Tortoise Happy

If you’re looking for money saving Christmas tips, you’re in the right place. Whether you’re already thinking about Christmas, or avoiding all mention until December, these Christmas tips will help you save money over the festive period.

The first money saving Christmas tip is to get some money saved, if you haven’t already. In our house, we don’t start preparing for Christmas until November, except for the part where we save up the money.  In our first joint budget, around 7 years ago, we came up with a budget of £500 for Christmas and have saved £50 a month, every month, ever since.

We call this our ‘Cost of Christmas budget’. It covers not just gifts, but also additional cost of food, fuel for the car, a real tree, decorations ,cards, and wrap. This gives us an extravagant Christmas but one that we’re happy to pay for. When you work out what your budget should be, make sure you add in all the extras, and not just the cost of presents, as the extra can soon add up.

As we’re constantly prepared from a savings point of view (because we’ve set aside the money throughout the year), from a planning point of view, we don’t have to ruin the magic by starting to buy presents in August.

Key things to remember:

• A budget is not a target. You should treat it as a maximum but aim to spend less.
• Christmas is a single day. In spite of it being the most expensive day of most people’s year, it’s probably only one of a handful of your best days in the year, and those other best days were probably much cheaper (weddings excluded!). That’s if Christmas even makes your list of best days for the year.

If you don’t already have a budget, now is the time to work out how much you can afford to spend, and start putting money aside to pay for it.

My money saving Christmas tips over the next few weeks will help you find savings and suggest things to make Christmas feel special without costing you money. You can find links to all these pages here:

• Use your travel budget to buy gifts on your travels
• Thoughtful gifts that cost less
• Entertaining a lower cost of Christmas
• 50 Christmas Savings

How much do you budget for the cost of Christmas and how do you pay for it?

This is a good tip to help you save money on gifts for Christmas or birthdays AND get something that’s extra special.

If you’re going on holiday between now and Christmas, and the place you’ve visiting is known for something in particular, use your holiday budget to pick up a gift for someone you know who will appreciate it.

How does that save money? Well, it’s usually quite easy to make little alterations to save money on holiday so that you can pick up a gift or two. Those little alterations mean you’ll have picked up a gift that was within your holiday budget, and not your budget for gifts. You will also probably find more authentic and better quality gifts that are cheaper than mass produced versions exported to the UK. It’s a win-win.

Here are just a few examples:

Portugal

If you want to ruin a port lover’s taste for port, bring them a bottle home! They keep the good stuff to themselves, which makes it very difficult and expensive to buy in the UK. This will certainly be a well appreciated gift… partly for how well it suits the recipient, and partly because it means a lot that their gift was on your mind when you were on holiday. If you would have bought port for them for Christmas anyway, you’ll find your money goes further. So you can save yourself some money, or go for a much nicer bottle for the price of a bottle you would have bought at home!

Another speciality is a cherry liqueur called Ginja, this makes for a delicious cherry coke cocktail and a lovely gift!

Belgium

With so many differenct chocolates and beer, you’ll have a hard time staying within your luggage allowance. Whilst these gifts may suit any number of people who you’d normally buy gifts for, try and pick out the one or two people that would particularly appreciate luxurious chocolates or craft beers. If you’re opting for a couple of beers, you can normally get a glass designed specifically for the beer you’re buying too.

 Italy

An obvious choice might be wine (and not a bad choice at all), but if you want to go for something a bit different (or smaller, depending on your luggage allowance), how about a bottle of balsamic vinegar aged for 8 years? Most foodies are gonna be pretty impressed with that on Christmas day.

The longer balsamic vinegar ages for, the sweeter it becomes. 8 year aged balsamic vinegar is perfect with bread and oils, or savoury dishes. For someone with a sweet tooth, opt for 12 or 15 year aged balsamic, which is perfect drizzled over vanilla ice crea and strawberries… If you can bear to part with it yourself!

Cuba

If you’re sunning yourself in cuba, be sure to pick up a bottle of rum! Choosing something like 7 year old Havana Club rum will set you back around $11, or if you wait until you get home, it will cost more like £20!

The thing to remember is to buy a gift for the person who will love it. It can be tempting to buy something that an area is famous for. Beautiful though placemats hand crocheted by a grandmother in Greece might be, its unlikely your brother will thank you for them!

