Christmas with a $0 budget

I know the title of this post sounds depressing but it's true. This year my Christmas budget was $0. I lost my job a few months back when a few unfortunate circumstances occurred ending with me having pneumonia. I was devastated. Not only had I liked my job and the people I was working with but it was only months until Christmas and I LOVE Christmas.

Christmas was my mom's favorite holiday and it's the time I actually feel the closest to her. It's hard to describe that to people who don't understand. She passed away 11 years ago. Now with 4 children in the home I was determined to make it work any way I could.

I've always done surveys and signed up for freebies but I knew it was time to step up my game. So here's a breakdown of how I spent $0 on buying several gifts for everyone in my family. Please use this as a guide if you find yourself in the same situation next year. If I had done this all year things wouldn't have been so rushed.

1. Sign up for Amazon Prime. I got a free 30 day subscription and it changed my life. Seriously it pays for itself and now you can even pay monthly at $10.99. Amazon Prime gives you free shipping on all of your Amazon deliveries. But what you may not know is that they will also offer you a "Reward" if you choose not to use your 2 day shipping. This was huge for me when I found out 2 weeks ago. lol. Basically they will offer you one of several rewards if you opt to wait a few extra days. I've only been offered two different ones but I have a friend who was given better deals..in a way. At first I was offered $6 off an Amazon Pantry order. Those do not stack and even if you have Prime you still have to pay for shipping which is $5.99. So those were useless to me. But after about $30 of that offer they started offering me $1 off a digital purchase. I know that doesn't sound like much but let me break it down for you.

$1 digital rewards do stack and can be used on any virtual purchase. eBooks music...even virtual video games. And virtual gift cards for places like xBox and Playstation. They even have few video games if you choose to buy them through that route. Like I said earlier I found out about this offer 2 weeks ago. I've already redeemed $20 in xBox gift cards. :) Another $15 is pending.

Other offers that I have seen but not been offered were $5 off print books, $5 off toys or games, $5 off luxury beauty items and $10 off of home services.

Quick note: If you are on EBT you get a 50% discount on Amazon Prime. You would apply here.





2. Sign up for the following email lists/websites:

Express - You will get an initial $15 added to your account to spend on anything you want. They ran deals for 50% off and free shipping and sometimes they will add surprise reward to your account. I received an additional $10 and I made 2 different transactions. One was for a lipstick that was originally $19.95 and was half off making it $10 even. I received that shipped completely for FREE and the second order I made had a "Let's Be Unicorns" stemless wine glass and a can drink koozie that says "I don't give a flock". So me! The lipstick is going to my sister and I'm keeping the other two for myself. :D





Eddie Bauer - They have sent out $10 off any purchase emails for the past few weeks. I was lucky enough to receive one of the emails right as they had a 50% sale on all items. I bought two stainless steel mugs with an attached carabiner. Originally they were $10 each but after the 50% off they were $5 each and after my $10 coupon code they were shipped to me for completely free. One is gong to my sister and the other to her fiance. They were super cute and for free you can't beat that at all.

Coca-Cola - My true love. They had a deal this past month or so. Enter in 10 Coke caps and get a free $5 Amazon gift card. 2 per account created. I scored a few of these and some friends let me score from their accounts as well so that gave me a good amount of money to spend on Amazon. You can also score free popcorn/drinks to movie theatres and even Shutterfly items.

Marlboro - Marlboro is awesome. They give freebies throughout the year but this Christmas they did a few things. They had a daily voting poll where you logged in daily and voted once for 10 days in a row and you would receive a $25 gift card. Mine was a virtual Visa gift card that I could use anywhere. I made 2 purchases on Hollar which was around $23 and with the rest I used to pay for my Shutterfly purchases. The second offer was for a FREE movie ticket. When I received the email it gave me the option for a movie ticket (which if you live near a movie theatre would have been a great stocking stuffer) or $15 towards a virtual movie download through FandangoNow.

I opted for the virtual movies and because my sister and her fiance both had accounts we had $45 total. I bought Cars 3, Moana, and The Good Dinosaur. Not really Christmas gifts but something to keep the kids occupied leading up to Christmas. And the third offer was a $25 music gift card, which was of course, an itunes gift card which I won't use so I traded it for $10 Amazon cash. :) And the last freebie they did was a free gift if you sign in on a certain day from your phone. I haven't received that yet but I hear it's a free Zippo lighter. Great stocking stuffer!

