Ulta Deal

I found a good deal while perusing the Sunday ads today. I was, of course, thinking with Christmas in mind, especially for my sister because I wanted to do her a good basket for Christmas. I want to overload her with awesome stuff in a pretty basket.

Ulta has a deal right now that you buy three get three free of their Ulta Smoothies, Swirl Creams and Bath stuff, so I looked online and this is the scenario I came up with.

Buy (4) Ulta Shower gels @ $3.00 each
Buy (2) Anti bacterial hand lotions @ $4.00 each
So far your total will be $20.00
The sale will take off $9.00 (3 of the shower gels)
Then there is a $3.50 off $10 purchase coupon on the flier
Total = $7.50 or $1.25 each

I think I will go do this deal during lunch this week to start stocking up on some more Christmas stuff. I might actually do this offer twice so I can get some stuff for other baskets too.

Christmas Planning

OK, so once upon a time I said that I would do a series on planning for Christmas. Here are my basics on how we get away with doing our entire Christmas without killing ourselves on time, energy and especially money! This is easy to do but you have to be a bit creative, and this year will be my most creative ever!!! Here is the first step in the Christmas Planning Process.

Step #1 - budget, Budget, BUDGET!!!

List everyone you have to buy for, and I mean everyone. Don't leave anyone out. This includes the Secret Santa gift you may be buying for a co-worker, gift cards for the mail man, trash man, whomever you buy for!

Once you have your list put a limit by each person. For ours we set the limit for each of our children first and this is normally the most expensive that we buy for. Next we set the limit for each other, but before I set this limit we talk about what we want that limit to be. Then, for each adult we normally do $50 and each child is normally $25.

Add everyone up and see the total you come out to. Does this number sound reasonable? If not, go back and revamp your limits for each person.

Once you have your grand total, divide it by the number of weeks or paychecks you have from now until Christmas. I however, use the Black Friday date for my "ending" time frame because this is my major shopping day for the holiday season. This is how much you need to take out IN CASH each week and put into a Christmas envelope.

From now until Christmas you need to keep an eye out for deals. You can start buying presents once you have money in your Christmas fund.

Next time... how to cut corners from your Christmas budget!!!!

Christmas Check in Again

Forgot to mention the other part of our Christmas and how we're doing...

We've gotten a bit more done... and have stayed within budget so far!

Here is another one that we saved a bit on...

My granny and papa, we budgeted $25 because they are really simple and love simple things. I ordered a lot of pics when different websites had promotions on free prints (photo sites like seehere.com, shutterfly.com, snapfish.com). I paid shipping on one of them for $3 and $6 on a photo album. I have about 150 pics that I got for nearly nothing.

That was a savings of $16 compared to what we had budgeted.

Saved $40 on my mom and $16 on my granny and papa, total saved for these two gifts... $56!!