This isn’t just about choosing a perfect, thoughtful gift, it’s also about helping you to save money. Don’t forget to deduct any costs you spend on gifts using your holiday budget from the Christmas budget, and use that money to pay off debt, add to your emergency fund or top up your investments.

What do you recommend to buy as a gift and from which countries? Do you have other ways of protecting your Christmas budget by making alterations elsewhere?

You can reduce the cost of Christmas by buying thoughtful gifts that cost less. Those glossy catalogues, glittering Christmas displays, and tempting 3 for 2 deals seem to be promising the same, but do they really offer thoughtful gifts and do they help you save money? Check out these 3 ways that I buy thoughtful gifts that cost less.

1. Don’t opt for luxury for the sake of it; know who you’re buying for

It’s tempting to splash out at Christmas, but it could be just wasted money if your recipient doesn’t appreciate it.

Here’s an example. My mum loves bars of soap. That’s right, bars of soap.  For years, I bought  various beautiful hand made soaps with expensive ingredients and delicate scents. As someone who gets more excited about the gifts I give than receive, I always felt disappointed in my mum’s gift and thought it was because I was choosing something so dull.

That was until I stopped and really thought about it. She loves to lather her hands in soap and warm water, but she felt guilty luxuriating with expensive handmade soap. So one year, I bought a random selection of bars of soap. I included things like imperial leather, dove, simple, and various other normal soaps, and presented them as a ‘soap selection box’ using a shoe box. When she opened it, she was beaming, gently getting them all out and popping them back in again. She genuinely loved the gift, and I realised that I’d been choosing fancy, luxurious gifts that looked good, but weren’t exactly what my mum wanted.

It was the moment I realised I need to stop looking at those glossy Christmas catalogues for ideas and first think what the person would truly love. This could be a great way of buying thoughtful gifts that cost less.

2. Don’t feel you have to spend the same on everyone

Do you know the story of the monkey mother who split a banana in two and gave it to each of her two monkey children? One monkey complained that his sibling had got the bigger piece, so the mother took a bite. Then, the other monkey complained that the first monkey now had a bigger piece, so the mother took a bite of that side too. This kept going, until she had eaten the whole banana.

It’s easy for that to happen at Christmas, where a present for a child, parent or sibling cost more than for another, so you buy something to make up the difference. Then someone has two presents, so you buy another small present, so you give the same in value and volume to both/ all.

We have an average ‘per person’ budget for Christmas, but we don’t have to spend the same on everyone. Not anymore at least. I realised I would buy something that cost a few pounds more for my mum, so I’d get my dad something else. That would take him over what I’d bought my mum, so then I’d buy something else.

I’ve experienced this myself from my own incredibly generous friends and relatives, and it often means you have presents that you don’t really need or use.

It’s better to get a single thoughtful gift that the recipient will appreciate, than lots of bits and bobs that they have to find somewhere to store. And it’s another way of choosing thoughtful gifts that cost less.

3. Beware 3 for 2 offers

3 for 2 offers sound like a good way of buying gifts for less, but is it really?

Christmas gift sets tend to only be available at 1 time of year: Christmas! What does that tell you? To me, it suggests one of two things:

1. There is no demand for them year round because people neither want nor need them, or they offer poor value.
2. People receive so many of these 3 for 2 sets that they last the whole year, when they receive a whole load more.

Since we’re on 3 for 2 offers, I’ll throw in a 3^rd option for free. Perhaps they all contain something that people don’t use that much of and will get wasted. Like a “handy” shower rack or yet another body lotion.

So rather than head into the gift section and before you get dazzled by beautiful, glossy Christmas brochures, think about who you’re buying for, and what they’d really like. If it’s a selection of items from a food, cosmetics of toiletries range, what specifically do they use? What would would they love as a gift? If you come to the conclusion that the person you’re buying a gift for genuinely does use the same amount of body lotion as shower gel (because every toiletries set seems to come with both), and a set is cheaper than individual items, then maybe a gift set in a 3 for 2 deal is perfect.

I’ve got a feeling that you’ll find more thoughtful gifts that cost less by avoiding 3 for 2 deals. This has certainly been the case for me!

