budget help tips

Gift Buying
1. Do it yourself. For an old- fashioned, inexpensive homemade present, consider assembling a mulled-cider kit. When prices drop on 64-ounce jars of apple juice or cider, “grab as many as you can,” says Teri Gault, CEO and founder of the online-grocery site TheGroceryGame.com. Then wrap three sticks of cinnamon and about a tablespoon of whole cloves or allspice in cheesecloth, and tie the packet to the bottle with a bow. Include instructions (“Add the cheesecloth package to the juice and heat until bubbles begin to form”). “It costs maybe $1.50, and it’s a really sweet gift,” Gault says.

2. Check company perks. Your company may have retail partners that offer special deals to employees, like a percentage discount at various retailers, movie chains, or museums. But check company policy before you go crazy. Some discounts are for employees’ use only and can’t be applied toward gifts.

3. Surf the Web for the best prices. Comparison-shopping sites search for the best deals online. A standout: NexTag.com, whose price-history feature charts the highest, median, and lowest prices of products, so you know when you’re getting a steal. Its Price Alert feature will e-mail you when the price drops to the level you choose. (A recent good buy: A Cuisinart convection-oven toaster broiler, with a list price of $150, was selling for $115 at press time.) Another resource is Google’s shopping tool, Froogle. Enter the item you’re looking for (be as specific as you can), then click on “Price: Low to High.” And Cairo.com searches off-line deals, from jeans to groceries, in and near your ZIP code.

4. Calculate the extras. When you’re figuring your gift costs, don’t forget to include taxes, gift wrapping, and shipping charges in the amount you’ve set aside. Less than 21 percent of consumers include those expenses when planning their holiday shopping, according to Visa USA research. Adding $15, plus state and local tax, to the cost of each item will help you stay within your budget.

5. Redeem your reward points. Most airline frequent-flier programs allow you to convert miles into magazine subscriptions, dining certificates, or electronics. MilePoint.com converts miles from America West, Continental, Midwest, Hawaiian Airlines, and Northwest into points that can be redeemed for magazine subscriptions (which cost from 300 to 6,000 miles). Credit-card rewards programs also offer gift-worthy loot. Blue from American Express, for example, will let you cash in 5,000 points for a $50 gift card for Pottery Barn or Bloomingdale’s, among other retailers.
6. Stock up on stocks. Get nieces, nephews, and godchildren stock certificates. “People don’t realize how inexpensive it can be,” says Adela Rios, a financial adviser with Merrill Lynch. “Many kids shop at Wet Seal, for example, and that stock has been trading between $2 and $10.” Imax, Atari, and Blockbuster are other relatively inexpensive stocks that might interest kids. Keep in mind that stocks can be volatile, so this is a fun present, but it also might pique kids’ interest in investing. Buy the stock in your account and have the stock certificate issued in the child’s name. Ask your financial-services firm to contact the transfer agent for whatever stock you choose and it will arrange to have the stock certificate sent.

7. Convert loose change. Coinstar offers holiday shoppers a special deal. If you take your pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters to a Coinstar machine and trade them for gift cards from Amazon.com, Hollywood Video, Pier 1 Imports, or Starbucks, you won’t have to pay Coinstar’s usual 9 percent commission. Check www.coinstar.com for a nearby location.

8. Buy in bulk. Holiday hostess gifts — a box of truffles here, some fancy olive oil there — can put a dent in your wallet. Plan ahead by purchasing a case (12 bottles) of an interesting wine, such as an Argentinean Malbec (try Alamos by Nicolas Catena, about $10 a bottle) or a South African Sauvignon Blanc (try Steenberg, $8). “When buying wines by the case, you can often save up to 20 percent,” says Anna Wallner, who with Kristina Matistic wrote The Shopping Bags: Tips, Tricks and Inside Information to Make You a Savvy Shopper (Dutton, $20, www.amazon.com). Ask your liquor store what discount it offers on cases; often you won’t need to buy all the same label to get the price break. Another hostess-friendly gift that can be purchased in discounted volume is coffee. Seattle Gourmet Coffee (www.seattlegourmetcoffee.com) takes 10 percent off orders of five pounds or more. Or buy a large quantity of mixed nuts and wrap small amounts in cellophane (available at your local party-goods store; or at www.perfectpartystore.com, 20 bags for $2.50).

9. Make a group effort. Board games, croquet sets, hammocks — these are presents all ages can enjoy, and one big gift for a family is often less expensive than a bunch of smaller ones. Some families even agree not to exchange presents among the adults, says Jacqueline Whitmore, founder of the Protocol School of Palm Beach, Florida, and the holiday-etiquette expert for Office Depot: “People are usually OK saying, ‘Let’s just give to the children this year.’” Similarly, Peter Post, director of the Emily Post Institute, in Burlington, Vermont, advocates group gifts for the boss. When everyone chips in a few dollars, he says, “you take away competition and any ‘me-against-you’ feeling.”

