Gift Giving at Christmas on a Budget
When you're not into DIY...
There are people who save for Christmas all year, and there are people who get to November and panic a little, all of a sudden becoming freshly aware of the pressure around Christmas present buying.
Whichever camp you fall into… being on a tight budget at Christmas doesn’t mean you have to be the token Grinch - promise!
It also doesn’t mean you have to become a DIY queen either, not everyone is into that and that’s a-ok. Though I will say, simply baking some homemade cookies has proven to be a big winner for me in the past, DIY doesn’t have to be fancy!
So you’re feeling broke, you don’t want to be a Grinch… here’s my tips.
Firstly, let’s do a reality check for a second.
Remember, a lot of the gift hauls and present buying action you see online is at least somewhat performative. That’s not 100% a bad thing, I just mean it’s content that’s been curated for an audience. That can mean something as simple as trimming a video down to be short and snappy to grab your attention, or something more innocuous like undisclosed brand partnerships or items that get bought for clicks and returned the next day.
Live YOUR life this Christmas. Remember, you’re not seeing the average person’s behaviours online because as much as it doesn’t always seem like it, most people aren’t posting their lives online, they’re just living them.
You’re likely not seeing the recycled Christmas paper a lot of people are using, or the tight Christmas budgets or the people having simple Christmas lunches because that’s what they can afford… or even just because they like to keep it simple and not spend 500 hours in the kitchen 😅
If all else fails, spend November side-hustling!
You’d be surprised how much you can earn with side hustles. I did a challenge last October, aiming to earn $10 a day from easy side hustles and ended up earning just shy of $800!
I have a free guide here of various side hustles, including a lot of really low barrier to entry ones that you could get started with today.
There’s obviously also things like delivering for uber eats/door dash, but make sure you check out my list because there’s SO MANY you can do at home and they’re not all crappy survey sites.
Get prepped for all the upcoming sales
I’m very much team ‘let’s change how we think about and buy for Christmas’, however that doesn’t mean you won’t want to buy anything brand new at all!
If you’re wanting to grab any brand new items, you’ve got every sale known to man coming up really soon. Make a list of who you want to buy for and what you might want to buy for them and - this is the really important bit - set a budget per person.
Do not, whatever you do, go into Black Friday sales without a list and a budget! 🫣
Chat with your friends/family about gift expectations
I think it’s safe to say we’re all feeling the pinch right now, but besides the ‘eww inflation’ style posts you see online I’m not sure that people are actually having active discussions with those closest to them about how they’re doing.
Chances are, the people you want to celebrate with most may also be feeling a bit nervous about the upcoming gift frenzy! Maybe your friends all want to lower their spend - you won’t know till you open up the conversation.
We don’t have to cancel fun though, here’s some alternatives to buying every single friend and family member a present including your second cousin thrice removed:
🎁 Secret Santa - Everyone draws a name and buys a gift (or two) for just one person. You can also set a budget limit with this. That way, everyone is still getting presents without the financial pressure of twenty thousand relatives!
🎁 Silly Santa - Everyone gets a budget of 20 and draws a name. The focus of this one is to lean into the fun, buying the silliest, funniest gifts you can. Think pizza themed socks for the IT professional in your life, or a good old fashioned fart cushion is always a winner.
🎁 Old reliable, the gift budget - It can be as simple as agreeing on a budget limit per person. Maybe you do buy presents for the other five people in your close friend group, but you keep it to $20 each.
🎁 Invest in an experience - Maybe instead of physical gifts you all chip in to doing something fun together like a boat ride or a road trip, or even a trip away. Everyone going in on a trip to a beachside town could very well end up cheaper than buying everyone presents, especially if you stay somewhere like a caravan park or in a cabin.
Consider thrifting or buying second hand
It seems like this is a controversial take if the ‘I bought my kids all second hand gifts for Christmas’ video comments are anything to go by, but it’s so ok to buy second hand things for gifts.
Growing up I would often get a mix of new things, thrifted things and regifted things for Christmas… and that didn’t remove the joy of the thing at all. One of the best Christmas presents I was ever given was my aunty’s old record player along with some thrifted records that probably cost $5 total.
To me, I was seen. The creative music lover in me who also loves vintage things was seen and acknowledged. And isn’t that the real goal with giving gifts?
The key takeaway here is that just because you’ve always done things a certain way doesn’t mean you have to keep doing things that way.
It’s ok to change things up. Christmas after all is about time charged with those you love, about joy and peace. It can be hard in our current times to find that joy and peace, but really that’s all the more reason we should invest our time in finding ways to create it for ourselves!
As much as capitalism would like us to believe otherwise, our love for others isn’t measured by the gifts we give them.
And the best part of baking gifts... it can be a box mix and no one need ever know.