12 Ways to Save Money During the Holidays

I don't know about you, but it's an expensive time of year at our house!  The kids have been invited to lots of birthday parties, holiday events, work events, holiday food, parties and Christmas shopping.  It all adds up quickly.  I have some money saving ideas for you today.  I hope it helps save you a little money this month.

1. Clip fresh things from your yard to bring inside for holiday decor.  I have two beautiful holly bushes and I can't wait to trim some for Christmas.

2. If you go out to dinner, save your leftovers for lunch the next day.  I ordered the never ending pasta bowl meal at Olive Garden and couldn't finish my second bowl.  I boxed it up for an easy lunch the next day.

3. Teachers or room moms, if you need help, ask for it!  I know this won't apply to all teachers or won't work at all schools, but if you have parents who are willing to help, ask them for help.  We have snack time every day and my snack stash was running really low after passing out extra snacks to kids who forgot their snack.  I mentioned it in my weekly newsletter and parents were SO generous to restock my snacks.  It saved me tons of money and I was so thankful for the help.

4. Cash in your food rewards!  I have apps to all of our favorite food spots and instead of going to buy food, I'll shop my rewards.  I got a free coffee thanks to rewards points here!

5. Say YES to hand me downs.  Leo's current favorite slippers were a gift from a friend.  We don't get tons of hand me downs anymore, but I love when we do.  I also try to pass on favorite pieces to friends with younger kids.

6. Learn how to groom your pets to save money.  I'm the nail trimmer and cat groomer at our house.

This also applies to the people at our house.  I run my own family hair salon and it saves us at least $100 a month when I cut the boy's hair at home.

7. Pay attention to prices as you are checking out!

Walmart has been especially bad with this on clothing lately.  We got these snow boots for Fletcher.  They were marked $24.98 and rang up $29.98.  I was watching closesly, caught the error and my cashier was able to fix it right at the register.  I've noticed many clothing items at Walmart don't have prices on them so read the signs, scan in the app and know the prices you are paying.

8. I mentioned above to get all the food apps to your local favorite spots.  I love earning rewards to places we go to regularly.  One of my favorite money saving apps that I've been using since 2020 is Fetch.  It's the easist way to save.  You link your email, connect your Amazon account and it'll scan your emails for receipts.  You earn points from grocery purchases, Amazon purchsaes and more.  The rewards add up pretty quickly.  I always cash them in for Amazon gift cards or Starbucks gift cards.  It's a free app and you can upload your receipts one at a time with a simple photo or link your email accounts.  Either way works to earn rewards points.

I have a referral code if you are interested.

Turn basically anything you do into gift cards with Fetch. Earn at stores, restaurants and shopping online. Even playing free games. Download Fetch with my link or use code C8K71 to get a bonus when you submit your first receipt.
https://referral.fetch.com/vvv3/referralqr?code=C8K71

9. Splurge on fun things at Costco for dinner instead of going out to eat.  We grabbed these Crab Cake Minis at Costco for $19.99, made $5 worth of sides at home and ate a nicer meal for $25.  Going out to eat costs us about $25/plate so this Costco dinner splurge still saved us tons of money.  We really enjoyed these crab cakes in the air fryer.  I assumed they came with the dipping sauce, but they didn't.  Next time I'll make sure to make my own sauce to go with the crab cakes.

10. Compare prices.  If you are tempted to grab something in store, check the price at Amazon, Walmart or Target to see if you are getting a good deal.

For example, Fletcher loves these funny food socks.  They are $1.25/pair at Dollar Tree.  I looked for some more options on Amazon and I could get a six pack of food brand socks for $30.  That's much higher than Dollar Tree.  I just stopped in a couple different Dollar Trees to collect some socks for his stocking instead of overspending on the Amazon ones.

11. Read your credit card statements very carefully this time of year!  We just finished resolving a scam issue on one of our credit cards.  It looked like we were buying a lot of things - 45 different things - on itunes when we had only authorized 2 itunes purchases.  We caught it about the same time our credit card company did, but we had to double check accounts and call to dispute those charges.  They were all under $10 so it took a bit to flag our account as getting scammed.  Especially since it was listed as a shop that we purchase from.

12. Shop your closet first!  I know the matching family Christmas pjs are darling, but do you need them?  This year, two people in our family did not need any new Christmas pjs so we only bought pjs for the people who needed them.  Same thing with dress up days at school - we have elf day, candy cane striped day, Christmas sweater day, etc.  I'm shopping our Christmas closet first and will fill in the gaps as needed.  Try not to get pressured into buying holiday apparel to wear for the next 3 weeks.  I bought the kids each one new holiday sweatshirt and then we are using what we already have on hand for the other holiday things that pop up.

Happy Shopping!  I hope you find some great deals this season!