Spread the Holiday Cheer

One of the Chicago coupon bloggers I follow is frugalista, who recently published a post titled “8 things you should do before the end of 2010 to save money.” She has some good tips, but one I couldn’t get too excited about was #4: Cut someone off your Christmas list. Well, I kind of agree. Frugalista suggests cutting someone such as your cousins’ niece’s husband. That makes sense. You don’t need to give every single one of your extended family a present, or even all your friends for them to know you care about them and love them.

But.

People like frugalista and myself are couponers. And that means we save heaps of money on almost absolutely everything. I don’t keep track on how much I save, but here’s an example for you. I had a $60 purchase the other day at CVS that I got down to $3 thanks to all my coupons. On top of all the savings, there's all the stuff I get for absolutely free. That’s a lot of money saved in a calendar year.

Do you get where I am going here? If you’re saving hundreds, possibly thousands of dollars a year, I think you can afford to add someone to your Christmas list. But instead of a random relative, how about adding someone who makes a huge difference in your day-to-day life? Even just a $10 gift card is a nice gift, I think.

Here are some ideas of people it might be nice to thank with a little gift:

• the barista who hands you your coffee every morning
• your postman (mine sucks baguettes so is NOT getting an xmas gift from me, no absolutely most definitely not!)
• the admin at work who does all your expenses for you or schedules all your meetings
• your yoga teacher
• your bus driver
• your doorman

Got any others?