Christmas is fast approaching! There are, as of today, 70 days until The Big Day.

If your family celebrates Christmas, it can be a testing time for your finances. Even with a relatively small family, it is amazing how quickly the cost of gifts can mount up. Throw in buying for friends, distant relatives, distant cousins 18 times removed, and you quickly end up potentially spending hundreds upon hundreds of pounds.

If you have not begun preparing for the cost of this, it inevitably ends up being charged on your flexible friend.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Even if you cannot get away with token presents, you do not have to spend the earth on giving to others. Some of the best presents can be the cheapest, and this Frugal Friday explores some of the options available to those of us who want to give thoughtful, meaningful gifts at Christmas without having to take out a second mortgage to achieve it.

8 Christmas Gift Ideas

… That won’t break the piggy bank.

Gift Certificates

Buying for some people can be a nightmare – take my step-father as an example. The man has everything he wants or needs in life, so what do you buy someone in that position? Find their weakness.

His weakness is model trains; the loft space of their home is entirely devoted to his railroad tracks. To save buying him something he doesn’t want or need, the best gift for him is a gift certificate from our local model railway shop. That way he can buy what he needs for his next expansion plan – and not have to exchange any money to do so.

Be careful though: Some gift certificates/cards expire if not used in a certain period. If the business you buy them from goes bust, you also have little to no comeback.

Amazon Wish Lists

A lot of people in my family have Amazon wish lists. If you want to be certain of buying them a gift they will appreciate and they live some distance away, have a browse through their wish list. You can likely find a reasonably cheap “Want” that can be fulfilled, and it’ll still be extremely meaningful to them to know it came from you. Amazon will even wrap it and ship it for you!

To get started, head on over to your local Amazon and click “Gifts & Wish Lists” or similar. You can then search for Wish Lists by name or email address. This may get you to their list without them even realising you have something off of their list in mind. Perfect!

If anyone wants to buy me something for Christmas, you can find mine here

Amazon usually has coupons, too!

Scented Candles

I love candles, and if you shop around, you can find some brilliant scents for very little. A few years ago I bought my wife a “Europe Candle Collection” that had scents of different European cities. They smelled divine when burned, but also looked amazing as well.

The price? £15 for 10.

Books

Almost everyone enjoys a good book, and if you cannot find anything on their Wish List, ask someone close to them for ideas. The danger is buying them a book they already have, so some collaboration is required. If you know the person really well then this becomes less of an issue – buying something they will really enjoy but that might be outside their usual own-purchase window.

Failing that, you can always fall back to a gift certificate from Amazon or their local book store.

A LoveFilm Membership

If their thing is more along the lines of good movies, then a LoveFilm (or other online DVD subscription service) is a brilliant gift. They can load it up with the movies they want, and watch them without paying a penny. This is much better value (for you and them!) than buying ‘a DVD’ or ‘a boxset’.

Home Made Cookies

If you are a whiz in the kitchen, some home-made goodies will go down a treat. For the sake of the cost of the ingredients involved, you can make someone smile from ear to ear for literally pennies.

Receiving such gifts, knowing the loving care that went into making them, makes the cost irrelevant to the receiver.

Gourmet Coffee

For the amount of coffee you usually get in these, they are hellishly expensive – but we are really talking about a whole gift for under £10 here. If the person you are buying for is rarely without a mug of coffee in their hand, this gift will be  perfect.

Expensive Undergarments

Male or female, adult, child or somewhere in between – there is always the need for socks and underpants. Ordinarily I am a ‘utility’ kind of purchaser in this department. When someone buys me some expensive stuff for Christmas, I really am thankful. They feel good, look good, and last so much longer.

You will still spend out less than £10.

Further Reading

There are loads of resources on the internet for further ideas – try searching Google for “Frugal Christmas Gifts” to end up in a sea of suggestions. You cannot escape the fact your son may want a Playstation 3 this year, but by saving money on other gifts, you might just be able to make that happen without resorting to charging your credit card or suffering in other areas of the budget.

Next year, start budgeting for Christmas gifts in January. If you already do this then fabulous! If not, budget it in. If you allow £25 in your budget for gifts, come December you will have £300 to spend on gifts for your loved ones, rather than ending up in a blind panic on December 10th wondering what to buy and how to pay for it.

Every Friday I publish “Frugal Friday!“, an open-ended series with some of the simple and best ways to really save you money both now and in the future.

Did you roll your eyes when you saw that title? It’s OK to admit it if you did.

As a child, I was routinely told charity begins at home, and therefore never really got round to doing much about ‘giving’. While my parents didn’t struggle for money, they were not rich by any means. I therefore grew up with the belief that giving to charity is something rich people do; something I’ll consider doing next year; or something I’ll do when I’m not in debt.  But I’ve slowly discovered giving to charity isn’t limited to donating £2 a month to the RSPCA or PDSA or WWF or whatever advert pops ups on your TV in the next 30 minutes.

Charitable giving doesn’t have to involve parting with your cash at all.

There are hundreds of ways you can give meaningfully. Organisations are crying out for volunteers with all sorts of skills from IT, to communication, to just being an ‘adult’ at kids clubs. When you donate your time rather than the loose change in your pocket, you get to see first hand at the difference you are making.

If you are 16-25 years old, V Inspired is the best place to start:

“vinspired is the volunteering site for 16-25 year olds in England. We’re here to help you find your perfect volunteer placement, and we’ll make sure you get recognised for the impact you make on your community. How much time you give is up to you, from a few hours or the odd evening to summer jobs or full-time placements.”

If you’re outside of that age-range, or want to try something totally different:

Community First Responders work with their local NHS Ambulance Trusts to provide life-saving treatment to those in their immediate vicinity, bridging the gap between that first 999 call and the ambulance arriving. Full training and generally (dependent on the individual trust), full equipment is provided.

Police Special Constables give up their free time to police their community, but are otherwise fully-fledged, fully trained police officers who do it because they want to help people, and not because of the paycheck. It need not take over your life either: 4 hours a week is the minimum you need donate.

Volunteer firefighters do the same for the fire and rescue service in their area.

The examples above are great if you’re time rich but cash poor. But what if you’re cash poor and time poor? You may be working 2 or even 3 jobs trying to dig yourself out of debt and have absolutely no time left whatsoever, beyond the bare minimum needed to sleep.

There are still options available if you want to give something back, and one of the most rewarding for so little time is to donate blood.  Each donation you give can save up to 6 lives. It takes a maximum of an hour to do every 14 weeks, and you get free juice, tea, coffee, biscuits and crisps in exchange.

There is almost no better way to spend just one hour of your life and yet help so many. I put this off and put this off for almost a decade, coming up with a variety of excuses along the way; “I’ll do it next time”, or “I don’t like needles” or one of a thousand other excuses I came up with to appease myself. In July 2009 I ran out of excuses and gave blood for the first time. It was an amazing experience, and knowing that you help directly save lives is a feeling you just cannot beat.

The National Blood Service website has more details if you want to get involved.

Want some other takes on it? Trent over at The Simple Dollar (another personal finance blog that I read regularly) has a different view – he budgets money for giving to charity. If you can afford to do it, then do it! Cash rich, time poor is the ideal excuse to give raw cash to causes you identify with. Trent is further along in his money goals than I am, and I hope one day to follow his lead.

Free Money Finance has a couple of posts on the topic of giving, and ultimately does both. They follow the same principle of Trent by budgeting for giving financially, and also volunteer their time.

Charity doesn’t begin at home. Only financial well-being begins at home.