Here are some frugal gift ideas submitted by one of our readers:
Suggestions for Christmas Gifts
- A year’s subscription to a magazine – Go online and look up magazine subscriptions for $5.00. You will find a lot of subscriptions to magazines from $3.00 and up. (Yes! It’s true.)
- One year, we went to the Dollar Store and bought Bibles for everyone… plus I made a small loaf of banana bread for everyone… simple gifts but they last a long time.
- One year, when my daughter was a teenager, she wrote a poem for each person, printed them on pretty paper and then framed them. Everyone loved them! My family members still have these hanging on their walls in their homes.
- One year, I bought teddy bears at the dollar store and dressed them up with lace, hats and booties.
If you live in a state that is always hot like I do (Florida) and don’t have time for baking, if your rental house has no insulation and you DREAD turning that oven on, here’s an idea that is frugal but really nice. Wal-Mart has baked goods 2/$6.00. Get four boxes ($12 for 48 yummies!)
Then go to Walgreens for those little bags that are decorated with Christmas themes for 10 cents each. They are about the size of a brown bagged lunch bag.) Buy a few extra so you can shred them and add to the bottom of the others.
Go to the dollar store and buy the CDs and/or movies that they sell for $1 each (granted, they are old movies, but still a nice gesture). Put all of it together and voila!… Nice homey gifts from the person who doesn’t like to bake or can’t bake because they burn everything or its toooo hot!
Also, the dollar stores sell some pretty good reading books that you can add to the bag instead of the movies (for the people who like to read). I think I calculated that for 8 people, this would cost under $30 total. You can also add a candle to each one too… Sometimes you can find them for 3/$1.00 (or you can go to Wal-Mart and get a bag of tea lights for under $5 and it is a lot of candles). I just wanted to share this with everyone… Hope this helps… :D
-Rose in Enterprise, Florida
photo by: learnscope
It sounds like great ideas. I usually make some hats and scarves in advance for the holidays. I add them along with the other gifts. So people don’t feel like they didn’t get any nice gifts for Christmas. Also, many people don’t want to get dollar store items as gifts. So I give them gift cards in handmade one of a kind gift card holders. The amount does not matter to them.
I’ve heard the magazine subscription idea before and still think it’s a good one. You may also want to consider getting or renewing an auto club membership (such as AAA) for a friend or family member. Paying for any type of subscription or membership to something the receipient would have normally bought for themselves anyway is always a good idea.
A few years we have bought our son’s family a family membership to the recreation center. It has a pool, rink, gymnastics, soccer, chess, baseball, dance and a few other things.
It cost us about $300 for the year.
Sounds like a bit but they have 3 children and 2 adults and once you are a member of the center all the activities are free.
Adults can swim as well as join into the other things. They have mom and baby swim classes and swimming lessons for any age.
With 4 grand children and a ‘home’ based day care full of young children coming up with gifts that do not cost a lot of money is sometimes difficult to do. However a few years ago I had a brain storm idea that proved to be great as far as the kids and MY pocket book were concerned. A few days after Halloween I go to the different Walmarts and Targets in my area. I buy the Halloween costumes at 90% off. I never paid more than $3.00 for a costume. Then I remove them from the package and put them into MY package with a ‘dress up’ idea…example a princess will get a crown and maybe some high heels. Or a Batman will get a plastic sword etc. The kids enjoy dressing up. I buy a lot of the out fits and put together a dress up box for the day care.
Thanks Roxie! I was going to post this and totally forgot. I just went to our Walmart 2 weeks ago and got a TON of stuff for 90% from Halloween.
Dollar stores are the bomb. You can find great gifts as long as you are patient. It’s my go to store when shopping for gifts.:D