10. Sock it to them. Choose quantity over quality in stuffing stockings. Dollar stores, drugstore clearance aisles, and party-supply stores are ideal for picking up everything from crayons to little toys. Another cheap thrill: lottery tickets.

11. Recruit your kids. A roll of brown kraft paper or white butcher paper costs under 5 cents a foot (about one-third the cost of regular wrapping paper), and you can use it year-round (try your local craft store or www.centralpack.com, which sells a 1,000-foot roll of white butcher paper for $34.50 and a 1,000-foot roll of kraft paper for $19.50). Spread a roll across the floor and arm your kids with crayons, paint, or rubber stamps. You can even slice a potato or a pear in half and cut out a star shape in lieu of a stamp — just press it to an ink pad. For inexpensive postal wrapping paper, cut open brown-paper grocery bags, turn them inside out, then trim to fit.
Shipping
12. Watch the calendar. Ship packages by ground; upgrading to air costs two to five times more. The domestic standard ground-shipping deadlines for a package to reach its destination by December 25 are:
• U.S. Postal Service (parcel post): at least 7 to 10 days before December 25.
• United Parcel Service (UPS): December 13.
• DHL: December 15.
• Federal Express: December 16.The U.S. Postal Service is the cheapest of the four, but bear in mind that it doesn’t offer free tracking or deals on insurance on its ground packages, as the others do. (UPS, for instance, offers free insurance for the first $100 at which your item is valued.)

13. Keep it light. A box that weighs one pound, for example, costs $4.05 to ship from coast to coast with U.S. Postal Service ground. If it weighs 10 pounds, the price shoots up to $20.25, while a 20-pounder would cost $38.35. Don’t bother with insurance unless you’re shipping something expensive or with sentimental value. (For something valued at $500, insurance costs $6.50.) Also, if you end up shipping by air, pack gifts in the smallest box possible (though experts suggest leaving two inches of cushioning), because you’ll be charged by size as well as weight.

14. Think flat. For last-minute gifts, buy books, DVDs, CDs, gift cards, gloves, and scarves — anything that fits in a U.S. Postal Service flat-rate envelope. Sending them by two-day Priority Mail, which can technically be used until midnight on December 22 (though most post offices close at 5 p.m.), costs $3.85; next-day-delivery Express Mail, which can technically be used until midnight, December 23, costs $13.65.

15. Shop around. Buy gifts from online retailers that offer free shipping. Because most sites don’t offer this freebie all the time, it pays to check coupon sites like Couponhut.com, MonkeyBargains.com, and Savester.com. There you’ll find free-shipping codes, especially in October and November, when sites try to outdo one another with promotions, says Karen Hoxmeier, founder of MyBargainBuddy.com, which lists product information, coupons, and free-shipping services. Some online retailers always offer free shipping, like the shoe site Zappos.com; others offer the perk once you’ve spent a certain amount ($25 for both Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com) — in which case you might decide to make it a one-stop shopping trip. Still others, like Staples.com (during November and December) and Overstock.com (from December 14 to 21), run holiday-only free or deeply discounted shipping promotions. The day after Thanksgiving, Yahoo! Shopping will list free-shipping and special-offer codes among its 250,000 merchants at www.shopping.yahoo.com.

16. Rev your engines. Everyone knows about Orbitz, Expedia, and Travelocity for finding cheap airfares. But newer “meta” travel search engines comb through these and other sites, rooting out even deeper discounts. Run searches for airfares, hotels, and car rentals through FareChase (farechase.yahoo.com, which works with the browsers Safari 1.2 on Macs and Windows Netscape 7.1 on PCs), SideStep (www.sidestep.com), Mobissimo (www.mobissimo.com), and Kayak (www.kayak.com). Each site has a different agreement with airlines, car-rental services, hotels, and independent sites (like CheapTickets.com), so they won’t display the same results. Southwest’s fares won’t show up at all; it is the one major airline that doesn’t participate in these types of programs.

17. Watch your weight. First airlines took away free food. Now they’ve instituted luggage surcharges. Though airlines differ, you can generally check two bags weighing less than 50 pounds each for free on domestic flights. A bag weighing between 50 and 70 pounds usually costs about $25 extra, while luggage over 70 pounds costs about $50. (Bags weighing over 100 pounds will usually not be allowed on the plane.) An extra bag will cost $80. Remember to check with your airline, as these rules can change. To be safe, either ship gifts to your destination (far in advance, so you can use ground shipping) or pack them in two separate, medium-size bags.
Decorating and Entertaining
18. Skip the tree skirt. Instead of buying a fancy tree skirt that makes an appearance once a year, buy or use a tablecloth or a piece of fabric that is four to five yards long. Wrap it around the tree’s base during the holiday season, then wash and reuse it as a tablecloth during the rest of the year.

