Frugal Christmas Ideas

by Stuart

Times are hard! In this economy, we need some plans to make our holidays inexpensive without sacrificing any of the fun. Here are some frugal Christmas ideas.

Once during an economically challenging Christmas season, my wife sold some homemade ornaments for extra cash. Local businesses like gas stations and an appliance parts store allowed her to place a small rack on their checkout counters. Don’t be afraid to ask! She bought inexpensive large packs of blue Christmas balls at Big Lots, and painted the South Carolina (our home state) flag emblem on them in white. She sold them for $5 each. Other ideas would be to paint your local college or pro team’s emblems on balls of the appropriate background color.

If you have very young children at home, go for quantity, not quality. Most young kids have limited fascination with their toys anyway, so impress them with 20 small toys from Dollar Tree, or Big Lots, rather than one toy from a normal retail outlet.

Next, don’t be afraid of used things! For other family members, pawn shops and Craig’s list can be your friend. Find gently used items instead of paying full price. One of the things that always worked well for my kids was to buy tons of used DVDs at the pawn shop. I would find out what movies they were interested in at the time, and buy stacks of them. Most of these went for $5 or less. The same goes for video games.

Here's some other great money saving great frugal Christmas ideas!


Have a Merry Frugal Christmas!