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Thrifty Christmas Thursday

If you didn’t go shopping for the deep holiday discounts yesterday, you’re going to want to snap to it! You can pick up all sorts of otherwise expensive holiday decor at tremendous discounts if you can get them before they break out all of the Valentine’s Day merchandise.

Frugality

Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
~Benjamin Franklin

This is a great virtue for Christmas. So many people spend so much on frivolous things, bad habits and actual addictions. Apply the measuring stick to any expense:

• Is this absolutely necessary for me to have?
• Does this expense help someone in a specific way?
• Is this wasteful spending?

There are so many ridiculous things to burn your money on all year round but around the holidays the possible wastes explode like New Year’s fireworks. So many people go deeply into debt trying to put on airs, compete with others or to attempt to fill the emptiness in their lives with temporary things.

It takes time to make money, so you have to consider that whenever you waste your money on useless things you are actually wasting all the time it took you to earn the money to buy that stuff. The hours, days and weeks it took to earn the money or the weeks, months and years it will take from your future to pay off those credit cards are going right down the drain.

Ask yourself, is this purchase worth hours or even days of your life? Looking at things in this way can help you practice frugality until it comes naturally to you.

Loving Leftovers

One of the great things about the holidays is all of the parties and family feasts. If you have a lot of leftovers, you can do a lot more creative things with them than simply reheating them in their original state. With a little creativity, you can switch it up and make an entirely different meal from the very same ingredients.

Turkey and ham are the most common Christmas dinner foods. Even though people bemoan the abundance of turkey around Thanksgiving and Christmas, there are ways to rehabilitate these holiday staples:

• Shred it, spice it, brown it and put it in a taco shell
• Rip it up, heat it up and get it in some BBQ sauce to put  on a burger bun
• Dice it, spice it, get it in a stir-fry
• Dice it, marinate it, put it on a salad
• Chip it, fry it, serve it over toast

That’s just the main dish. You can repurpose the vegetables, cranberry sauce, stuffing and whatever is on hand. You can do stuffed turkey breast sandwiches. You can mince the whole berry sauce and add it to a vinaigrette for a seasonal specialty salad dressing. Vegetable sides can be incorporated in a stir-fry with or without the turkey or ham.

Think outside the gravy boat when reworking your holiday leftovers. Instead of griping about an eternity of turkey, you can look forward to a new flavor every day until you run out.

Post-Christmas Discounts

Smart shoppers know that the deals you get after Christmas are often even better than the ones on Black Friday. Why? Well, whatever didn’t sell before Christmas is still a drag on their bottom line. They need to unload merchandise and they need to unload it now.

We’ve all heard the stories about how the hot items of the year sell out before Christmas. Cabbage Patch Dolls, Beany Babies, X-Box 360, iPhones and all sorts of things were the items that people were frothing at the mouth and elbowing each other in the heads to get. The premise of Jingle All The Way is based on a workaholic dad who forgets to get his son THE hottest action figure of the year. That’s the enduring seasonal myth.

The truth is, most retailers stockpile all of the hottest items of the year and roll them out periodically to boost sales throughout the holiday season in order to maximize profits. It sounds crazy that they can maximize profits by offering merchandise for 50-75% discount, but the discount only applies to specific items under specific circumstances and there are almost always collateral purchases.

If you think about it, somebody who wants to get a big screen TV for a quarter of the usual price will often be drawn in by the various discounts throughout the store. Accessories for the TV, such as surround sound speaker systems and Roku will be there to tempt collateral purchases. As they work their way through the store, they’ll see seasonal items on the end caps and all the things they haven’t gotten around to picking up. Since they’re saving so much on the TV, it occurs to them that they’ve got money left over for clothing, cookware or even sundries. Any money that wouldn’t have otherwise been spent, turns into end of year profits for the retailers.

Be a wise shopper. Plan your purchases and apply Benjamin Franklin’s guidelines to frugality to keep your Christmas merry and your New Year happy.