19. Lighten up. Add sparkle to your decorations with energy-efficient LED holiday lights. They save electricity, last up to 200 times longer than traditional bulbs, and stay lit even when one of the bulbs burns out. Most hardware and home-goods stores carry them, and though the initial cost is higher than that of traditional lights (at www.christmaslightsetc.com, 70 multicolored LEDs cost $18, while 70 multicolored regular lights cost $6), the investment is worth it. “LED lights are far more efficient than incandescents, which translates to bigger savings on your energy bill,” says author Anna Wallner, and they give off less heat than ordinary incandescents. Putting holiday lights on a timer is another easy way to save electricity. To avoid a fire hazard, be sure to turn off all lights when you go to bed or leave your house. While you’re doing your lighting makeover, consider replacing regular bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs ($10 for a six-pack at Home Depot). They illuminate as much as a 60-watt bulb and are similarly shaped but use only 16 watts of energy; they also last for 10,000 hours, 13 times longer than standard bulbs. “You’re saving 44 watts every hour they’re on,” says John Vacher, an energy-efficiency expert at Home Depot. “When you calculate that for all the bulbs in the house, your savings can be quite astonishing.”

20. Switch bubblies. Who needs a pricey New Year’s Champagne when you can raise a glass of Prosecco (a fizzy wine from Italy) or Cava (from Spain), both available at most liquor stores for about $10 a bottle? “They’re sexy and good and don’t cost an arm and a leg,” says Erika Lenkert, author of The Last-Minute Party Girl: Fashionable, Fearless, and Foolishly Simple Entertaining (McGraw-Hill, $15, www.amazon.com). Zardetto Prosecco Brut and Paul Cheneau Cava Brut are good choices.

21. Grab your sweater. For every degree you turn down the heat, you’ll save up to 3 percent on your heating bill, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. A hot-water heater accounts for about 14 percent of a home’s utilities bill, according to the U.S. Department of Energy; setting it at 120 degrees Fahrenheit will “save a significant amount over the season,” says Mary Hunt, editor of the newsletter Debt-Proof Living. But don’t go any lower than that temperature, she adds — it’s the lowest that still kills bacteria in washing machines and dishwashers.

22. Talk cheap. Whether it’s Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa, use your cell phone — not your landline — for bidding family and friends good cheer. Most plans offer free nights and weekends (“free nights,” meaning no minutes are deducted from your plan, start anywhere from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., depending on your carrier). Some also offer free calls when you’re dialing a cell phone from the same carrier, in what’s known as “free mobile-to-mobile.”

23. Take a (tax) break. Before the year speeds to a close, spend a couple of hours gathering gently used items for Goodwill or the Salvation Army and earn a 2006 tax deduction on your donation. Winter-coat drives are another way to donate during the holidays; check the Hands On Network (www.handsonnetwork.org/our-network) for programs in your area. Keep a detailed list of the goods you’ve donated and their estimated values (which depend on location). Some branches offer price guidelines. If yours doesn’t, estimate what each item would fetch at a yard sale. Snap a few photos if you’re donating a considerable amount of goods or an expensive item or two, just in case the IRS comes knocking. Be sure to get a receipt from the charity, too. Use IRS Form 1040, the basic tax return, and Schedule A, the deduction-itemization list, to claim the deduction.
Getting Organized
24. Start a blog. A family blog can cut down on everyone’s long-distance phone bills, and it’s not as complicated as it sounds. Go to Blogger (www.blogger.com) and create a free account, then invite family members to access the blog by clicking “Comment.” You can post a calendar (so no one fights over party dates) and a sign-up sheet for who’s bringing what to the holiday feast. Karli Bertocchi, founder of the organizing service Organized With Style, in Chicago, discovered that a holiday blog saved her money and time when she was arranging her extended family’s holiday last year. “Our family cut down on phone bills and, most important, miscommunication,” she says.

25. Click “send.” No snail-mail addresses? No problem — and no licking envelopes, either, when you send free holiday e-cards. Check sites like www.hallmark.com and www.amazon.com (type “eCards” in the search box); Yahoo! Greetings (www.yahoo.americangreetings.com) also offers some cards gratis. Or, for $8, you can send tasteful animated e-cards from Jacquie Lawson (www.jacquielawson.com) for a year (preview “Christmas Cottage” and “Sugar Plum Fairy” for free). For hipper “season’s greetings,” try iCards (www.apple.com/icards).