How I Save up For Christmas!

As August is nearing an end, Christmas looms not too far in the near future! Can you believe that I’ve already seen the Halloween stuff out for a few weeks now? Pretty soon everything will just be up year-round!

In years past, we bought so many Christmas presents (our family of 4, my parents, my hubby’s parents & 2 sets of grandparents, his 2 sisters, their husbands, and their total of 4 kids, my sisters & her 3 kids, husbands, brother, etc. I mean, that doesnt even include any personal friends, co-workers for my hubby or any extra random gift we may come up with to give! You Get the idea??? Even if everyone had a budget of $10 (which is impossible with family!) you’re EASILY looking at over $300-and that’s on the tight end! At least for us, we just didn’t have the extra $300+ leftover in a month to cover Christmas expenses, so we would take the $$ out of our tax return every year and set it aside. Well, we set aside $500 every year out of our taxes, but to me it just seemed that it ate up SO much of our tax return! So this year, with some ideas from my friends, we’ve come up with a new way to do things-without spending any money for our budget!

Our trial method this year- and it’s working!!!:

We didnt start till spring-time, so we missed out on the beginning of the year, but we started by applying for the Visa Amazon credit card. Seemed like a great idea since I do so many online surveys and get Amazon gift certificates often for it. (will explain later…) So we got our credit card. Every dollar we spend we get 1-3 points for depending on where we spend it (gas, restaurants, misc, etc). Once you get 2500 points you can “cash out” for a $25 Amazon gift card. So we began the switch to our new credit card. This is our main and only used credit most of the time. Everything possible goes on it- any utility bills I can sign up for, our house phone/internet, medical bills, etc. Even my husband’s school loan bills which are QUITE large!! JUST make sure you can pay your bill off every month! It would be counterproductive for you to carry a balance!!! That being said, the points add up easily, and right now I am able to get a $25 gift certificate every month or so. Already made $125 since I opened the card about 5 months ago. I apply the gift certificate to my Amazon credit balance, and DONT spend it!! Our goal by Christmas 2011 is to be able to SOLELY pay for our Christmas presents by using Amazon gift certificates from my credit card AND from the surveys and search sites I get paid to do. Although we’re also aiming for that this year!

I use a search engine called Swagbucks where you download their toolbar, and just search online like normal! They reward you with “swagbucks” in different increments, and once you get to 450 swagbucks you can cash out for a $5 Amazon gift card- and where do you think I put it??  (you can also shop online thru their site for even more easy swagbucks!) 🙂 I can cash out for a $5 card about once every few weeks. Doesn’t seem like much till you start adding it all up. I’ve made $115 in less than a year on my swagbucks account.

I also use MyPoints. You can earn points for opening & clicking on their emails, as well as shopping online. This one does take a while, but by Christmas (about 1 year after my account) I will have enough points to cash out for a $50 gift card or more for Amazon. You can also buy other gift cards for cheaper points such as restaurants & clothes stores.

Another way I earn Amazon gift cards is through completing surveys I’ve qualified for at Opinion Outpost.  I’ve earned $55 in Amazon gift cards since April of this year. They have legit surveys and once you earn $5 worth of gift cards you can cash out with an immediate promo code! Love this one!

Of course, against my better wishes, I have spent some of my Amazon money on some specialty items for my kids (they have food allergies) but even though I’ve spent about $75 of my Amazon money, I still have over $200 on my account of FREE money I’ve earned through my credit cards, online searching, and surveys! Imagine the possibilities!!! Why stress over where the Christmas money will come from? Do a little work throughout the year, save it up, and enjoy your holidays!

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