10 Ways to Not Bust Your Budget This Holiday Season

As the old saying goes, “Christmas comes but once a year.” Whether you celebrate that particular holiday or others that fall during the wintertime, the season can be a wonderful time to enjoy the company of your family and friends. The challenge, unfortunately, is that because it’s a once a year season of giving, holiday time also tends to be an expensive time of year.

Indeed, overspending can be a terrible way to ruin the holidays. With credit card interest rates averaging a bit above 17%, those charges can easily drive your total costs substantially higher. Not only does that add to the cost of your celebration, but the hangover of facing the bills month after month while paying them down also takes a lot of the fun out of the season. To help keep your holidays full of cheer instead of fear of the bills, here are 10 ways to not bust your budget this holiday season.

If this isn’t your first time through the holiday season, you probably have a pretty good idea in advance who you’re buying for and what holiday celebrations you will be contributing towards. Write it all down -- or keep it on a spreadsheet if you’re technologically inclined. On the list, put down information about what you plan to buy, who or what you’re buying it for, and how much you expect to spend.

Just by keeping a list like that, you are improving the visibility you have to the expenses you’ll be facing. That will help you keep a lid on your costs by reducing the surprises you face from people and events you should have known about but inadvertently forgot. In addition, if you see how much you’re expecting to spend, you can make adjustments before you spend it, and knocking a few dollars off each item can go a long way towards keeping your overall costs in check.

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As you’re checking off the items on your list, keep track of how much you’re actually spending vs. how much you thought you would be spending. Hopefully, you’ll be somewhere close to in-line with what your estimates were, or maybe even a bit below. If it turns out that you’re spending more than you thought you would, however, checking your list will give you early visibility to that.

Once you have a handle on what you’re spending vs. your expectations, you’re in a good position to adjust your future purchases to keep them more in line with where you need them to be. That can help keep your total costs down, even if you started out spending ahead of your expectations.

With a couple of months left before the big winter holidays, you still have time to channel your inner crafter and make, instead of buy some of your gifts. Many people prefer to receive hand-made gifts rather than store bought ones, at least in part because they know the effort and forethought that went into it.

In addition to your holiday gifts, that also goes for holiday party foods such as desserts, dinners, office snacks, cookies, etc. Homemade goodies are often tastier and much more appreciated than store bought ones, and they’re also much more likely to cost a whole lot less. As long as you have the skills and can make the time between now and the holidays, homemade gifts and goodies are great ways to keep your spending down this season.

While nowhere near as popular as they used to be, Christmas Club savings accounts are still offered by most credit unions and several banks. Designed to be short-term savings vehicles, these accounts let you sock aside a little bit at a time to allow you to take the accumulated money out when you need it for your holiday shopping.

Most popular in the 1970s, low interest rates, widespread use of credit cards, and easy online and ATM access to your money has made these Christmas Club accounts less valuable than they once were. Still, by providing a convenient way to save up the costs of the holidays in advance, these accounts can help you get through without a financial hangover after the fact.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are both still ahead of us, and they’re both well known as days with decent deals. Keep an eye out for retailer circulars and their pre-sale "leaks" that indicate what they’re offering. If their offers match up with what’s on your list, congratulations -- you’ve got an opportunity for a deep discount.

For your online shopping, sites like camelcamelcamel keep an eye on prices at Amazon and can alert you to when an item you want to buy goes on sale. If you make a list of alerts for the items you want to buy and then purchase once they go on sale, you can get more gifts purchased for a lower total spend. Of course, there are no guarantees that anything on your list will really go on sale, so if you’re shopping Amazon, have a date in mind by which you’ll place your order if you don’t get a sale price.

ALSO READ: Holiday Sales Expected to Hit Record Levels in 2019

Outlet stores generally sell products that are overstocked, based on last year’s styles, returned, or slightly damaged. If you’ve got a somewhat flexible gift list and time to do a little eagle-eyed browsing, outlet stores can be a great place to find bargains for your holiday gift giving.

Just be prepared to “treasure hunt” your way through the stores and to inspect what you find. Most of the time, the outlets sell quality products with barely or completely not noticeable damage, but every once in a while there’s a noticeable issue that you may care about.

Despite our ever-more-digital world, somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 billion coupons are distributed annually in the United States. Chances are pretty good that one or more of them is valid on some item on your list. Manufacturers and retailers print those coupons as a marketing tools to help you get into their stores and buy their merchandise, so you might as well make use of them.

Coupons can often give you extremely good deals on the products they’re offered on. The reason for that is that the retailers and manufacturers hope that once you’re in the store, you’ll buy something else in addition to what the coupon offered. Be forewarned about that, as you’ll need to avoid the temptation to buy stuff that’s not on your list if you’d like to stay within your budget for the season.

While paper coupons are still huge, digital coupons are on the rise, with around 31 billion digital deals expected to be redeemed worldwide by the end of this year. The advantage of digital coupons is that they’re easier to deal with than paper, and they are also more likely to be targeted to something that might be useful to you than the traditional newspaper inserts.

The downside of digital coupons is that they’re also much more likely to be used to track you and your purchases. Whether it’s because the coupon is tied to your phone, your email, or a specialized link you downloaded it from, chances are good that if you’re using a digital deal, you’re being tracked.

The era of bad tasting generics in black and white labels is long gone. Today’s store branded foods are often quite competitive with their national counterparts, while still typically offering a great value compared to the national brands. As you’re baking or buying your holiday treats, it’s worth trying out the store brands in order to save a few dollars and help keep to your budget.

Of course, you just might have to sample those holiday cookies you bake with the store brand sugar, just to be sure they turn out right. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.

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If you’re doing your shopping online, be on the lookout for shipping charges, which generally get revealed around checkout time. Several vendors will waive shipping costs if your purchase is high enough, and others offer subscriptions that include free shipping as a benefit. In many cases, if a retailer has physical locations in addition to an online presence, you can order online and pickup in store for free.

In addition to avoiding shipping charges on your online purchases, figure out if you may be able to avoid or at least minimize them on gifts you send to your out-of-town loved ones. If you’re going to see them at any time during the holiday season -- even if not exactly on the holiday itself -- that can be a great time to hand-deliver gifts. Alternatively, if your online order qualifies for free delivery, you could order the package to be delivered directly to the ultimate recipient.

John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Chuck Saletta has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Amazon. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.