A Holiday Gift Wrapped With Thought and Thrift

Rather than spend hundreds of dollars on gifts, my friend's family has a money-saving holiday ritual that produces thoughtful presents with minimal cost. My friend selected her sister's name from a hat as part of a Secret Santa gift exchange for the adults in their immediate family.

The sister -- a mother with two young children -- really loves Yoga, but has not been able to find a class near her home. As a holiday gift, my friend tracked down an affordable series of Yoga classes offered by a studio near her sister's home. In addition, to purchasing a gift certificate for a few sessions, she also bought a Yoga mat for her sister.

Next, she created a large poster featuring the gift certificate and rolled the poster into the mat. The entire gift cost $40 to $50.

When she told me about Yoga gift package, I was impressed with the amount of thought and effort used to put together a creative holiday gift. What's more, she picked out a present that will really mean something to her sister. It's a gift that will definitely be used and appreciated.

She could afford to spend the time and attention on a single gift because the Secret Santa gift exchange ritual eliminated the need to buy presents for every family member.


Here's how the system works:

1. Settle on a Price Tag: My friend's family, for example, set a price limit of $40 to $50 per gift. They wanted a price target that was high enough to purchase a substantial gift, but low enough to avoid a financial hardship for the Secret Santa participants.

2. Hold a drawing: Every adult in the family entered their name into a hat and selected a name from the drawing.

3. Shop and exchange: Wrapped gifts are exchanged at a designated time and place. A potluck holiday party provides an ideal time for a gift exchange.

How to Fill Your Shopping Cart & Spend Less

Whether we are browsing for home accessories or clothing for your children, shopping can be expensive. But Kathy Luisi, a Central Florida mother of four boys, has created and tested a frugal shopping system.

Her shopping trips begin with an empty cart. Without much attention to price tags, Luisi fills her basket with anything and everything that catches her eye, including gadgets for the home or clothes.

''I go through the motions of picking it up and looking at it,'' Luisi says. "I walk around the store [with the merchandise] and I feel like I own it.''
But before she hits the checkout line, reality settles in. Luisi seriously considers the items in her cart and usually discovers that essentials account for only 25 percent.

''Then I put the rest back,'' Luisi says.

This system, she says, offers a cure for the fleeting sense of ''I-gotta-have-it'' that typically hits in stores or malls. Pushing around a cart of fanciful garments and gadgets satisfies the craving for new merchandise without the expense of a full-blown shopping trip.

Here are some holiday shopping tips from the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast:

• Establish a budget. Find and stick to your financial boundaries for holiday purchases, decorating and travel.

• Trim your gift list. Give friends, family and co-workers a reality check by agreeing to cut back on the cost of gifts. Set price limits or find other ways to celebrate, including parties or homemade presents.

• Shop at nontraditional stores. Thrift stores, consignment shops and antique stores offer a range of merchandise, including one-of-a-kind items that may be perfect for a friend or relative.

• Look for the best deals. Coupons, promotions and rebates are available if you shop online or in stores.
______________

How to Celebrate Like a Budget Santa: Ideas From Kiplinger's

"Given our current economic woes, some parents may find their holiday budgets tighter than ever this year. So how can you get your kids to cut back their wish lists and expectations? Kiplinger’s Personal Finance deputy editor Janet Bodnar offers these 4 tips:

· Set (or adapt) your own customs. Every family has unique traditions. One idea is to set a rule that the kids get one special gift from Santa and several smaller ones from Mom and Dad. The kids are happy to accept that.
· Ask the kids to make choices. If you have to cut back, use this as a learning experience for your children. Once they've made their holiday wish list, have them pare it down to the top five things they most want. Older kids can even compare prices in catalogs or online.
· Be creative. Encourage the kids to consider alternative holiday gifts. Perhaps one big family present for everyone—say, that new flat-screen TV you're willing to splurge on. Or thoughtful gifts of service or time: taking over little Johnny's dog-walking duties for a month, or a one-on-one movie date with Mom or Dad.
· Get Santa on your side. Tell the children that you and Santa are a team (his investments have no doubt gone south, too). He's not about to go against your wishes by bringing a gift that you'd rather they not have." -- source: Janet Bodnar’s “Putting Santa on a Budget”

Hunting for Deep Discounts & Thrifty Gifts at Post-Holiday Sales

From home decorations to costumes, post-holiday sales offer great bargains. For that reason, I prefer to buy costumes and masks in November, Thanksgiving dinner table decorations in December and holiday presents in January.

It's a shopping strategy I learned from my grandmother, who stocked up on Halloween candy long after the last trick-or-treaters had gone home. Post-holiday discounts are compelling. Typically, holiday-themed merchandise is sold at half price days after the holiday, with markdowns falling to 70 percent to 95 percent of the full retail price within two to three weeks after a holiday.

