How to Never Pay Full Price for Gifts Again

How to never pay full price for gifts ever again with these four tips on cheap Christmas and presents! Save on gifts and have them on hand whenever you need them, and for every occasion.

Hey y’all, Tiffany here.

I just love the holidays. I love spending time with my family, decorating our tree, wrapping gifts, and enjoying delicious goodies.

But along with all of that joy and cheer comes the expense of presents!

Whether it’s the holidays, or simply the multitude of birthday parties, wedding receptions, and baby showers that you are invited to each year, the cost of gift-giving can add up!

Four tips on how to never pay full-price for gifts

Pay with gift cards

Have you joined Swagbucks or Ibotta? Do you shop Target deals when they offer free gift cards for purchasing certain items? If so, hang on to those gift cards and use them to purchase gifts for others!

We save our gift cards all year to spend for the holidays. Last year, we ended up earning almost $1,000 in gift cards through the year! (No, we did not use them all for Christmas – we also used them for birthdays throughout the year.)

Another idea is use apps like Raise to purchase gift cards at a discounted amount when you know that you are going to make a purchase at a specific store.

We also like buying gift cards at Kroger when they have digital coupons offering 4x fuel points for gift card purchases. We either use these gift cards to spend on other gifts, or we give the gift cards themselves as presents, which means we never pay full price for gifts!

Start a gift closet

Have you ever walked through Target, seen an item on clearance, and thought, “Wow, that is an awesome price! Too bad I don’t have a kid/baby/newlywed/pregnant friend that could use it.”

(Of course, if your luck is like mine, next week you’ll be invited to a baby shower for your husband’s coworker’s sister that you could have used it for.)

I’m here to tell you to go ahead and get that item! Put it in the closet, and the next time you are invited to a last-minute party or shower, you’ll have something to give. You can build up a stash of potential gifts to have on-hand for the next Christmas work party that requires a gift exchange or wedding reception where you barely know the newlyweds.

You can find out more about gift closets here. A gift closet is a great way to never pay full price for gifts!

Join a Facebook deals group

There are some Facebook groups (like ours) that spend time searching for promo codes that can be used on Amazon. This is a great way to build up your gift closet, or to just start stocking up for the holidays.

If you have a party or shower to attend in a week, just scroll through your deals groups to find current promo codes or low prices on items you can give (and get in plenty of time with free two-day Prime shipping!)

We also try to find out what the hot items are going to be each year (like Hatchimals or Fingerlings) a few months ahead of the holidays so that they can purchased before the rush hits and prices go up. Last year, people were able to pre-order Fingerlings and get alerts as to when they were back in stock.

With our Facebook deals group, you’ll never pay full price for gifts again!

Browse Facebook buy/sell/trade groups or Marketplace

If you are getting gifts for your own children or other family members, then consider purchasing them gently used! It used to be that you would need to drive around for hours ever Saturday morning, browsing garage sales to find something that was still in decent shape.

Thanks to the internet and modern technology, you can browse digital “garage sales” on Facebook or VarageSale! These tend to be safer than Craigslist (little chance for anonymity), but more convenient than physically driving around, looking for garage sale signs.

These groups are almost always for specific geographical regions, towns, or even neighborhoods! Some terms you might search for along with your town’s name are:

Beg, Barter, Buy, Sell (or BBB or BBBS)
Buy, Sell, Trade
Classifieds
Garage Sale
Shop and Swap

You can’t avoid spending money on gifts for others (especially when you have children who are invited to every single birthday party for every single classmate all year!). But you can find ways to avoid paying full price!

Do you have any tips or tricks to avoid paying full price for gifts for your loved ones?