It’s About Time!:

A Simple Strategy for Saving on Gifts

by Lara Krupicka

Everyone is looking for ways to cut spending these days. And few areas are more likely to be affected than the area of gift giving, particularly when it comes to those gifts of appreciation that we so often give during the holidays. Yet shopping the sales and looking for bargains is not the only way to cut gift costs and may not even be the best way. What if I told you there was one thing you could do that would not only save you money on gifts, but also cut down on the time and stress involved? Would you do it?

Timing and Gift Giving
You see, we are creatures of habit, or more nicely put, people of tradition. And in our society, tradition says that you show your appreciation with gifts (such as teacher gifts and thank-you’s to doctors, hairdressers and other service providers) around Christmastime. But as our list of social obligations has grown, the burden, both in terms of finances and time, has increased as well. Too often we spend the month of December harried and stressed by the long list of gifts we need to get (and wrap and deliver, not to mention all the goodies we have to make and parties we have to attend). It’s not an ideal arrangement, and yet many of us continue to operate that way. But what if we didn’t? What if we decided to give our appreciation gifts at another time of year? Perhaps there is another model that we could follow that would work better and save us money.  <Read more>