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financegirl on Apr 8th 2008 at 7:42 pm Frugality, Spending

A Guilt-Free Way to Reduce the Gift Budget and Snowflake the Difference

Tell me if this sounds familiar:

You’re planning on giving your sister a $20 birthday present - probably a DVD that she’s been wanting. You get to the store, and the DVD is on sale for $9.99. “Great,” you think, “Now I can buy her the DVD and a CD.”

Stop right there.

If you want to get out of debt, you need to gift at retail price. This means that if you can find something that’s worth $20, but on sale for $10, you stop shopping and snowflake the newly found $10 to your debt.

The recipient will never know, and you won’t have to feel guilty about cutting your gift budget.

(This post was included in the Festival of Frugality, hosted by Rather be Shopping)

Photo Credit: Closeup of a gift tag by ashleyg, used under Creative Commons licensing

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5 responses so far

5 Responses to “A Guilt-Free Way to Reduce the Gift Budget and Snowflake the Difference”

  1. # stacion Apr 9th 2008 at 11:32 am

    I did this last weekend. I found an outfit for my friends daughters 1st birthday. I got the gift for 10.57 and put 9.43 in the EF. :) Smart shoppers unite! lol.
    -nklsmom

  2. # financegirlon Apr 9th 2008 at 11:43 am

    Exactly - I just did this for a friend’s son’s 1st birthday too. Was expecting to pay $20 and bought a toy on sale for $15.

  3. # mydailydollarson Apr 9th 2008 at 1:21 pm

    Good point! It is easy to think about gifting by a dollar amount rather than by the item. I’m going to start shifting my thinking on this!

  4. # gradgirlon Apr 9th 2008 at 5:58 pm

    I have never thought about this before, but I totally get what you’re saying!

  5. # ldubon Apr 9th 2008 at 6:37 pm

    definitely a good way to think of it… i’ve been doing a terrible job lately of the actual snowflaking, instead ending up being like, “i’ve been SO good for months on end, i should totally use that $3 to get a tasty scone…” must hit reset button!

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