Practical Gift Giving (Part 2) - Receiving

In this second article about practical gift giving, I’ll share some interesting ideas about how to make the most of your opportunities where you will be getting gifts. This is not meant to encourage you to be greedy. Instead, this is to make sure that you are making the most of the gifts that you receive. This is because it makes sense to ensure the money and effort that is spent on getting gifts for you is not wasted. In this way, you can be certain that the effort put in to getting gifts for you makes you happy and yields some real enjoyment.

Find What Motivates You

One thing that always works as a good idea for gifts that I receive is when the gift actually saves me some money. This means that there will be more opportunities for me to spend the discretionary income elsewhere because I won’t have to spend my money on necessities. If you feel the same way, then you may want to read on.

Furthermore, if it is something that you really don’t enjoy shopping for, you can effectively offload both the cost and the chore of the shopping onto one of your potential gift givers. This works well for children and mothers or grandmothers when the children tend to be the subject of perpetual doting on children and love to buy clothes, toys, and other items for their children, nieces, and nephews etc.

Idea: Enlist these folks to buy gifts for the young ones in your life so you don’t have to since they know better what the children want/need anyway.

This becomes their gift to you. This works particularly well during the holidays. Instead of buying you a gift and the child a gift, they simply get the gift and put your name on it. They only need to shop for one person, and you only need to buy a gift for them, not the niece or nephew. Sharing gifts like this can save money and time during the busy shopping season.

Idea: Make sure that you get gifts that save you money.

Plan little shopping trips with people you love before the holidays come, you can make sure that you are able to swap these ideas with them in advance so that they know about the things that you are planning to buy for yourself during the upcoming season and then you get the stuff you want, and would have bought yourself anyway.

Idea: Stock Up on Essentials

One of the most annoying things when it comes to purchases are the essential items that you need large amounts of over the course of the year. Paper products, cleaning supplies, socks, motor oil are all examples of funny, but useful gifts that you might be able to get from someone who is open to your desire to remain frugal and get really practical gifts for the holidays.

During one holiday, I bought my stepfather a large box of expensive cigars. I’m not thrilled that he smokes, but I know that he will smoke them whether I buy them or he buys them, so it is something that he would have purchased, but it is something that he will really enjoy. So if there is something like this that you use regularly, instead of leaving people to guess, simply bring it up in a conversation before the holiday and you will increase your chances of getting this as a gift.

Gift Certificates

Entertainment is the first place that comes to my mind because it is something that I always get, but there are all sorts of excellent gift certificates that you might get in order to keep yourself current and able to afford items throughout the year. Whether it is the need to go out for dinner once in a while with your significant other, or simply the desire to splurge during a weekend shopping trip.

Gift certificates are a great way to let people get you stuff that you can really use, but without having to commit to an actual item now, when you don’t really know what your needs are. This makes sense because needs around the house are somewhat unexpected. But, if you decide to go this route and pick large stores like Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Target or Lowes where you can get all sorts of different items, you have a good chance of being able to actually use the gift certificate for something really useful that will save you money. So if you know it is likely that you will get these for a gift, suggest large stores where you shop for different kinds of items so that you will have a good chance of using the gift certificate.