Almost everyone enjoys the Christmas holidays, but buying gifts at this time of year can really strain your bank account, and that can take some of the fun out of the season. Fortunately, you can find ways to save money without sacrificing a lot.

Here are three ideas for saving money during the Christmas season.

Find Online Discounts
Your local shopping mall is not always the best place to look for deals. It’s too tempting to purchase items you see without comparing prices. Shopping online, on the other hand, gives you time to compare prices using sites such as BizRate.com or to look for coupon codes.

You can easily find coupon codes online that will help you save money during the holidays, or you can look for holiday-specific coupons and Christmas discounts at sites such as Christmas Coupons 365.com. This site lists coupons and deals for hundreds of popular stores and makes it easy for you to save money on gifts for everyone on your list.

Another way to save money online is to search for cheap gift suggestions. For example, here are 5 gifts under $5.

Create Personalized Gifts
If you’re craft-challenged like me, you might be tempted to skip this section, thinking that you don’t have the skills to make your own gift. Not so! Thanks to the power of the Internet, you can make personalized gifts with virtually no talent at all. If you’re making something personalized, you might feel ok spending less than you would on a generic gift? You can create mugs, shirts, iPhone and iPad covers, and much more on Zazzle and personalize them with your own photos, artwork and/or text.

Cut Down Your Gift List
One of the most obvious ways to save money is to buy fewer gifts. If you’re the generous type who likes to buy gifts for everyone, from your child’s teacher to the postal carrier, you can save money simply by cutting down your gift list or changing the way you give gifts.

For instance, if you’re from a large family and your family tradition is to buy one gift for everyone, including all the adult relatives, it might be time to suggest drawing names for the holidays. Rather than everyone buying gifts for every other adult relative, each person draws a name and then only buys one gift for that person, so each adult receives one gift, while children can continue to reap the rewards from multiple aunts, uncles, grandparents and so on.

With a little forethought, you can still give wonderful gifts and save money with a couple small changes.

Revised with permission from ,a href=”http://lisa42.hubpages.com/hub/Cheap-Christmas-Gift-Strategies”>Cheap Christmas Gift Strategies on HubPages.

As Christmas approaches every year, children work extra hard to make sure they’re on Santa’s Nice List. The fear of finding coal in your stocking rather than great toys and gifts under the Christmas tree is enough to keep most kids on their best behavior. Hopefully, that behavior continues after the holidays, and one great way to both recognize good behavior and encourage it all year long is to make sure your kids know they’re on Santa’s Nice List.

Here are some ways to show your kids that their good behavior has paid off.

The easiest way to let your children know they’ve made it to Santa’s Nice List is to send a personalized letter from Santa Claus with a Nice List certificate enclosed. You can get Nice List certificates from most companies selling Santa letters, or you can save money by creating your own printable Santa letters and Santa’s Nice List certificate at home. Creating your own personalized letters from Santa Claus ensures that St. Nick will say exactly the right things. It also gives you control over when and how Santa’s letter arrives.

Another way to make sure your children know they’ve made it to Santa’s Nice List is to send a free Santa message video in which Santa shows who is on his Nice List. You can can create a free video from Santa at Portable North Pole.

You can also surprise your kids with their own personalized Santa’s Nice List Christmas tree ornaments from Zazzle. Santa loves to leave these special ornaments on Christmas morning when he delivers all the other gifts for good girls and boys.

Kids will love getting these extra goodies from Santa. They remind your kids that Santa always knows when they’ve been bad or good, so hopefully they’ll continue to be good, for goodness sake.

Selecting the perfect holiday gift for friends and acquaintances can be difficult, particularly if the person is someone you don’t know very well. And if your budget is already tight during the holidays, the problem becomes even more difficult.

Christmas gift cookies or other baked goods are an inexpensive yet personal solution to many gift-giving dilemmas. And they’re easy on the budget, too!

Homemade candies, holiday cookies and treats can be a perfect present. After all, everyone enjoys eating. Even Santa Claus loves it when people leave cookies for him on Christmas Eve! This means your gift will surely be appreciated and used. The fact that you have made your gift trays with your own hands also adds a unique personal touch to your presents that an item grabbed off a store shelf could never capture. Additionally, the process of making the items can be fun and relaxing, giving you an opportunity to enjoy the holidays.

So what should type of culinary treats should you create in your Christmas gift factory? Traditional options include decorated sugar cookies, gingerbread men, or goodies such as fudge. If these require more time or skill than you have available in this busy time, you may want to make something simple but delicious such as saltine cracker toffee.

On the other hand, if you’re feeling a little adventurous, consider making cookies from around the world for an internationally themed holiday tray.

If you need ideas for cookies or other goodies, check some recipe sites such as Allrecipes.com or Recipezaar.

Any of these Christmas gift cookies or treats can be baked ahead of time and presented in a colorful holiday tin, basket or cookie tray. You can find these for a small price at your local dollar store, drug store or superstore. You can stick with one treat or mix and match recipes to build a tasty variety.

Giving tasty holiday treats will surely brighten anyone’s holidays and they’re far less expensive than many less personal items you could buy. So this season, head to your kitchen instead of the mall!

Reprinted with permissionfrom Christmas Gift Cookies and Other Homemade Gifts from Your Kitchen on Free Santa Letters blog.

