Even though we know it comes every year, we can never really prepare ourselves for the shock of holiday gift expenses. What's worse is that lately the annual holiday gift exchange seems to have become more of a gift card exchange. Long gone are the days when people exchanged actual items as gifts; today most children even request gift cards!
Fortunately, there are ways that you can soften the blow and still get people what they want for the holidays. Below are some tips to get you started.
The first thing that you can do is prepare yourself for this financial fiasco early. Can you afford to set a little bit of money aside each month? If so, many banks offer a Christmas Club account that you can set up to automatically transfer money each month from your checking account. Imagine if you could set aside an extra $35 a month starting in January. By the time December rolls around that would leave you with $420 to spend on gifts.
The second thing that you can do, if you are good with your credit, is to have a rewards type credit card. Paying monthly bills such as cable, water, electricity, gas, and even your cell phone can really pad that rewards account with points. If you use your credit card for most of your expenses (responsibly, of course), that can usually amount to a nice gift card at the end of the year!
The third thing that you can do is search the Internet for discount gift cards. One of the best places to look is eBay. Lots of people sell gift cards that they don't want at discounted prices. Some Internet search sites will even pay you to buy gift cards from eBay as long as the search originated from them.
Examples include bing.com/cashback, which usually offers an 8% cash back promotion and ebates.com which offers 2% and can be used in conjunction with Bing for a total of 10% cash back. eBay also has a program that will allow you to earn eBay bucks after purchasing items from their website as well as frequent coupon offerings. It is not entirely impossible to purchase a gift card from eBay at 25% or more off. Other websites like plasticjungle.com have a wide variety of discounted gift cards as well.
Even though the gift card has become the popular gift of choice lately, don't let the potential cost scare you! You need only to search and prepare, and you will be well on your way to obtaining gift cards at a discounted rate that will please all of the recipients on your holiday gift list.