If you’re trying to eat well on a budget, it’s easy to put the ‘budget’ before the ‘eating well’. Check out this list of 10 cheap fruits to help you eat well for less.

It’s more difficult to find cheap fruit than it is to find cheap vegetables, but it’s also supposed to be better to eat more vegetables than fruit anyway.

It’s even more difficult to work out which fruits are cheap, because lots of fruits don’t have a price per weight, only per item. I’ve tried to pick the ones that do have a price per weight or where I could take an educated guess about the likely weight and relative value. Just like with the last post on vegetables, I thought up a load of fruits, added them to a shopping list on mysupermarket and had a look for which fruits you could get more of for your money! The prices were sometimes per 100 grams, sometimes per kilogram, and sometimes per fruit. Where possible, I’ve included the price in kilograms to make it easier to compare.

It then made me think, how would you know what the cost of the portion size would be? Well, according to Change4Life, a fruit portion size equates to approximately 80g. A portion of dried fruit is 30g, and 150ml of fruit juice also equates to one of your 5 a day.

So, here’s my list of 10 cheap fruits. Every single one comes in at £1.50 per kilogram or less!

These were based on prices at Asda, September 2016. Prices may be even cheaper in Aldi or Lidl, but in case you don’t have one near you, hopefully you’ll still at least be able to get some bargain veg!

1. Cucumber

42p per whole cucumber. Technically, cucumber is a fruit, so this made the list, and is a very reasonable 42p for a whole cucumber. A well as including in salads, you can eat cucumber sticks as a healthy snack between meals!

2. Bananas

68p per kilo. Apparently, Bananas these are the biggest seller for the US supermarket Walmart! They’re such a convenient fruit, packed with potassium and easy to eat on the go.

3. Orange juice from concentrate

69p per litre. Fruit juice (150ml per day) can be counted as one of your 5 a day, so this is an inexpensive and tasty way to easily add another fruit to your total.

4. Kiwi

69p for a pack of 6/ 11.5p per per fruit. With small fruit like kiwi, a portion size would be 2 kiwis, so the cost per portion is 23p. That seems like a reasonable price for a fruit that makes your day that little more exotic!

5. Peaches

80p per kilo. This price is based on a tin of peaches, which is always useful to have in your cupboard as it has a long shelf life and means your less likely to have fruit going off and having to be thrown away.

6. Passata

Another cheat, but tomatoes are technically a fruit and only 80p per kilo. Tinned tomatoes and passata are more or less the same price, and are 80% of the way to a nice easy pasta sauce.

7. Pears

A bag of conference pears comes in at the super low price of 83p per kilo. Maybe its because they’re in season, but these cost way less than apples right now, which feature in many trolleys every week.

8. Plums

Pick up a punnet of juicy plums. If you opt for a larger punnet, it will only cost you £1.13 per kilo (or £1.25 per kilo for the smaller punnet).

9. Sultanas

£1.38 per kilo. These are  over the £1 mark, but these are actually a bargain. Unlike fresh fruit, which 1 serving size is around 80g, with dried fruit, a serving size is 30g! You could eat these as a snack between meals, or kick of your day with a handful sprinkled in your cereal, or with yoghurt and granola- yummy!

10. Apples

£1.36 per kilo. Though technically cheaper than sultanas, as a fresh fruit the portion size is bigger, so they don’t offer quite as good value. As they say, an apply a day keeps the doctor away…

So there’s my list of 10 cheap fruits. And I’m going to throw an 11^th in there; grapes. We’ve skyrocketed up to £3 per kilo and there are lots of fruits in between. But grapes really go head to head with blueberries, so before you shell out for these at £11.54 per kilo, you might be better going for the grapes that have almost the same health benefits.

So there’s my list of 10. It was much tougher to find cheap fruits than cheap vegetables, so if you’re really looking to save more money, opt for more vegetables.

Whoever you are and whatever you situation, if you’re trying to repay debt, live on a low income, save for your future or just want more cash to spend on swanky cars, this is a great list of 10 cheap fruits to help you eat healthily without spending a fortune.

Do you have any cheap fruit that you’d add to the list or tips to get more fruit into your diet?