Hollar - I love Hollar! Even if you had a budget you could totally have made it work at Hollar alone. They have a lot of brand names like Disney Trolls and Nyx and it's super cheap. My Hollar game alone was great. This season they have opted to give people a $5 credit for new signups and when you bought something the person who referred you (by giving you their unique link) also got $5. I posted that thing everywhere and managed to get about 5 orders in total. :) From toys to Christmas decor I was able to put together some nice items.

Jump Send - This is one of the sites that allowed me to get the most bang for my nonexistent buck. This is a site that allows you to apply for Amazon coupon codes to get items extremely cheap and sometimes free. I haven't purchased much from this site but the things I have gotten were: a hard phone case (looks like a phone suitcase. lol) that included earbuds for .15, Deli wax paper (100 pieces) for .98, and a wireless mouse for $1.80. Remember those digital rewards? I received $1 reward for each of those so the phone case and the wax paper was a money maker meaning I was pretty much paid to buy those items. And I used gift cards I made doing surveys to pay for it all.

Elite Deal Club - My absolute favorite site at the moment! This site is a free for all. I log in at exactly 10am 2pm and pm and click like mad trying to get huge discount codes for Amazon. Similar to Jump Send except you aren't requesting a code and waiting to be approved for it you are clicking stuff and praying you are a winner in the Elite lottery. Things I've gotten are phenomenal. A wooden cube maze $2.99, wooden afternoon dessert stand (so cute!) for $3.95, TV wall mount for $1, Shaveology razors for .29, stainless steel mandoline slicer for $2.49, and Set of makeup brushes $1. The list is endless and THIS is how I bought most of my Christmas gifts. Everything from actual makeup to poo-pourri it's been amazing. I highly recommend it but you have to be patient as sometimes you may not get what you want. But even if I don't get what I want I still make it work. I'll buy .10 vitamins just to get the $1 digital reward.

Shutterfly - I've been using Shutterfly for years and even though they've made some policy changes you can still score some amazing free tems here. From Christmas cards to magnets to cookie jars I've shook this tree as hard as I could this year. Some partner stores (such as Pampers kellogg's and Destination Maternity to name a few) will send out free shipping codes during the holiday season. Once you stack those with the other freebies stores have sent you or the sales you can easily get away with a $200 order for free! You can read more on my Shutterfly tricks here!



3. Sign up for ebates!! Seriously sometimes you can even get a percentage back on orders that were free! It's free money so why not? You are already on the site just download the plugin and it will pop up and let you know how much of a percentage you will get back. I got .60 back for those 2 free Express orders. And that will make a pretty nice check once the pay period is over and you get it in the mail. :) If you are new to ebates you will get a $10 free gift card of your choice so sign up just for that alone!

4. Survey Sites

 This is how I bought all that great stuff on Amazon! Join the following survey sites (these are all legit and I've redeemed many times from each)

Crowdtap - you take tiny little surveys about a question or two long and post a few things to your social media for points to win gift cards. Once you sign up the first two point wins are at 500. You will get a $5 gift card to Amazon each time and after that first two it jumps up to 1000 points so far I've redeemed $45 in Amazon from there and I've gotten some full size products to test out as well.

I-say (Ipsos) - You can redeem from 1000 points on up each survey can pay from 90 points on up and sometimes you'll get 5 points just for trying. You can choose from a few different gift cards so if Amazon isn't on your radar you have other options. Surveys here can take a bit and be patient you may get booted out of a lot of them. 1000 points gets you a $10 gift card.

Global Test Market - Another just like I-Say where you take surveys and once you hit 1100 points you can start redeeming. Everything from Amazon to Paypal! The choice is yours. 1100 gets you a $10 gift card. In the past month I've made $35 in Amazon gift cards and $15 in paypal.

5. I didn't buy wrapping paper. Between Amazon and Hollar I used the paper they pack the boxes with as wrapping paper. It's plain brown or bone colored kraft paper but it does the job! I managed to get a coupon code for a whole 8 pack of masking tape for .12 and the labels I use are from a product review. I don't have bows this year but they never stay on the gifts anyway.

I'm pretty proud of myself honestly.


A few tips:

1. Don't use your main email address. Make a new one for all of your things to go to once you've signed up.
2. Try every survey that you get every day. And log into Crowdtap daily.
3. Be patient. Rome wasn't built in a day!
4. It never hurts to try.
5. Enter contests/sweepstakes on Facebook and instagram. I've won some pretty cool stuff just by entering!

So there you have it. This is how I did Christmas this year!  hope you find this helpful and if you have any questions you can reach out to me on my social media email me or just leave a comment below.