Christmas on a tight budget can take all of the joy out of the holiday season. However with careful planning you can provide wonderful Christmas gifts that your family will always remember without breaking the bank. These gifts are creative and may require a bit more planning, but you can also employ good shopping strategies to get better deals on the other gifts.

Kid Gift Ideas

Create an Experience – One thing most children crave is more time with their parents or grandparents. This time should be time spent focused on them, and provides an opportunity to improve your relationship. Find a way to create an experience at home or for not very much money that your child will remember forever. You can give a certificate or items needed to complete the experience for them to open under the tree. One example is teaching your child to cook her favorite dish. You can make an apron and buy measuring cups from the dollar store to put under the tree. Another option is to take your young son to a local high school basketball game. He still has the excitement of attending the game with you without the high price tag.

Craft Boxes – Craft boxes can be assembled without very much money and can be a great gift for your children or for cousins. If you buy in bulk you can further lower the cost and give to several different kids in your family or neighborhood. Be sure to include paper, glue, scissors, glitter and any other items that catch your eye at the craft store. Wizzley has some great ideas on what to include in your craft box.

Adult Gift Ideas

Meal of the Month – This is a great gift to give a busy family, to an older couple or someone who is single. You have the option of delivering them a meal each month freshly cooked or inviting them over to enjoy dinner with your family once a month on a scheduled night. This can be adapted into freezer meals or dessert instead. It also allows you to break up the cost over the next twelve months and possibly just absorb it into your food budget. You can make up a booklet with the list of items you plan on taking over or a card along with your first meal for the month.

Give Memories or Family History – Typing up family history stories, genealogy or poems and journals written by your ancestors can be a really meaningful gift to give to family members. The only expense in this is printing out the stories, but you can post them online or deliver them as electronic files. Generally, just going back a few generations to your grandparents is enough, and it allows your stories to be carried forward. Genealogy.com offers some guidelines for putting together your family history.

Employ Shopping Strategies

Finally you can utilize some good shopping strategies to stay under your budget and end up with a good assortment on gifts. The Black Friday sales are a good place to start, but begin checking other stores right now. Often the stores will run buy two and get the third free for things like video games, DVDs and other items. Online coupons can get you free shipping, and gift-wrapping saving you time and money when you need to ship your presents out. Taking time to find the perfect gift, instead of the most expensive gift can also save you money on your holiday shopping.

See some amazing Homemade Gift DIYs we’ve collected for you for additional ways to save money this Christmas!

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