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Considering the current state of the economy we have started to think very seriously about the best way to save money on Holiday shopping this Holiday season.  Here are five ways to help your family keep on budget for gifts this year.  We’d love to hear your ideas too!

Use Your Points

With the airlines cutting back on miles seat availability and increasing the number of black-out dates most of us find it almost impossible to use our credit card points for flights these days.  Why not use them for your Holiday shopping?  Most miles/points clubs offer gift cards to major department stores in exchange for points - some even offer actual products.  You can use the cards to go Holiday shopping or just give the cards as gifts.  My point program also offers magazine subscriptions and movie tickets - both of which make great gifts.

Pollyanna

Well we call it a Pollyanna but you may have another name for it.  I’m one of four children.  Three of us have spouses, not to mention 6 children between us.  Holiday shopping can get crazy.  When we reached adulthood we made a Holiday deal.  We would all put our names in a hat and pick one name each.  The rules are that you only buy for the person you select and the gift must be $35 or less.  Of course this means all the girls are crossing our fingers that we get picked by my brother who manages a jewelry store :-).

Let Your Creativity Blossom

Don’t deny that your favorite gifts of all time are those given to you by your children when they were young.  I know you have all those hand-prints and glitter laden handmade cards stashed away for safe-keeping in a closet somewhere.  These are our favorite gifts because of the obvious love and sincerity that went in to making them.  Why not use your creativity to create gifts for family that they will want to keep forever?  Are you a writer?  Write a poem for your Mom or Dad and use beautiful calligraphy and a photo frame from Target to make it in to a keeper.  Have a fun photo session with the kids and Photoshop some fun and funky photos for relatives.  Create a special scrapbook for a loved one with the commitment to complete a page a month for the following year.  Who needs another “thing’ after all - gifts of love like these will be remembered.

Give the Gift of Time

In today’s busy world the most precious commodity of all is time.  A gift of your time will be appreciated by anyone on your list.  How about presenting a “personal chef” coupon to your friend who is a working Mom?  You will come over once a month to cook a meal for her family.  How about a gift of one-on-one time per child for your horde of nieces and nephews?  You could present your Aunt with a “gardening company” coupon.  Do you have special skills?  How about giving computer lessons to your Grandma, or sewing lessons to your sister.  Even better - declare this Holiday a “time gift” only Holiday and challenge your whole family to create special gifts of time.

Give on a Deferred Payment Plan

Do you want to give a more traditional gift of flowers or books?  Many companies out there offer a “Book of the Month”, “Flower of the Month”, “Fruit of the Month”, “Wine of the Month”, etc…  With most of these types of gifts you can choose to pay on a monthly basis rather than all at once.  We have our own “Gift of the Month” program with our Collector’s Club.  You could send an outfit a month to your favorite doll lover and only pay on shipment.  Give a year-long gift or only 3 months it’s up to you.

We spend a lot of time talking to Emily about finances and the importance of living within your means and given the current state of the economy it doesn’t hurt to think seriously about frugality.  We discovered an article on Extreme Ways to Save.  Hmmm… now let’s not go crazy.  Keeping your eye on the pennies and ignoring the big picture is often a big mistake.  But let’s see what they say:

Turn your car off — while it’s moving

Ummm….no.  Not only do I think this is extremely dangerous but I am about as coordinated as a tap-dancing giraffe.  I can only see smoke, fire, broken engines.

Reuse plastic sandwich bags

Although I actually laughed out loud at my frugal husband when I caught him doing this, I will admit that it is definitely environmentally friendly.  It’s worth the hassle for the environment.  Worth the hassle for $30 a year?  What do you think?

Stop saving money

I think the article needs to be MUCH clearer on this one.  If you read carefully there is a tiny mention of not saving so you can avoid credit cards… OK - I agree with that one.  No one wants to be earning 3% on their savings in the bank while spending 20% on credit card interest.  This article though seems to be giving carte blanche to not save “if you can’t afford it”.  Everyone can afford to save something even if it is only a $1.  I think saving is a discipline and once you get out of the habit it is easy to let go.

Make your own cleaning supplies

This one seems simple enough and a good money saving piece of advice.  Who needs a $12 bottle of pine-sol if vinegar really works just as well.

Stop drinking soda (or another beverage of choice)

Excellent piece of advice.  Soda is full of sugar and a ton of empty calories.  It’s expensive.  Once it’s gone I’ll bet you won’t miss it and neither will your kids.  I’d like to add bottled water to this tip.  There’s nothing wrong with water out of the tap - in fact most bottled water is tap water anyway!

Move back home with your parents, at any age

Ummm…no.  Do I need to elaborate?

Get rid of your carpet

This one make me scratch my head a bit.  Get rid of your carpet and do what?  Have a concrete floor?  It would take an awful long time for $200 a year to pay back the investment of a couple of thousand dollars in tiles or hardwood.

Hold a no-spend month

Very interesting concept.  I am off to read about it on Small Notebook and would love to hear from anyone who has tried it.

Tune in later this week for some saving ideas from us and our readers - anyone have something to suggest?

In our house we believe that chores are a requirement in order to be a participating member of family life.  We don’t give allowances for chores - chores are expected not rewarded.  My own Mother didn’t believe in chores and waited on us hand and foot.  Sure we had a wonderfully creative and experience rich childhood, but it sure was tough to develop the self-discipline required to keep my tiny dorm room under control when I went to college. 

Emily is very good at remembering her chores so we don’t keep any kind of regular chore chart.  But she has a school trip this year that she expected to contribute towards so I went hunting for something to track her “trip points”.  I found this very cool website filled with free downloadable chore charts.  Surprise, surprise, Emily picked the Kitty one featured above but they have everything - from princesses to sports to teddy bears.

We’d love to hear your views on chores.  How are they handled in your household? Do your kids have chores?  Are they tied to their allowances? 

There is a lot of debate surrounding a child’s allowance and one of the biggest points of contention is whether or not your child’s allowance should be tied to chores.  I personally think an allowance is absolutely essential to teaching your children about managing money.  The chore question to me is purely a matter of choice, as long as your child gets an allowance of some kind.  Even a dollar a week is money in hand that they have to make choices with - and every choice they make is a money learning experience.  Of course an allowance without a financial education is useless and we will be posting about ways to help your children learn about money in future posts - but today we are talking about allowances.

Emily’s school has an annual “sleep-over” trip.  Since she is only 10 years old we wouldn’t let her go on this trip last year for a variety of reasons, but one of the main reasons was the cost.  This trip would have been a huge gift for Emily.  SInce we didn’t know about it ahead of time we didn’t have the chance to teach her about the value of earning something.  Well - her school will have a trip again this year and we have told her that she can go… if she earns it.  To that end we made the decision that this year Emily’s chores will be tied to her allowance and her saving goal of paying half of her school trip. 

I was browsing for help and advice on the web when I came across this promising looking website.  Pay Jr allows you to set up a chore calendar for your child, link those chores to her allowance and give your child a way to watch their savings grow.  The only thing I was disappointed in was that you couldn’t enter short and long term goals which would be a very useful added feature.  I haven’t used it yet so I don’t know how friendly it is - but I will try using this and see how Emily likes it.  If anyone else has ideas or suggestions I would love to hear them.