Last November, for instance, we purchased an angel costume for my daughter -- complete with gold wings and a halo -- for about $5 from Target, down from the full price of about $20. She wore the ensemble for a costume party in March. Halloween sales also provide a great opportunity to stock up on orange dessert plates, black napkins and candy, which can be used at parties throughout the year. Likewise, scary merchandise -- skulls, witches and ghost -- can be purchased and saved to create a spooky atmosphere at backyard summer carnivals and birthday parties.

Discounted cloth napkins, centerpieces and holiday-themed serving dishes can be stored for coming years. Every year, for example, my parents set the table with Thanksgiving accessories saved from year to year. What's more, some holiday merchandise -- without symbols or other holiday markings -- can be used year-round. I have post-holiday place mats and cloth napkins in seasonal colors that brighten my table in the summer and spring.

My family, however, has made some post-holiday shopping errors. Based on those mistakes, I offer these tips:

• Show restraint. Mesmerized by a 95 percent off post-Halloween sale, last year we purchased a Star Wars Yoda costume for our dog. He hated the getup.
• Watch the calendar. As time passes, sale merchandise gets really picked over. It's a balance between getting the best price and purchasing merchandise you really need.
• Look for expiration dates. One year, my grandmother purchased Halloween candy that was filled with worms. The candy was returned.


______________

Here's how to buy my new book:

@ Amazon.com
@ Barnes & Noble
@ Borders
@ Target.com

A Frugal, Flexible & Creative Gift Registry: Community Group Offers Free Alternatives for Gifts

Wedding guests spend about $19 billion annually on gifts selected from bridal registries, according to The Knot, a wedding planning resource.

There are ways to get the gifts you want, be it for a bridal shower or baby shower, and let the givers be frugal and green.

Hardware stores and specialty stores are two options for unusual gift registries. Another is the Alternative Gift Registry from the consumer group Center for a New American Dream.

Registration is free and users can request merchandise from any retailer such as an energy-efficient toaster from Target, organic-cotton sheets from Bloomingdales or a handmade vase from a small gallery.

But whether you sign up for the Alternative Gift Registry at http://www.newdream.org/ or generate your own wish list to e-mail to your friends, the site provides a wealth of gift ideas.

For weddings, consider:
• Recipe cards: Engaged couples request recipes for easy-to-prepare meals that can be cooked in a crock pot or in simple steps.
• Green appliances: Couples can direct wedding guests to the federal Energy Star website, (http://www.energystar.gov/) for a list of energy-efficient appliances, their names and model numbers. Use search engines to locate places where they're sold.

For baby gifts, consider:
• Used clothes: New Dream's registry lets parents request gently used clothing for infants and toddlers.
• Baby-sitting services: Use the registry to line up friends and relatives to help out for date nights and other outings. Specify an amount of hours and the registry will let browsers know when the time quota has been filled.
• Meals: With a new baby, who has time to cook? The registry provides space for home cooks to sign up to provide new parents one or more free meals.

This is from my latest column in the home & design section of the Miami Herald.

______________

My Mom Fired Her Holiday Presents

This year was a bit unusual. My mom did not hit the malls for holiday presents. She hit and fired up clay instead. Large clumps of clay were flattened, rolled, pressed, imprinted and even tossed on the floor. That’s how my mom describes her holiday gift activities.

Clearly, my mom has had her manicured hands full creating terracotta angels and glazed salad bowls. That’s because she has four adult kids, who celebrate three different holidays. Consider the evidence: My younger sisters celebrate Christmas; my brother, a fellow blogger and a philosophical man with waist-length dredlocks, celebrates Kwanzaa, and I celebrate Chanukah.

My parents —Ben and Barbara Harvey (in the pictures) —have a very busy holiday season. With such children, my parents have learned seasonal flexibility. Like clay, they mold their holiday cheer with shape-shifting adaptability.

So it’s just perfect that my mom retreated to a pottery studio to make holiday presents. She says that shaping clay is good physical therapy for her hands, which were fractured last year. Hitting clay, she says, is also good for anger management, which is not her issue, but appears to be something that other pottery makers in her workshop are working through. Handmade pottery has now become another holiday tradition for my family.

Since my childhood, the family rituals of the holiday season have meant a lot to my parents. Christmas meant Nat King Cole singing about “chestnuts roasting over an open fire.” Christmas was the smell of chocolate chip Slice’n Bake Pillsbury cookies baking in our oven and the scent of a fresh pine tree in the front room. And on Christmas Eve, we’d decorate that tree with red, green and gold balls on hooks, strings of multi-colored electric lights and painted wooden ornaments, including the little blue moon that my parents bought when I was a baby.

Everything leading up to Christmas was magic, even the Sears catalogue, which was packed with a thick toy selection. Every page had something we wanted. My brother Ben Jr., and our little sisters, Karen and Debbie, spent hours studying the toys.

