Follow My Christmas Savings Plan To Buy Your Christmas Gifts For Free!
Need a Christmas savings plan? Get your Christmas gifts and presents free with these 10 legitimate holiday gift savings tips and budget tricks using gift cards! Have a no-cost Christmas while still purchasing gifts at the store! Don’t lose track of your Christmas expenses and go into more credit card debt this next holiday spending season.
It’s almost the start of the holiday shopping season again! While this holiday season is one of the most beautiful, joyous times of the year, it is also one of the most stressful! Family is coming into town, meals to cook, houses to clean, trees to decorate……and presents to buy.
Hey, y’all, Tiffany here.
Finding gifts for your loved ones can be stressful. You love them – hence the term loved ones – and you want to show them that love with the perfect present.
It can be even worse when times are difficult and your finances are tight, like if you’re living on a $42 weekly grocery budget. It’s tempting to take everything on their shopping list or their wish list and buy it on layaway, pay with a credit card, or dip into your emergency or Christmas savings account.
Especially in our large families. I’m the oldest of 10 children (not counting their spouses, their children, their friends, their family, etc.). Even for the most basic of gifts, it adds up!
Even if you wanted a no-cost Christmas, it’s still difficult when your love language is gift-giving and you don’t have time to do them homemade.
Have a No-Cost Christmas!
However, this post is not going to be a post about how you can make everyone’s Christmas presents – we’re not that talented when it comes to crafts. At all.
(You should my last attempt to paint something….., no, you really shouldn’t.)
Instead, we want to help you have the no-cost Christmas of your dreams, but without spending any money out of pocket for holiday shopping to do it!
One idea is to do the 12 Days of Christmas with your friends, family, and spouse, but that can only go so far. You can’t exactly do that with your kids.
Save gift cards to use for next Christmas’ presents!
What is this mysterious solution to a magical Christmas that doesn’t have you spend enough money on gifts to break your bank or Christmas savings account for your holiday expenses? The answer is…..gift cards for a debt-free Christmas!
Yes, you read that right – gift cards! We all start our Christmas savings plan for the spending spree during the shopping season, start to spend our holiday budget while shopping for gifts, and start our Christmas savings plan on December 26th. We work hard to get gift cards all year for a debt-free Christmas and all holidays, and we save them up for a no-cost Christmas!
We’re going to go over each method that we use on our holiday spending. Some of these methods don’t get us tons of money in gift cards individually, but all together they easily add up to several hundred dollars in gift cards for our Christmas budget!
This year, as you can see below, we saved $1,050 in gift cards that will go towards our no-cost Christmas and start our Christmas savings goal! (Note: we reserve some of the saved money from these gift lists for monthly expenses, birthday presents, Christmas budget, and other holiday season expenses throughout the year as well as holiday expenses.)
Swagbucks for a no-cost Christmas
Swagbucks is an online rewards program where you earn points (Swagbucks) for your online activity. This includes internet searches, online shopping and purchases, watching short videos, playing online games, and more!
In our first six months of using Swagbucks a few years ago, we earned for our Christmas savings goal over $300 in gift cards! However, now we mostly just earn points by doing searches. This earns us about $25 in gift cards each quarter or about $75 per year.
GO HERE to sign up for Swagbucks and to get started with your Christmas savings plan and on your way to a no-cost Christmas!
Don’t miss our save-money post on how to set up a budget with our free printable!
Ebates
Ebates is another online, account rewards program that is very similar to Swagbucks. There are a few differences, however. Ebates has an extension that will automatically apply promo codes when you shop online using your online savings account, to help you save more money there. It then also gives you a certain percentage of cash back when you have separate savings account accounts and make purchases (Swagbucks does this as well, but Ebates tends to be a bit higher) through them.
Once per week or quarter, they deposit the extra funds saved or money you’ve earned into your personal finance holiday savings account for your Christmas gifts! We then withdraw funds from our savings accounts direct deposit back into the bank holiday savings account and buy gift cards and gifts with this extra money. We usually get about $5-$10 per quarter, or $30 per year from Ebates
GO HERE to sign up for Ebates and have a no-cost Christmas this year!
As you live a frugal life, make sure you follow these seven steps to financial freedom. If you’re already working on them, then make sure you aren’t making these common mistakes.
Target
So many sales at Target involve receiving gift cards! For example, about once a week or month they have gift cards for buying a certain amount of diapers.
We save those gift cards up throughout the year, and we usually end up with around $300 by Thanksgiving! Then we use them for Target’s month of toy deals that start the day after Thanksgiving each year!
Each day this holiday season, they roll out a Cartwheel (coupon on the Target app) good for 50% off a specific toy. You don’t know what the toys are in advance, but there are usually some really good deals for a no-cost Christmas!
Need to re-think how you view money? Read these four books!
Pinecone Research
Pinecone Research is a survey website where you earn points that you can redeem for cash or gift cards! Now before you disappear at the word “survey,” we promise that this is not a gimmick. Each survey is guaranteed 300 points (which equals $3).
