraction of the movie theater).

To be clear, we’re not talking about re-gifting the crock pot you’ve used 1,000 times that has stains and scratches and smells like beef. We’re talking about the nice things you got that you don’t want anymore but that someone else would want.

OR, you could consider selling your extra things to make more Christmas money.

Examples of things you could re-gift or re-sell:

This is the key to making all of it work. If you don’t track how much money you spent, made, or saved, you won’t actually know if you met your goals!

Apps like Every Dollar are a great way to keep up with your spending. You can also just use a good old Excel spreadsheet (or a piece of paper, for that matter). The method is up to you, the most important part is that you just do it.

Christmas is here, which is absolutely wild. You might be feeling the pressure, but there’s no need: you can make it through this holiday season without breaking the bank. In fact, with some of the above tips, you might even come out in the green!

Cheers to getting 1% better each week! 🥂

We’d love to hear about it, and your tips could help someone else do the same!
Just hit reply and share.

Thanks for reading,
—Your friends @ Future Funders 🍽️

P.S. Forward this to a friend who’s buying gifts for 20 people this Christmas. 😁