Let me be real with you……. The holidays are not easy for me right now and I feel like a little retail therapy does help the downers of this time of year. But when you have a budget how do you shop smart on a budget? Well I have some tips and secrets for you.
Being a military spouse I am usually far from most of my family on the west coast and the past 4 years I am over 2000 miles from them. This makes it hard because my family has so many crazy different traditions that they all do. Usually I hop from house to house for thanksgiving and plan my day and meals accordingly; who has the best appetizers, desserts or main course spread. Listen, I love food and who doesn’t but food is my enemy most times because the older I get the more difficult it is to keep the food from destroying my figure.
Christmas is also tough because getting cool little treasures in the mail just ins’t the same as sharing the moment with the family member who is sharing such a gift with you. Yes, I know it’s not all about the gifts and sometimes I have been known to go way overboard when Christmas is not supposed to be about the gifts, but I didn’t have much growing up so I try to give my children those great gift opening memories. Am I so wrong?
This year I have to strategically plan my gift giving on a very tight budget. With our recent move even further Northeast I had to quit my wonderful job and become unemployed and living off one income. So I came up with a plan……. I would try to do all of my shopping based on clearance items or using coupons very wisely.
I started about a month ago and I discovered that I can find some pretty good deals if you let me go to Target, Walmart or CVS without the kids…. it’s like a spa trip. Relaxing, quiet, you can just do what you want for as long as you want without a 3 year old tugging at your leg halfway through your trip telling you he has to poop.
Most of my shopping is now done in the clearance isle these days. Yes, it takes time rummaging through the items and everything is a scattered mess but it’s worth the hassle. Most recently I found a huge deal at Walgreens in their Halloween clearance isle. They had a huge Nightmare Before Christmas display in the middle that was not marked as clearance and there was 2 other ladies clearing out the Halloween stuff that was marked down by 90%! So as I have learned; do a price check on anything you are unsure about. I took one Nightmare Before Christmas item off the display up to the register to be scanned; it was a nice hardback journal with over 100 pages and it displayed Jack Skellington on the front, and the clerk rang it up and to my surprise this $4.99 item was only $0.49! So without disrupting the other Clearance shoppers in the isle I discreetly went back to the display and started loading up my cart as quickly and quietly as I can. Then after I had almost cleared off the display they looked at me and said, “Oh, those are clearance too?” I replied with, “Yes, but I am not taking it all so you are welcomed to the rest.” They were very impressed with my haul.
After ringing up over $390 worth of stuff retail, I paid just under $30!
These items were not Halloween themed so they are great Christmas Gifts this year on a budget. I even scored an awesome Jack and Sally salt and pepper shaker set! (picture of the haul below)
I am very frugal when I have to be. The Walmart app on my iPhone also helps me score some amazing deals. I use the scanner feature in the app to scan as I shop and most times the price reflected is not what scans. Most times its significantly cheaper. I usually start in the clearance isles.
This year I have bought a 22″ touchscreen HP all-in-one computer for just $159, worth over $600 (which I am typing on now). It was a display but it was missing the keyboard and well in my house we somehow always have extra keyboards laying around. I also got 2 Dell computer towers both for $200. Worth over $500 each. (these were needed because in a week my mother-in-law is moving in and she loves to play her games online). And almost free suitcase sets, 2 ninja coffee bar systems scanned at $40 each (one for me so I quit Starbucks and one for my daddy for Christmas), 2 mini Fuji Instax cameras for $15 each, Outdoor Halloween displays, handful of costume kits that can be reused and save us money each year, and a $40 Serta full-size mattress with free shipping (online).
Sometimes online and in-store deals seem to good to be true but they happen and you just have to be diligent in your search and talk to a store manager if you see an item on display with an unreal low price. Most state retail rules are they have to at least offer one of the item with the display if it was a store error.
I can’t promise you will score all the amazing deals that I did, but your fist score may trigger a huge addiction. But be smart… only buy the things you really need because if you go clearance shopping every day just to go, you may end up over spending on your budget.
Be smart, Be frugal, and HAVE FUN!
