Fill your stockings with ideas for a frugal Christmas
With December upon us and a number of Christmas-related stories in the headlines, readers on Guardian Money were keen to hold back the panic factor by discussing some of the best ways to be frugal this festive season. From present rotas to Guardian wrapping paper and homemade food, our commenters had no end of creative ideas for saving the pennies this Christmas.
Justjanice suggests:
I have a rather large family and buy presents throughout the year and stash them away to be wrapped just prior to Christmas. This means I always buy in sales and on special offers. I love getting a bargain that I know my family will appreciate. I bought my brother a boxed set of Stieg Larsson's books in hardback, priced at £69.99 I bought them for £20.00, a lovely little black top with sequins, very festive for my sister-in-law, in the last January sales £35.00 down to £5.00! etc, etc....I try to buy about one or two a month. I then wrap just pror to Christmas and get into the festive spirit. With regard to food and drink I am extremely fortunate there, going to my daughter and her partner for christmas and my mother, sister and brother over the New Year. I take a drink contribution or chocolates but that is just a drop in the ocean to what I receive. No frugal Christmas for me.
Jediperson greets old attic friends:
I have had the same tree decorations for 25 years. Its like meeting old friends when they come out of the attic. Though some of the rockers have fallen off the wooden horses. May everyone whatever their circumstances have as good a christmas as they can possibly manage. Good food and drink and cheerful companions who are happy to pitch in are the only criteria for my perfect Christmas!
tarnarama says:
I have a big family and we have a rota system: you buy for one sibling, their partner and kids up to an agreed limit, and that's it. We've been doing it for about 20 years, and it's a great system.
Christmas dinner duties are also divvied up so no one person/family has to bear the cost of catering for the crowd. It's more fun when everyone pitches in, anyway. My hubby is an only child, and we just buy something small for his folks at their request and have them over for Boxing Day lunch. As a couple we just get a little something for each other and save the blow out for birthdays (a fancy dinner out or a trip somewhere usually, rather than more "stuff".) I am a sucker for Christmas cards, though: as I don't live in my home country, I use them as a chance to catch friends up on the news (supplemented by email/postcards the rest of the year). And my gran and elderly aunts and uncles still love a Chrissy card. Hubby is doing a funk & soul Christmas-themed sountrack and e-card, but I wouldn't know where to start!
tabithatwitchetty advises:
My three children get a present each, everyone else gets homemade mince pies in a box. My Christmas is about spending time with my family and has been since I was a kid. Thankfully none of my lot have ever bought into the showy Xmas 'who can spend the most, on rubbish you don't need' twaddle. All my decorations are hand-me-downs or homemade. I have a living tree I bring in every year. We eat well and spend the day together and maybe play a board game. At least being hard up means I know how to deal with austerity already. A frugal holiday is nothing new.
And some thoughts on the whole idea from DeniseAng:
X'mas is about family. I used to give small gifts to nieces and nephews, but they are now grown, so instead of gifts, I invite them to a small BBQ party, a get-together and that does not cost a lot. Its the company and time spent together that matters. Its not what you give, or what you eat.
There were lots of comments on this story on our Facebook page too. Here are a few tips from readers:
Marit B:
My saving tips: budget & buy in advance. Scoure eBay & other online shops for bargains. And stick to budget. The point of gifts is the thought, not the money; people will appreciate an expensive pair of flipflops which they would not buy themselves, which is cheaper for you to buy still, or if a bigger collection of sumit, people will be happy with second hand (books for example). I budget for £20-30 per person, single item rather than several, & I will only buy this for nearest & dearest. Acquaintences gets a card, some a smaller box of chocolates/sweets (as a Swede Ill get a box of sumit Swedish which is the same cost as any Cadbury or Nestle but has the extra touch of personal/exotic/luxury/bla bla).
Scott L:
I'm paying cash and buying local and fair trade as much as I can. That puts money into the hands of real people
Autumn statement
There was plenty of reaction to George Osborne's autumn statement, delivered to the Commons on Tuesday and signalling much gloom and economic belt-tightening.
However, bagsos feels the measures are unavoidable:
bagsos
I think I mentioned here quite some time ago that the consequence of the unsustainable debt we took on, both public and private, during the New Labour years, would eventually be that we would face a painful downward adjustment to our living standards, both in relative terms re the rest of the world's nations and for most Brits, absolute terms as well.
This would have happened whoever formed a government after the last election. We will have to just get used to it I am afraid.
Good to see that the Tories are at least prepared to speak the truth on this; what planet Balls is on, I don't know, but his policies would have us in the arms of the IMF faster than you could say Winter of Discontent.
Ifshespins sees ideology at play:
Yes, the public debt is too big. Yes, it probably needs to be brought down. The issue, though, is the speed that they've tried to do it at. I don't recall how many countless economists told them that it was a reckless policy to try to slash the debt so quickly, but they seem to have been proven right, don't they?
