Today we have a guest post by Richard Epley from over at Bluejeans Millionaire.

If ever there were a year when you needed to get maximum value from minimal gift spending…this is it.

In that spirit, here are ten valuable tips on coping with the holiday overload.

And a bonus tip on dealing with conflicting family obligations.

1.   Take the initiative in contacting family members and let them know there will be a truce this year in the spending wars.  The best possible gift is time spent with your loved ones.  The trinkets and baubles are of secondary importance.  You might even suggest a dollar limit on gifts to remove the burdens of guilt and obligation.

2. If air travel costs threaten to break your budget, take advantage of last minute price reductions.   The airlines will do whatever they have to do, in order to avoid the most perishable of commodities….an empty seat on a scheduled flight.   You can also gift your banked airline miles to those who cannot afford the high cost of air travel.

3.  Don’t buy holiday gift cards from retailers.  I know the rationale.  It shows that you actually entered a store and made a purchase, which is supposed to signify something….that you physically went shopping,  more or less.

This year there are dozens of retailers who will not survive into the new year, and many such cards will expire worthless.  Don’t believe me?  Check out the market for Sharper Image gift cards from last year.

Even in years when the retailer survived, many cards did not, as they were lost or expired unused, or had credit balances never cashed in.  What a waste of time and money.

4.  Instead of store bought gifts, why not convert some of your digital family photos into print form and create an album as a gift.   Every time a hard disc crashes, your digital photo library is at peril.  And everyone loves family photos.

5.  To stretch your gifting budget, put cold, hard cash in the fireplace stocking.  It never expires, and is accepted universally.  And it will go much further when prices are slashed the last week of the year and into the new year.   This is the time honored technique to get more bang from the buck.

Not to mention that everyone gets what they want.  There is nothing to exchange.

6.  For next year, consider the concept of the family contingency gift bank.  My wife and I both come from large extended families, and we never know for sure how many will show up for the holidays.  So we acquire gift items at clearance prices throughout the year, as bargains present themselves,  and store them for future gifting.

7.  The best gift selection for the very youngest family members is an equity investment in their future.  It might be a Coverdell IRA for their secondary education expenses, or a $50 per month automatic deposit into one of the funds, like T.Rowe Price, that allow for such a low threshold of funding.

You know how this works long term.  From humble acorns, great oaks can grow.  And we may go another generation before we see stocks priced as low as they now are.

8.  Don’t forget charitable gifting.  You may have your own favorite charity, but please also consider the Smile Train.  They perform cleft palate surgery on needy children worldwide, and they keep overhead at a bare bones minimum.  You can elect to have a monthly donation charged to your credit card.

9.  If you cannot afford a cash contribution to charity, you can always arrange to donate your own time and effort.  At the every least, when you clean out your pantry, be sure to donate unneeded non-perishable food to your local food bank.  Due to the recession, their shelves are bare and they would greatly benefit from your generosity.

10.  Many grocery stores have holiday promotions where they almost give Turkeys away when your total food bill reaches a required threshold.   There is no limit on how many Turkeys you may acquire this way, and then you have the option of gifting them to those who help make your life a little easier each year.

Bonus suggestion:  Everyone who has a significant other faces this dilemma every holiday.  Whose family do we visit this time?    Here’s how we handled it this year.  Our older adultlet was invited to spend Thanksgiving with her boyfriend’s family.

So we simply postponed our family Thanksgiving dinner one day to the following Friday.

Both families get to host the kids…and the kids get to celebrate twice.

Everyone wins. Nobody feels left out.

Hey, it’s a four day weekend…and this is a free country….so why not plan your gatherings for the day most convenient for everyone?

Best holiday wishes to everyone from our team at bluejeansmillionaire.com.

Thanks for sharing RIchard.  Do you have any special plans for the holiday?  Let us know!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 26th, 2008 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Budget. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.