10 must-know Life-Changing Christmas Shopping Hacks

The only time we do not entirely love to shop is during the Christmas season. It’s not that we do not love Christmas (We wait for it the entire year after all) but because Christmas shopping can cause dire financial stress to our budgets. From shopping for gourmet food for lavish dinners to buying gifts for everybody – with a hundred heavy expenses, Christmas can often feel like a luxury we cannot afford to have. But then again, it’s Christmas, and you cannot “not celebrate” it. But you can certainly make some adjustments and try these Christmas shopping hacks that I’m about to disclose.

10 must-know life-changing Christmas shopping hacks

1. Use coupons and cash back

Do you know why some e-commerce websites keep coupon codes deep within the categories? Because we are too naïve of their existence. We shop without using the coupons, either because we’re incognizant about them, or we consider their hunt hassling. Mostly, it’s the former.
Thus, this Christmas, wherever you shop, make sure you check for coupons and cash back offers. Here’s one website that I recommend.

2. Compare prices on Amazon

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Retail stores sell Christmas items at soaring prices. But you can get better deals on Amazon or any other E-commerce shopping website for that matter. So, every time you’re out there shopping, always make sure to compare prices. If you get better deals online, go ahead and buy.

3. Shop Christmas décor at the Dollar Tree

Dollar Tree is a chain of retail discount shops in the USA and Canada. If you happen to have one in your city, you can consider going there to shop for Christmas décor. You can get some amazing things at dirt-cheap prices – as low as $1. Hard to believe, right? Well, go see for yourself.

Alternatively, if you prefer a Target, you can find such cute decor in their dollar section at the front of their store. I’m sure you’ve seen all the influencers with the bottle brush trees (guilty here too!) all over their homes for Christmas. Those come from that section and really make decorating fun and easy.

4. Do Secret Santa

If you have too many people to gift to, skip the process entirely, and gift just one person; it will save you a lot of

money. Secret Santa is a group game where everybody is assigned a person, for whom they have to buy a gift. The identity of the gift giver remains unknown till the end, so the gift receiver has to make a guess.

Another great alternative is to do a white elephant gift, which can be played one of two ways. The first is to get a trick gift, like my favorite — “cold hard cash” where you would buy a cookie tin, put an amount of money into the tin, and fill with water and freeze. The person believes it’s cookies, but when they pick it up, it’s cold, and inside they have to wait to see how much money is in it if you stack the bills together.

The other way to do white elephant is to get an actual good gift, one you would want to receive as well. You can read a story and everyone sits around in a circle to be able to easily pass the gift on a specific word. Each time the word is said, you pass your gift. When the story is over, you open the gifts in order and can ‘steal’ a gift from someone else if you want. It makes it kind of fun and lets others choose what they’d really like and keeps your costs lower.

5. Shop beforehand

As mentioned before, things get extremely expensive during Christmas because of the demand. However, for the rest of the year, a standard rate is maintained. This is when you can shop for Christmas to save a lot of money– you can buy gifts, or décor even when Christmas is months away. However, you might also have to arrange for space and pack the décor properly to preserve the novelty of your purchases.

I know someone in my family who shops and makes gifts all year long so they are completely done shopping before Halloween and it serves them well. They have an area in their home they put all the gifts and it works for them.

6. Keep an eye out for sales

Brands offer sales throughout the year, and that my friend is the best time to shop for Christmas. But in case if

you are someone who remains oblivious of the sales, you have to change if you don’t want to be burdened by the financial stress of Christmas.

7. Prepare baskets

Instead of gifting someone one expensive gift, create a basket including little stuff that would together come out to become a thoughtful Christmas present. You can perhaps add dried flowers, homemade cookies and chocolates, cards, soaps and scrubs, anything that the person you are gifting to might like.

8. Register on Ebates

Ebates (now Rakuten) can be a God-sent for Christmas shopping. Rakuten is a reward website where you can shop and earn up to 25% cash back on online purchases. But for that to work out, you need to register on the platform; the cherry on the top – there’s no joining fee.

There are also several other reward sites you can choose, I also like using Capital One Shopping and Karma Now as they have a browser plug in that searches for discount codes at checkout. It makes sure you get the best price and save some money without really doing much other than clicking the check box to allow it to apply the codes and check other sites to see that you are getting the best price.

9. Create a shopping list and stick to it

This does not happen just during the Christmas season, but the whole damn year- we shop more than we need to

and shop what we don’t need. Ergo, to prevent it from happening, consider making a shopping list and ensure you strictly stick to it. Before you make one, make sure to check what you already have. You wouldn’t want to buy things you already had.

10.  Buy second-hand or do a yard sale of old Christmas décor

There’s no shame in buying second-hand things if it saves you from financial troubles in the end. Thus, you can either buy second-hand products or sell what you own in a yard sale. People who are looking to change their Christmas décor from last year while saving money might be interested in buying old Christmas décors.

In Arizona, every Friday, people have estate sales, and sell off many decor items as well as items you can use for gifts. These make great ways to negotiate and find some gently used items for your decor you may never have been able to afford. I personally love going to higher end ones to find items which I would love to have, but don’t want to pay the retail price.

Now that you know these hacks, you do not need to worry about Christmas shopping. By following these tips, you can save significantly and enjoy Christmas as you should! Merry Christmas and have a happy holiday season! We all look forward to saving money, don’t we? And I’m sure this includes you, so if you have some additional shopping hacks to share, feel free to drop them in the comment section.