Clean, not green. Buy an inexpensive pair of cloth gardening gloves to cut down on cleaning costs. Use them to wipe dust and dirt from window blinds and shutters. Unlike expensive cleaning wipes, you can toss them in the laundry and use them again and again.
Become a fan to get a fan. A great inexpensive gift for a child who’s also a sports fan: a fan-mail package from his or her favorite sports team. Some packages are free, some cost up to $15 (depending on the team), and most contain a crowd-pleasing assortment of items such as bumper stickers, magnets, team photos, and more. Check out the website of your favorite team for ordering info.
Keep it in the family. Here’s a gift idea that will thrill all your relatives, as well as your wallet. Gather favorite recipes, copy them, and create a family cookbook for everyone in your family.
Give a gift certificate—from you. Give a friend or family member a gift of your time. Whether the recipient needs babysitting, cooking, snow shoveling, or gardening, use your talents and your time to give a welcome (and inexpensive) present.
Celebrate Christmas all year. Buy half-price gifts after Christmas, and give them at birthdays, anniversaries, and so on. You can also buy holiday gift sets at bargain prices, take them apart, and either give the gifts separately or repackage them for the appropriate occasion.
The gift of practicality. If you’re on a budget and don’t know what to give as a gift, choose an inexpensive practical gift that anyone would appreciate. Stamps, stationery, pens, cookies, coffee, and other simple, useful, and expendable gifts are particularly welcomed by those who don’t have a lot of space.
Don’t go empty-handed (or with an empty wallet). Holiday parties are great fun, but they can get expensive if you take a gift to each one. Save on hostess gifts by buying thoughtful presents in bulk: cocktail napkins, bars of scented soap, pretty candles, and so on.
The perfect photo-op. Give grandchildren inexpensively framed photos of their parents at the recipient’s current age—the goofier, the better. You’ll provide laughs and memories for everyone at a picture-perfect price.
Send sentiments for less. Forget about buying traditional greeting cards at the stationery store. Instead, buy packages of greeting cards (either all-occasion or blank) at your warehouse club, craft store, discount store, or mass-merchandiser. At $2.29 per individual card, you can save around $10 by buying a multi-card package. You’ll also save on gas by not running out to get a card every time you need one.
Make sentiments for nothing. Collect bits of scrap paper, fabric, clipped-out pictures from magazines—the sky’s the limit—and make your own greeting cards. The effort will not only be appreciated, but it might also be framed!
It’s like printing money. If you have a color printer, design and print your own gift cards, either with a simple word-processing program, or with a special paper and software package that offers you hundreds of designs and styles to make each card your own, available at stationery stores.
Bag it. Save money and the environment by bringing your own bags to the grocery store. More and more stores are giving you money back for every bag you reuse.
Weigh in on savings. Whenever you buy potatoes or onions or any other produce by the bag rather than by the pound, weigh several bags and buy the heaviest one. You may get a 101/2-pound bag for the price of the 10-pound bag.
When old is new again. Don’t fall for food described as “featured” in the aisles of your grocery store. The manager may just be promoting a commonly found food at its regular price.
Don’t fall for limits. Keep your money in your purse when you see signs like “Limit six per customer.” Stores know that customers will buy more of an item if they think there’s a shortage—and there generally isn’t.
Double up. Try to stretch out the time between grocery-shopping trips. Instead of going once a week, go once every two weeks. You’ll be forced to make your current food last longer and use up the food sitting patiently in the pantry and freezer.