“Make a list,” Mom or Dad told me when I was about seven and we still lived in Philadelphia. I was in the middle bedroom and the Sears catalogue was on my lap. Bengy was about five; Karen and Debbie were pre-schoolers; I took their orders as they pointed to toys on the glossy pages. The list was for “Santa,” and M&D promised to mail it off to him. “We’re his helpers,” they always told us with such pride.

This year in the pottery studio, my mom again molded herself into Santa’s helper. The process involves far more than I ever imagined. In addition, to pummeling clay, pottery also demands finesse and creativity.

For example, to create textured wings for a terracotta angel my mother used a piece of crocheted cloth and imprinted the fabric into the soft clay. Likewise, the leaves from a palm tree were pressed into service in order to mold a large salad bowl.

That process – like parenting — also demands patience and time. Before going into the oven, each piece requires at least three coats of glaze and it’s a real wait-and-see process.

“In between coats, we use a hairdryer to dry out the glaze,” mom says. “It takes patience.”

As a pottery student, my mother was especially impressed with the patience shown by her teacher, the Ever-Patient Phyllis in the Heritage Isle Club House.

"She gave us all individualized instructions and attention," my mom says.

My parents, however, know a bit about patience. My siblings and I were raised with equal doses of special attention, instruction and care.

The molding process is also a lesson in frugality. Every bit of clay is used or recycled for other projects that are twisted, snapped and pounded into shape.

“We never throw away extra clay. Everything is recycled,” my mom says. “You add piece by piece and you work it out.”

During the process, my mother has worked out the little idiosyncrasies that makes us unique and she has designed each piece to match the quirks of the designated recipient. For my youngest sister, a religious Christian, my mother created a brown cherub with textured wings.

For my new-age brother with the long dredlocks, my mother created a large blue salad bowl for his leafy green meals. And for my middle sister, a sales executive in the Orlando hospitality industry, mom made a beautiful showcase bowl that will look elegant on a coffee table or a display case.

And of course, my mom has made a piece for me. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m guessing that maybe she’s fashioned candle sticks for my Sabbath table, a small menorah for my children to light next Chanukah or maybe an elegant salad bowl. But the gift doesn’t matter, because she’s already given me this narrative as a holiday bonus.

Sharon Harvey Rosenberg is the author of The Frugal Duchess of South Beach:How to Live Well and Save Money Anywhere You Live, which will be published in May of 2008 by DPL Press. This piece includes an excerpt from that book.

_____________

Digg!

Uncle Sam’s “Stocking Stuffers:” A Guest Post From a CPA

Cash gifts to friends? Food bank donations? Those are a few of the year-end tax gift ideas suggested in this guest post prepared by Rosamaria Bravo, partner at Morrison, Brown, Argiz & Farra, one of the largest accounting firms in Florida.


Here's her list of year-end holiday treats with a tax bonus:

"Give to clients (or customers): You can deduct these, but keep in mind that deductions are generally limited to $25 per person.

Give to family and friends: By taking advantage of the Gift Tax Annual Exclusion, you can buy gifts for family members and others (up to $12,000 annually) without any tax implications. Remember to purchase these prior to year end to take advantage of the 2007 exclusion.

• Hang on to your receipts: Individuals can deduct either state income taxes or sales taxes incurred from gift buying, under the Sales Tax deduction. Keep receipts of purchases of all the gifts you make to substantiate your claims. In most instances, the actual sales tax paid will exceed the amount calculated using the IRS tables.



• Give to your favorite charity: Make charitable contributions before year’s end and you can make the deduction on your 2007 tax return. But remember: the IRS has developed stricter substantiation requirements for charitable deductions. Contributions of $250 or more require a written receipt from the charity, and every cash donation must be supported by a canceled check, credit card receipt or written communication from the charity.



• Contribute to your retirement: Consider it a gift to your (future) self! Contributions made to retirement plans are excluded from income, and you can reduce your tax liability by contributing the maximum amounts. 401K (maximum is $15,500) contributions must be made before year’s end, but contributions to other plans can be made after December 31 and still qualify as a 2007 contribution.



• Donate to Your Local Food Drive: Not only are you giving to a good cause, but you’re eligible for the Enhanced Charitable Deductions for Contribution of Food Inventory.



• Donate Property: Generally, if you donate property with a fair market value lower than your cost basis, you can’t claim a loss. But if you sell the asset and deduct the loss, you can use the proceeds of the sale to then donate as a gift to charity (i.e. Contribution of Property with a Built-in Loss).
  

source: Rosamaria Bravo, partner at Morrison, Brown, Argiz & Farra

~~~~
Previous Posts

Today:
Airhead vs Workaholic: What I Learned about Money from Writing a Book

Yesterday:
Wait 'Til January & Other Great Last-Minute Shopping Tips
Free Online Typing Drills: 10 Frugal Business & Craft Classes
Frugal & Green Rx for Post-Holiday Cabin Fever
______________