From snailpacetransformations.com
10 ways to afford gifts & food for Christmas Day when you have no money to spend!
12 Christmases ago, I pulled off Christmas for almost nothing. Our family had taken a big move that summer and it resulted in a lot of expenses. Plus my husband was starting off a new job as a Registered Nurse for the first time and therefore was earning an entry-level wage. We had some medical bills come up and after praying over it, I knew God wanted me to pay them with what little I had saved for Christmas and there I was mid November with not a nickle saved for Christmas.
Yet come Christmas day, each of our three children had a gift from us, a gift from Santa and a stocking. My husband got a small gift from me and he gave me a few pieces of a Dollar Tree Christmas Village I had been eying. We had a very simple Christmas meal . The highlight of the day was the beautiful Christmas tree we got just in time for the big day for free.
How did I do it? I got very creative and thought outside the box, and at the very last minute my husband got called in for an afternoon of over time work and that pay check arrived the day before Christmas and helped pay for a few items I had not yet gotten. Which is why I said I pulled it off for almost nothing.
If you don’t have the hope of overtime filling in the gaps for you, you can still pull of a great Christmas on a zero budget, especially since now 12 years later you have more possibilities available to you than I did, thanks to the growing internet.
10 Ways Celebrate Christmas On A Zero Budget
1. Go through your home from top to bottom
10 Ways To Make Cash While Tossing Clutter
Christmas for zero requires you doing some inventory. What do you have that you no longer use that you can sell? Could you sell those jeans you no longer fit in for enough money to fill the kids stocking. What items do you have around the home that could become gifts? Could that tablecloth you never use become doll clothes.
Go from room to room looking through every nook and cranny taking stock of everything you already own and try to see it with new creative eyes.
2. Find a local Facebook Buy and Sell Group
Tips For Selling In Facebook Buy & Sell Groups
In most areas November is a little late to have a yard sale, but now a days you can have a yard sale any day you want with a Facebook Buy and Sell group. You can sell items big and small in these groups.
3. Start Working Point Reward Programs That Have Low Payout Minimums
Swagbucks
Bing Rewards
InstGC
Recycle Bank
Tyndale Rewards
Now is not the time to spend hours on surveys for a company that doesn’t pay out until you reach $30. Instead work at programs like Swagbucks where gift cards in general start at 500 Swag Bucks for a $5 card. Visit my Christmas Swag Bucks plans for 24 ways to earn Swag Bucks and enter the drawing for 5000 Swagbucks while your there.
Another fast earning program is Bing rewards where in 30 days you can earn enough points for a $5 gift card, and generally they take just 24 hours or less to arrive.
A new to me program I recently discovered is InstaGC where the pay out is set at a minimum 0f 100 points for a $1 gift card. That might not seem like much but InstaGC has a lot of ways to earn and when I played around on the site I was able to hit 50 points in less than 30 minutes.
If you have a magazine lover in your family join Recycle Bank, and do their environmentally friendly themed point earning tasks. Magazines subscriptions start at 160 points.There are some activities that come out worth 150 points so it won’t take long to earn enough for a magazine subscription for a loved one. There is a wide variety of magazines including those for fitness lovers, home decor lovers, celebrity news lovers and more.
If you want to surprise a book lover young or old with a new book join Tyndale Rewards and follow the instructions in my article on Tyndale rewards to earn enough points in your first day as a member to purchase a book. Books do take a few weeks to be delivered so plan accordingly..
4. Trade Books And Clothing & Toys For Store Credit
Books I no longer needed was something I found on my inventory walk-through those 12 Christmases ago. I took them to a local secondhand bookstore and got credit that I used to pick out like new board books for my toddler to put in his stocking. You could also try children’s consignment stores that pay cash up front, they often give you more if you will take store credit, and usually they have like new toys you could give as gifts to your youngsters.
5. Hold An “Eat What You Got” Week
For one week, skip the grocery store and get really creative making meals out of food already in your cupboards and use the savings to buy gifts. I used mine to buy the ingredients needed for Christmas baking and Christmas dinner that tight financial year.
6. Wait Until The Last Minute For Amazing Deals
That Christmas 12 years ago was the first time I have waited to finish my shopping until Christmas Eve. When I knew we had no money saved for Christmas, I had made a list and had prioritized it, and was doing well at getting the most important items, the two things I was missing though were a tree and Santa gifts.
We were making do with a 2 foot artificial tree I found in the attic. It had been left by the previous owner of our home and was very Charlie Brown like but it worked. I was racking my brain for free Santa gift materials around our home, when my husband got the afternoon hours of overtime and we figure out the money from it would arrive Christmas Eve.
With the money in our account early that morning I sent my husband out with a list and told him, Santa gifts first and if there was money leftover a tree. He got the gifts and thought we had enough leftover for a small real tree. When he got to the tree seller’s place the guy was shocked we didn’t have a tree yet and pointed out that he had already gotten his ready for trash pick up but he allowed my husband to pick one out for free.
You can imagine my face when he came home with a huge tree, and if I remember rightly he spent the money we saved on some 50% off tree decorations to decorate it.
7. Sign Up For Samples As Soon As You Can
What Thrifty People Do With Free Samples And Where To Find Them
Right around Thanksgiving it seems like companies go crazy with free sample sign ups. Money Saving Mom is my favorite place to find out about them. The site has a weekly round up list of them, but I prefer checking the site daily for new ones. Free samples can make great stocking stuffers, or gift basket fillers.
8. Search Pinterest For Ideas
Presents you can make out of old jeans
Presents you can make out of t-shirts
If Pinterest were available that year I created Christmas out of next to nothing, my brain would have hurt less. Use the Pinterest search bar to enter whatever materials you seem to have in surplus of and watch amazing remake and repurpose ideas come up.
9. Watch Out For Coupons That Lead To Free Items
My coupon tips resource page with a list of printable coupon sites and coupon apps
For probably the last 5 years now I have been buying my children chocolate for their stocking for pennies by using the Hallmark $5 of a $5 purchase coupons that are available to print online and also found in free magazines I enjoy.
CVS Black Friday sales as well as Walgreens are also a great place to get free items by stacking deals with coupons.
10. Give handmade Coupons
If you want to include friends in your giving but all 9 ideas above leave you too short to make it to them, here is an idea. Give out handmade coupons. Give babysitting to the couple you know never gets out. Give a coupon of “I will help you plant your flower garden this spring”, to the brown thumb friend who needs someone to be there to guide them in purchasing the right plants and getting them in the ground in place they will grow. Give your hubby a few coupons too, for back rubs and …….(be creative 
).
A Christmas day filled with simple gifts and good food can be created even if you have zero saved right now and little hopes of an overtime check coming your way, it just takes out of the box thinking, and a can do attitude.
