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One of the best ways to pay for Christmas presents is...

February 27th, 2015 at 06:53 am

By paying with gift cards.

A friend of mine did that last year or the year before and put a picture up on Facebook of all the cards she bought, and I thought that was such a wonderful idea.

I figured if I divide the Christmas spend by 10 and buy 1 card per month from February to November our Christmas spending will be taken care of, and not only will one headache be taken care of, but it should add to the enjoyment of the season. (Sure I could save the monthly instalment into the EF and withdraw at Xmas but I want the EF to be a place where money floods in erratically & often and dribbles out only in the event of a true emergency, no transfering between accounts willy-nilly).

Gift cards have a 1 year expiry date so I will buy first the ones I know I will be shopping with and last the ones that we will be giving.

Last year because we were so broke our Christmas shopping was phenomenally low - $180 and we only bought for the niece and nephews. We felt bad, it's not really the meaning of Christmas to make other family members miss out because of our money dramas. It sucked.

So as it's the 27th of February I thought I'd better get card number 1 and bought one for $50.. 1 down, 9 to go!

7 Responses to “One of the best ways to pay for Christmas presents is...”

  1. scottish girl Says:
    1425026783

    Do you have Swagbucks in Australia? You could do surveys to earn points and then redeem gift cards. Or any other survey site?

  2. bluesfemme Says:
    1425029566

    SG is right - we can do Swagbucks, but for me it didn't work well with a full-time job - I was resentful of the time. I do do the nine MSN rewards surveys though, and have racked up $103 in giftcards over about 3 yrs and it didn't seem onerous. They now do gift cards to jbs which is good for Christmas :-)

  3. VS_ozgirl Says:
    1425030286

    I had a look and it looks like we can? They don't have a lot of Australian gift cards but they do have some. And they have iTunes cards which I'd use. I've got a full time job too so could probably do a little bit a day? Thanks for the idea.

  4. VS_ozgirl Says:
    1425032163

    Actually blues femme I just had a look at ninemsn surveys and that doesn't look too bad either, they have chemist warehouse which would be really useful. Ps I found out through Money magazine about cashbackclub.com.au which gives you cash back for ordering online through them, they have various shops like Priceline on their site.

  5. doingitallwrong Says:
    1425045547

    Here you can also buy discounted gift cards -- I'm not sure they're available down under -- giftcardgranny.com is a good place to start, it's a round-up of several discount card sellers.

    I would add, though, that it's not really the meaning of Christmas to spend as much as you can, either. Smile

  6. VS_ozgirl Says:
    1425069614

    I know it's not the true meaning of Christmas but it's a part of Christmas that I'd like to deal with ahead of time (especially as B is self-employed so does not earn for a couple of weeks). It's the reality of our Christmas. We have giftcards.com.au which has been helpful. You don't buy discounted cards from there but they tell you which department stores have gift cards on sale.

  7. Chatterbox Says:
    1451894086

    Hi VS, Swagbucks and many other survey sites are awesome. They have paid for my Christmas 2015, bought me part of a Garmin vivofit 2 (like a fitbit only different brand), and I still have money sitting there for both gifts and from survey earnings last year!

    i joined swagbucks on Nov 9th 2015, and im a day or two away from cashing in $133 in paypal cash since joining (we get the conversion rate on a $25 paypal redemption, so end up with around $33.

    i will be writing a blog post at some stage about my surveys and who I use and who I find the most successful etc.

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