Graduation season can be hard on the pocketbook–especially if you have several graduates on your gift list. However, there are a couple of things you can do to save money on graduation gifts.
10 Ways Thrifty People Save Money On Graduation Gifts
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Most of the tips I share here will work well for either high school or college graduates.
1. Use Free Photo Book Codes
It is okay if the price of the gift is in the loving work you put into it and not what came out of your wallet. Photo books are a great example of this principle.Shutterfly often releases free codes that can bring down the price of an album to shipping only (which is usually around $8.00-9.00).
You can either do key moments from the life of the graduate, or you could make them a family recipe book that they can take with them to whatever nest they are next settling into.
2. A Point-Earned Bible Or Devotional
My Reader Rewards Club offers a variety of Bibles and devotionals that you can cash in your points for and give as graduation gifts. Points are earned by filling out short surveys, reviewing books and other simple tasks. Add a journal, pen and perhaps a Bible case to the gift to give the graduate everything they need for a daily quiet time with God.
3. A Coupon-Bought Laundry Survival Basket
This is a great gift for college graduates who are probably going to have to stop bringing their dirty laundry home during school breaks now that they are finished with school.
Combine coupons and sales to reduce the cost of putting together a laundry survival kit. Buy an inexpensive laundry basket and fill it with detergent, stain remover and fabric softener or dryer sheets.
4. Cash In Your Swagbucks For A Gift
Swagbucks has a huge variety of gift cards for various stores. You can save up and buy the graduate a gift from any one of them, including Amazon, Walmart, Target and Best Buy.
5. Buy In Bulk
Here in Indiana, people throw graduation open houses for their children when they graduate from high school. If your child is graduating that year, it is entirely possible that you will get a dozen or more invites to graduation open houses for their friends whose parents are friends of yours.
The traditional gift at these open houses is cash in a card. Now you can’t save money on the cash, but you can save money on the cards. By buying graduation cards in bulk through DaySpring, you can get high-quality cards for around $0.50 apiece.
6. Cruise Pinterest For DIY Gift Ideas
If you are a lover of all things DIY, spend some time searching Pinterest for ideas for gifts the graduate might like. Do they love their iPad? Could you make them a stylish case for it with a matching charger case? Maybe you could sew them a book bag or build them a bookcase?
7. Watch Daily Deals For Gifts
Zulily sells more than just clothes, I have seen deals on high-quality sheet sets, kitchen items, headphones, smartphone cases–all things that a graduate might like to take with him or her to the next nest.
Got a graduate that prefers memory making moments to things? Get him or her a Living Social deal on an activity that you can enjoy together such as rock climbing or kayaking or more.
8. Give The Gift Of Service
Perhaps you just don’t have the money to give a gift right at the moment, but you do want to give something. Is there something you can do for the graduate? Help them move into their new apartment? Help them put together their IKEA bookshelves?
9. Hold A Selling Blitz To Raise The Cash For Gifts
I have done this once myself for a dear friend who was graduating from college and I wanted to bless her family with a gift card large enough to eat out together. However, the week of her graduation open house some extra bills came up, and our paycheck wasn’t going to stretch far enough to pay them and buy the gift card. So I marched up to the attic and started taking out things we no longer used and worked my way down to the basement, by the time I was done I had about a dozen items for sale.
I listed them all on Facebook and then on Craigslist and by the time of her graduation open house I had the money for the gift card and then some.
10. Plan Ahead
Some of these steps above you might not be able to use this year, but pin this post to Pinterest and start applying what you learned now and you should be able to save a significant amount of money on next year’s graduation gifts.
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The best idea I’ve ever read was Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover. You can get one fairly priced, (ok we’ve picked up tons of these at garage sales. One copy we found was brand new – still had an unopened graduation card in it!) and it pays off big time!
Good idea, and yes I do see them like new at yard sales all the time too. Not sure if that means the people having the sale are putting his plans into practice by selling everything but the kids, or ……