As much as you may dislike (New) Labour, you have to concede that the economic policy George Osborne is forcing the country to follow is more political than strictly necessary.
daves2X adds:
I find it amazing that the population in one of the richest countries in the world with some of the world's best economists, political scientists, statisticians, etc., has let this economic and social mess happen. I would like to see the people who are paid to be responsible for the economic and social well-being of the society, i.e., those individuals elected, held accountable for the mess created. After all, "accountability" is one of the main mantras of the past few governments.
Ten years of austerity
And in related matters, Reality Check users responded to Polly Curtis's investigation into what ten years of austerity will really mean.
asimo says:
I think we need a better analysis which looks at things like projected energy costs too. Household budgets will be squeezed from both ends over the next 10 years. Expenditure on necessities will increase as a proportion of overall expenditure. Those on low incomes are already struggling. Plan B needs to look seriously at how we deliver Pareto improvements to our welfare/quality of life without spending much. We need local strategies that reduce the amount of our expenditure going to large corporations. Keep it more local and we will all be better off. Also - buy a bike.
dotmegsan adds this personal account:
Will be redundant by April aged 50. Have possiblilities to explore fortunately, but for the first time in a working lifetime am steering clear of my usual first options of Local Authorities and schools because they no longer represent sufficient security and I'd rather take my work into my own hands. Will have an effect on my pension but I see myself working long after pensionable age anyway. First sniff of a good possibility abroad whether home working or employment and I'm off. I'll survive, but things I've spent a professional life working for in our treatment of people with special needs are being thrown away, and I'd rather not be around to see it.
floundering gives this account:
My wife and I on our joint income were in the 9th decile 26 months ago - comfortable. I then faced a 16% net pay cut when I went onto a 4-day week, and she retired so our combined income dropped 25%. Since then our income has been frozen so inflation means further real cuts equivalent to about 10%. We cut costs where we could to pay off the mortgage last month, so we feel more secure now. The business has been down-sizing however and I predict I may be made redundant within the next year, so we are saving all we can while we can. I don't rate my position as hardship. But my 1/3rd fall in spending over 2 years must have a negative effect on the businesses I used to spend it with. Vicious spiral of decline in fact.
Shadowmind shares his experiences:
I work in the third sector as a money adviser. Nearly everyone who walks through my door now has fuel arrears. We keep getting told to help people to budget from the government, but how can we when income drops and expenditure goes up. Fuel, rent, food costs are all increasing. The simple fact is people don't have enough money, and if you are on benefits you will be in debt, because the money you have will barely cover any ongoing costs, and one little financial emergency and you start financially spiralling out of control. I have a good job, but I certainly worry about stagnant wages, high inflation and ever increasing fuel costs, because I see it effecting more and more people everyday and nothing is done to reduce or curb these costs.
Happiness index
To end things on a lighter note, users responded to the news that 76% of us are generally happy.
Userhappy was aptly one of the first to comment:
So over 70% of us are more or less happy campers.
Problem with self-reported data is people often tell the story they want to hear. In other words, people report everything's fine because they don't like admitting their stress or anxiety - especially to themselves. It feels like admitting defeat, and who wants to feel defeated?
If we'd captured people's facial expressions and body language when they answered these questions, the data might tell a different story.
johnmayflower pointed out that the housing slump might actually be having a positive effect:
I think most of the reason for people's happiness is because they no longer have an unhealthy obsession with the rate at which the value of their house is increasing in comparison to other people's
.
In another thread, twentyfour explains after taking part in the survey:
They asked me! I got a phone call a few months ago and as they were polite and it sounded quite interesting I took a few minutes to answer the questions. They will phone me again in something like 2 years to do it again.
sounds like my responses were fairly average from looking at the results
hessexham takes the practical approach:
Obviously people come onto the Guardian comments page to vent their spleen (see 750 comments and rising on Jeremy Clarkson), but this result isn't so surprising, is it? Presumably people were asked on a scale of 0 Very Unhappy through 5 Neither Happy Nor Unhappy to 10 Very Happy about all aspects of their lives. Most people thought about their families, their homes, their jobs, their friends, all the things they did, and thought that they were quite happy.
Seeing most people in the street or the supermarket or wherever, that's probably what I'd expect them to say.
IReadTheArticle wasn't convinced:
I don't know about happiness indices, but if you ask people about their satisfaction on a scale of 1-10 about Grugglesnugs (make up your own meaningless term), the average response will be a little above 7.
In other words, people's natural desire to please the questioner and be seen as a "positive" person tends to create a bias to the upside. So you should measure genuine satisfaction as the deviation from this neutral point. That makes 7.4 pretty blah
JayPizzle was confused:
What's going on here? The story this morning was how we're all going to have (even more) squeezed incomes. Now we're all being told how happy we are? Yeah, I absolutely love working 4000 miles away from my family just to keep a roof over their heads because there was no work in the UK.
And spongebob said:
Happiness is, as you say, a personal subject, and changable day-to-day. All this is likely to tell us (as it has so far) is that the population get most of their pleasure in life from good times with family and friends, regardless of the economic/political situation.
Thanks for all your comments and contributions this week.