The holidays bring plenty of fun, food and family gatherings. But they can also bring financial stress. Fortunately, you can avoid the seasonal money crunch by creating a Christmas budget early and shopping all year long, rather than trying to cram all your purchases into the few weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

First, you’ll want to create a holiday budget that is comprehensive enough to include all the ways you spend money during the Christmas season, including holiday preparations and other purchases that aren’t for gift giving. Then follow these tips to help you stick to your budget and avoid the holiday crunch.

1. Start early. For some people, December 26 marks the beginning of their holiday shopping for the next year. Many of us don’t think about Christmas that early, but this is a great time to take advantage of those after Christmas sales to make purchases of holiday stables like ornaments, gift-wrap, and party supplies.

2. Save a little every month. The easiest way to make sure you don’t overextend your finances during the holidays is to create a Christmas savings account that will help you reach your holiday budget goal. Many banks and credit unions offer savings programs just for the holidays, and can help you set up a program to automatically deduct, say, $25 or $50 from your paycheck or checking account and deposit it in your Christmas fund.

3. Shop for Christmas all year. Create a master shopping list with gift ideas for everyone on your gift list and keep it in your wallet or purse all year. That way you’ll be able to refer to it when you spot a good sale.

4. Comparison shop online. Whether you’re shopping mid-season or during the Christmas rush, you can use the web to help you find great deals. Use a comparison shopping site such as Shopping.com or iBestPriceSearch.com to find the best prices, and search for coupons to save even more.

5. Create homemade gifts. You can save money by baking goodies or making gifts for friends or relatives who will appreciate such a personal gift. Many people really don’t need or want more “things,” but would love a personally crafted gift, or the offer to help them do yard work, run errands or do household chores.

By following these simple tips, you should be able to stay within your budget and have a financially stress-free holiday.

By Elisabeth Kuhn

Are you worried about spending too much on Christmas presents? Don’t be. Great gifts don’t have to cost much at all. Read on for some easy and dollar-stretching edible Christmas gift ideas.

We all need to eat. But sometimes, especially during tough times, we deprive ourselves. And that’s when edible gifts can be especially welcome — cool treats that your gifts’ recipients wouldn’t have made for themselves.

Of course, the traditional way to approach edible gifts was to go to a gourmet store and order a very expensive gift basket. Or order it from a catalogue. I’m sure you know which ones I’m talking about.

But it doesn’t have to be that expensive. In fact, there are some downright cheap Christmas gifts that can bring a lot of joy and pleasure. Here are a few ideas of varying degrees of thriftiness:

1) Store bought goods

One of our most treasured edible gifts when I grew up in Germany was a Stollen, a German Christmas cake that keeps well, ships well, and tastes utterly delicious (especially the kind filled with marzipan — or the ones that are spiked with rum). And it’s not very expensive either. Neither are a lot of other ready-made Holiday cookies or cakes you can buy at the store.

2) Store bought ingredients, assembled at home

You can create your own gift baskets by assembling some choice fruits and cheeses. If you pick well, you can get a great assortment for less than $10. And for a few dollars more, you can create a veritable gourmet feast. Read on for a variation on that concept…

3) Home-made edibles

Of course, you can also bake cakes or cookies, or create other fancy edibles, wrap them nicely, and send them on their way.

4) Home-made do-it-yourself edibles

This last one is my favorite: Home-made do-it-yourself edible Christmas gifts! Just assemble the ingredients, pack them up nicely, attach a recipe card, and send them to the lucky recipient.

Of course, as a nice bonus, you can use the same recipes to make some treats for yourself. In fact, I would highly recommend that you try out everything you plan to make to ensure the result is what you were hoping for. You might even try out several recipes to find the ones you like best.

Another big advantage to the do-it-yourself edible Christmas gifts is that they will usually keep for quite a long time. This means, they will keep until all the perishable holiday goodies are long gone — and can bring back the glow of Christmas even when the snow is but a distant memory!

But where are you going to find the right kind of recipes for easy to assemble edible Christmas gifts? Here’s my FREE gift for you: A huge collection of yummy edible Christmas gift recipes that you can instantly download — so you can get started right away! Just click on this link: http://www.EdibleChristmasGifts.com.

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There are a lot of animal lovers in this world, and during the holidays, a great gift for pet owners are products featuring cute Christmas animals. They’re not difficult to find. From cuddly Christmas teddy bears to cute donkeys in a manager, animals are on all kinds of gifts, from mugs to shirts, and mousepads to calendars.

Here are some cute Christmas animals I like on Zazzle and CafePress. The products shown are just samples of what’s available. Like all designs at Zazzle and CafePress, these Christmas animal images are also available on dozens of other gifts. Check the sites for more details.

Santa cat Christmas cards
This cat Christmas card features a cute kitty in a Santa hat. Sure to please any cat lover!

Chinese Shar-Pei T-shirt for Christmas
Funny shirt shows a wrinkled Chinese shar-pei saying “Pah, Humbug!” Great gift for the dog-loving Scrooges in your life.

Christmas Cow Sweatshirt
Who says a cute Christmas animal has to be a housebroken one?
Here’s a shirt to celebrate the farm animals in your life.

Dog Christmas Cards: Chihuahua

If you loved Beverly Hills Chihuahua or just love little chihuahuas, these Christmas cards are for you.