Five Christmas essentials you can get for free this year – and how to do it | Personal Finance | Finance

Christmas is likely to be the most expensive time of the year for most of us. What with the food, the gifts, the events, the parties, even the Christmas jumper phenomenon, most of us spend December hemorrhaging money in what has become a festival of Mammon rather than of Christ!

MoneyMagpie.com asked their readers on social media what are the top things they spent money on at this time of year. They said food, presents, parties, cards and decorations. So here some top ways for you to get all of those things for free.

Food

Every year my neighbours and I do a food swap, and I recommend it for everyone. If you’re stuck with three jars of cranberry sauce but no mincemeat, swap ingredients with friends or have a cooking day where you can share recipes and ingredients.

Also, if you’re doing the cooking this Christmas, ask your guests to bring contributions of food and drink. Tell them it’s a ‘credit crunch Christmas’ and everyone has to pull together, but remember to coordinate contributions and ask for specific items from each person so that you get everything you need.

You could even ask all your guests to provide one whole dish each to save yourself a lot of effort and expense.

Presents

Would you believe, you can get free presents for kids? The handy app, Young Planet, has helped parents fill their children’s Christmas stockings for free in previous years.

People give child-related products away through the app and other parents can pick them up. They currently have thousands of toys, including doll’s houses, toy trucks, books, LEGO, and plush toys, which parents are able to claim for free – they may be secondhand, on the whole, but they are still worth having.

Young children in particular don’t mind secondhand presents at all. They just look at what the item is and don’t notice scratches and scuffs.

Get into ‘re-gifting’: give your unwanted presents as Christmas gifts instead of letting them clutter up your house. Just remember who gave them to you so you can avoid fobbing auntie off with the same bath products she gave you last year!

As well as giving away stuff you already have, try swapping your items for presents on sites like NextDoor.co.uk or local Facebook groups. You could also try to sell them on eBay to make the cash to buy the present you want to give, too.

A further option is to search for presents on freebie websites like Freecycle.org or the Free section on Gumtree.com. Lots of people would rather give you their stuff for free than go to the hassle of selling it or throwing it away.

Parties

You can do parties for free, or very little, by getting guests to contribute to food and drink, as mentioned above. But you can also get really good discounts – if not entirely free meals – at some eateries this season. For example, check out our deals pages here and you will find that the restaurant chain Cote are offering a free three course meal as one of the offers.

However, if you are not one of the lucky ones to get that freebie, then consider setting up a product party before Christmas where your friends can buy gifts and you get paid to do it. Find out how here.

Free Christmas cards

If you kept last year’s old Christmas cards you can use them this year by transforming them into gift tags or bookmarks. Alternatively, make your own cards by printing out Christmas designs from the internet. A good resource for online templates is HP’s website which has a range of designs you can print including festive photo ornaments, calendars and gift boxes.

You could also raid your craft supplies, if you have some at home, to make your own cards. This is especially fun to do if you have children. Let them fingerpaint, get creative with glitter (if you can bear the clean-up!) and even teach them how to make snowman pompoms to stick on their cards. While you’re at it, find out how you can make money writing gift cards.

You can also save money on cards and awful postage by sending e-cards from free sites like 123Greetings.com and eCards.com. You don’t have to sign-up or pay a penny, but you might want to use a different email address to your normal one when you try these as they are likely to spam you a lot once you have used them.

For 99p you can send an eCard from Moonpig now too (which can be a life saver if you’ve left it a bit too late or are worried about postal strikes). They also have an offer on now (at the time of writing) – get 50% off 5 cards, which could save you money if you want to add personalisations and your own photos for family and close friends.

Decorations

Use garden leaves as stencils. Spray pinecones and ivy gold or silver and fix to the walls. Pick sprigs of holly to put behind picture frames. Or combine all these ideas and make your own wreath for the front door.

If you have children or grandchildren you can have fun making decorations together. Get some colourful paper chain kits from eBay (£4.25) to make decorations to go around the room.

Children love making those, together with Chinese lanterns that you can make with one piece of coloured paper folded and cut in strips. YouTube has some great videos showing you how to make those and other fun Christmas decorations.

You can even build your own Christmas crackers with wrapping paper, toilet roll inserts, and some fun jokes you’ve written on bright paper. Again, there are some good YouTube videos that show you how to make these.

If you’re savvy with a crochet hook or knitting needles, you can also quickly make up lots of Christmas bunting, baubles, even wreaths! Knitting and crochet are great hobbies if you’re on a tight budget.

Check out LoveCrafts.com for some inspired decoration ideas. It’s a great way to teach children how to knit or crochet, too – the projects are small and often use very simple stitches, so they’re perfect for beginners.

You don’t need to spend lots on wool, either. If you don’t have any in the house, ask friends and family if they’ve got any spare – or, the local pound shop or charity shop usually has plenty for pennies!