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Need gift budget strategies?
Our "Top 3" will ease financial stress at gift giving time.
What? no gift budget?
Here's how to create and manage one!
Holiday shopping used to leave me flat broke until April. Then, no matter how carefully I searched for inexpensive gift ideas, Mother’s Day gifts in May left me scratching for Father's Day funds in June.
I finally vowed to develop a year-round gift budget and keep control of it. Through trial and error, I found some really effective strategies. My daughter Diane and various friends have tried them, and now they're believers too!
Here are the Top 3. They’re not difficult,
and there’s nothing particularly original about them.
But all three sure work!
Strategy #1:
Spread Gift Shopping Over the Whole Year
If you purchase holiday gifts one or two at a time, your gift budget won't be plagued by that all-too-familiar flu$hing sound in December.
• Take advantage of sale prices year round: February white sales, spring clearance sales, back-to-school sales, and so on. Is your sister’s birthday is in July? Keep it in mind when you check out the January sales, and you'll relieve your summertime budget.
• When November rolls around, take stock of the holiday gifts you’ve accumulated during the year. If you’ve purchased gifts for half the people on your list, you can probably finish your shopping on half the gift budget you usually need for December. The same thing goes for birthdays, anniversaries, and so on. Keep your eyes open for gift ideas, especially inexpensive gift ideas, whenever and wherever you are shopping.
• Spend a few extra minutes in the automotive or yard-and-garden shop. Is something perfect for your brother, and priced right? Grab it!
• When you travel, check out shops that carry regional specialties and locally crafted items. You may find an unusual gift idea that's perfect for someone on your list.
Year-round gift shopping takes the stre$$ out of the holidays. If you keep track of what you save by shopping sales over the year, you’ll be pleased how well your gift budget has survived. As a bonus, you'll save time by eliminating special shopping trips and minimizing downtime in crowded stores and parking lots at holiday time. A tip to remember: inexpensive gift ideas can be the basis for elegant gifts! With a little imagination, there's no need to deplete your gift budget - even for the most special person on your list. We invite you to review
Affordable Gift Ideas
to help get your creative thinking on a roll.
Strategy #2:
Your Monthly Cash Flow May Provide a Bonus
Most bills are due monthly… rent or mortgage, utilities, credit cards. Even with weekly items like groceries, gasoline and pocket money, it makes sense to budget on a monthly basis. This is probably second nature if you're paid monthly or semi-monthly, say, on the 15th and 30th.
People paid weekly or bi-weekly have a fortunate advantage:
"EXTRA PAYCHECKS" outside the monthly expense budget.
a. Extra paychecks can fund a gift budget.
With a monthly budget, if you're paid bi-weekly you'll plan around two paychecks every month, or 24 each year. However, you receive 26 paychecks each year - two EXTRA paychecks that occur approximately 6 months apart: one in the spring/summer, the other in the fall/winter.
If you're paid weekly, you'll plan a monthly budget around four paychecks, or 48 per year. However, you receive 52 paychecks each year - an EXTRA paycheck every three months.
The extra checks need cover only weekly expenses,
like food and pocket money - the rest is gravy.
- Voila! - Funds for a Gift Budget!
b. Here’s how to get your gift budget started:
Decide which monthly bills to pay from checks received in each half of the month. For example, if rent is due on the first of next month, pay it from funds received in the second half of this month. Bills due after the 15th can be paid from funds received in the first half of the month. The idea is to be ahead of the bills as they come due.In months that have a fifth weekly paycheck (or a third 2-week paycheck), take out your grocery and pocket money for that period, and the rest can fund your gift budget.
c. Here's how to keep your gift budget going:
Two things to consider: First, there is a strong tendency to regard a checking account balance as “available funds” for whatever need (or impulse?) comes along. Second, it's impossible to manage a gift budget if there's no money in it!
Conclusion: separate your gift funds from your checkbook balance! You can open a special savings account for your gift budget, or you can keep the cash in a cookie jar. Or, as I do, you can leave a gift fund in your checking account, but hide it away where you won’t be tempted to spend it on anything else. In this age of electronic banking and bill paying it may seem quaint, but I still find it useful to keep an old-fashioned, hard-copy checkbook. For one thing, it's easier to "hide" special funds where I won't see them every day. Here’s how I keep the checkbook record:
• Set up a "Gift Budget" record on the back page of the check register
• Deduct Gift money from checkbook balance, and add it to the Gifts page. Now I can easily know how much of my balance is earmarked for gifts.
• When it's time to write a check for a gift, I transfer the appropriate amount back to the regular page to keep my check record accurate. If I withdraw gift funds via ATM, they go in a separate pocket in my wallet or handbag.
• When my bank statement arrives, I treat the Gift Budget balance as an outstanding check so the statement will balance against the regular checkbook total. One more tip: Be careful when banking online or at the ATM machine! Those "available funds" appear temptingly large because they include your gift fund. Resist the temptation! If you open a special savings account for your Gift funds, you may wish to link it to your checking account so you can transfer funds into it easily. But remember, it's just as easy to transfer funds back out, so be sure to transfer out only what you need FOR GIFTS. One way or another, I strongly recommend that you separate your Gift Budget from your other funds, so it will be intact when your next gift occasion rolls around. Now, here's the best strategy of all!
Strategy #3:
Do You Save Pocket Change? Go One Better!
Try saving $5 bills. You heard me! This is the best way ever to accumulate some meaningful savings and really beef up your gift budget. You will be truly astonished at how little you miss a $5 bill, and how fast they pile up. I started doing this when my income was very, very small, and I can assure you it works even on the tightest budget.
Here’s WHY it works:
• Saving $1 bills is like saving pennies – too much bulk for the paltry amount that accumulates. (Besides, I tried saving $1’s but kept needing them for school lunch money, highway tolls, etc.)
• Putting aside $10 bills makes too big a dent in your pocket money.
• For items costing under $5 you can usually come up with a few $1's and pocket change to avoid breaking your $5 bill.
• Before you break a $10 or $20 bill for something costing under $5, you may think twice about whether you really want the item all that much (this alone helps your overall budget!).
• Result? You still have the $5 bill!
Here's HOW it works:
• If you decide to break the larger bill, you’ll probably get a $5 bill in change. This you can stash away without much missing it. This could easily happen a few times every week!
• Sock the $5 bill away in a different pocket or section of your handbag and pretend that you spent it in the transaction. Do not put it back with your other bills! After you have done this for a few weeks, you’ll find yourself separating $5 bills automatically – you’ll sort of mentally disqualify them as cash!
• When you get home put your $5 bills away in a safe (inconvenient!) place of their own. One of those boxes that checks come in is perfect. If you earmark your $5 bills for something specific like a gift budget, you’ll be less likely to invade the stash for any other tempting purpose.
• Band them together when you’ve accumulated $50 or $100 (it'll happen faster than you think!) and deposit them in a savings account or the gift budget hidden in your checkbook.
If you make these strategies a habit,
you'll save a few hundred dollars or more
over the course of a year!Top of Gift Budget Strategies
©Copyright 2005, well-chosen-gift.com, all rights reserved.
Logo photo by Jane M. Sawyer, courtesy of morguefile.com
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