With most survey sites, you spend five minutes answering tons of questions, only to be disqualified. Pinecone Research is not like that. Usually, there are only 4-5 questions to see if you’re qualified, and it’s hard to be disqualified (unless it’s about pet food and you don’t have any pets or something).
Additionally, each month you spend you can get an automatic 300 points by uploading your Amazon purchasing history (not personal information).
We usually do about 4 surveys per month, plus get the 300 points for the Amazon history. This adds up to about $15 per month = $180 per year (which we redeem for Paypal cash or Amazon gift cards usually). Pinecone Research is currently accepting new applicants HERE
Wondering how to live a frugal life? Learn how the Mormons do it!
Achievement
Achievement is one of our favorite ways to save money and earn extra money for our holiday shopping! If you have an exercise tracker (like Fitbit), you can link it with Achievement and earn points for logging your exercise, food, etc. It’s a great way to keep saving money and motivate you to be healthy!
Once you get to 10,000 points, they send you a $10 check. We typically turn around and buy a gift card of some kind with this money and save it for our no-cost Christmas.
This one is a bit slow for earning, but you earn by basically doing what you should already be doing anyway. We get enough points for an Amazon gift card about four times per week per year, so $40 total. GO HERE to see the list of the 25+ apps that can sync with Achievement to earn you points!
Get in shape with this couch to 5k plan!
MileUp for a no-cost Christmas
MileUp is an app that tracks the miles you drive and gives you points for them. (Tip: once installed, change your settings so that it only updates when you’re connected to Wi-Fi. Otherwise, it will eat up your data).
The points for driving can only be used to purchase entries into giveaways. That’s not why we like MileUp, though. Once you’ve had the app on your phone and have driven for a bit, you can upload your C.L.U.E. report for enough gift credit card” points to purchase $100 in gift cards! The C.L.U.E. report is just the same driving history that a car insurance company accesses when getting a quote for your car insurance.
The point of MileUp is to help people drive safer – they see your accident history and compare it with your driving style. Also, if you are in an accident, you can submit the accident report and get $250 in gift and credit card and points! Accidents aren’t great, but this helps make it a bit easier.
In 2018, Phillip and I each submitted our C.L.U.E. reports and got $200 in Amazon/Target gift cards! CLICK HERE to get the app!
If you have a car payment (or any other debt), learn how to pay it off quickly! If you have a lot of debt, read about how this couple paid of $300,000 in three years by reading the Bible!
Rare Patient Voice for a no-cost Christmas
Do you or a loved one have a chronic health condition? Or are you a caregiver of someone who is chronically ill?
Rare Patient Voice is an organization that puts health researchers in touch with patients and caregivers so they can express their voices. You get a $5 Amazon gift card when you initially sign up and qualify. After that, you can earn $50+ for each interview/survey that you qualify for! There are not dozens of opportunities each month, but it is worth it when they do happen! I have Crohn’s disease, and in 2018 I participated in two different 60-90 minute telephone interviews and was rewarded $325 for my time!
GO HERE to sign up for Rare Patient Voice!
If you have a chronic illness, you have probably gone through the stages of grief. We’ve learned a lot in our marriage because of Tiffany’s health issues, and it’s easy to feel like a bad mom when you’re sick all the time.
VeryDice
VeryDice is a new app where you roll dice for free, earn tickets based on the rolls, and exchange those tickets for items you can purchase on Amazon as part of your no-cost Christmas!
You could choose to buy rolls if you want, but we don’t recommend it. Instead, just open the app once a day to spin a wheel that gives you a certain number of free rolls.
Within our first two weeks of using VeryDice, we earned enough tickets to “purchase” a Christmas toy that is normally $10 on Amazon! On average, we earn $50 worth of prizes with VeryDice each year. If you want to get the app, then use our friend code 961160 to get an extra 50 rolls to start with!
In addition to rolling dice, you can also easily improve your finances by watching Netflix!
Ibotta
Ibotta is a rebate app where you pay, upload your receipt from your bank account for grocery trips, and receive your money back. You can receive your rewards when you reach a minimum balance of $20, and you can either cash the funds out to Paypal/Venmo accounts or receive gift cards for the same bank account.
We received over $200 in Ibotta rewards a few years back! If you download the app HERE or use our code uottmxp then you can get an extra $10 when you redeem your first rebate! (Exclusions apply, see app for details.)
Save even more on groceries by learning how to coupon!
Dosh
Dosh is a cash-back app that is kind of a combination of Ibotta and Ebates or Swagbucks. You get cash-back on purchases like Ebates or Swagbucks, but it works for in-store purchases like Ibotta does as well!
You don’t even have to upload pictures of receipts! Just link your debit or credit card to start saving money(or even a pre-paid bank or credit card debt-free one, with a $0 minimum balance down) to pay it to Dosh and get a FREE $5. Then each time you make a qualifying purchase with your regular bank savings accounts or credit card rewards amount, you get extra cashback that you can cash out to Paypal.
It’s a great way to start saving and have a no-cost Christmas!
Learn what the scriptures have to say about money.
An earlier version of this post was written by Tiffany on The Crazy Shopping Cart
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