Who finds the holidays more stressful than joyful each year?  For some of us the stress of buying extra gifts, food, and traveling quickly makes the holiday season the most unjoyful time of year.

It doesn’t have to be that way!  With a little holiday planning and a lot of self-care, the holidays can once again become the most joyful time of year.

I understand the financial stress that the holidays can bring.  For many people, gift buying becomes another chore to check off a long holiday list of to-dos.  With a large family and a larger extended family, gift giving can be very expensive.  There have been years where we’ve been very financially strapped and were so stressed out about gifts that it became almost impossible to enjoy the holiday festivities.  Although I don’t know your personal situation and I realize that we’re less than a month from Christmas, I wanted to share with you one simple way to help pay for Christmas.

One simple way to help pay for Christmas is to save your gift cards throughout the year.

Hear me out before you go shaking your finger at me saying, “Really?”  This simple way to save money can take many forms.

If you are a credit card user (and I only recommend that if you pay your balances off every month) accumulate your rewards all year to use towards Christmas.   My husband saves his rewards all year from his card (we pay several of our household bills using that card) and then requests the rewards in form of Target gift cards.  There are other gift cards that we could request but I love Target and can get a lot of my gift shopping done there.  This year I paid for over half of our 5 kids’ Christmas gifts with these and since he pays the balance off each month it was essentially free money.

I have another friend that saves all of her Target gift cards she receives all year round from Target’s weekly gift card promos. When it’s Christmas time she uses all of those gift cards to pay for her gifts.

I love Target’s gift card promos as well but I’ve never saved them up all year.  I think I may do this with half of my cards for next year.  (What I usually do is use the gift cards I earned for buying one promotion and getting a gift card, to purchase the next promotion and receiving another gift card.)  I have no problem having an extra Tide in the closet by buying 2 at a time, using 2 coupons when I check out, and earning a gift card.  When you use your Target debit or credit card you get an extra 5% off on top of that which usually makes these a very good deal.  Target is always offering these type of promos whether it’s deodorant, laundry soap or cat food.  They even work online if you hate going out to shop or don’t live close to a Target.

I know some of you may be nervous about keeping that many gift cards and not losing them throughout the year.  A few solutions to that would be to put them in your lockbox or safe, keep them in a special Christmas box in your closet so you know that is what they are for, or even store them in your desk.  Be creative and I would love to know what works for you!

Have you ever used this simple way to help pay for Christmas?

P.S. I have received zero compensation from Target from this post.  We simply shop there a lot and I do love their gift card promos!

Happy Wednesday! Thanks for joining in the party!

Welcome to Women With Intention Wednesdays!

Here is what you will find at Women With Intention Wednesdays:

• This is a link up party where you come to encourage one another, have fun, and share your best posts to help women live their best life!
• In other words, any post that you have written about Christian living, homemaking, relationships, healthy living, living a frugal life or that helps another woman can be included in this link up! Please just them family friendly (I reserve the right to remove anything that I feel isn’t appropriate).
• This link up is beneficial for every woman! Whether you are a blogger or a reader, this is one you won’t want to miss! I’m very excited to offer this link up as a place to not only build new relationships between bloggers but also by providing an awesome resource of information for my readers!

Here are the rules of this link up:

1. You must link directly to your post (no homepages, please).
2. Please link up no more than 2 posts each week and please do not link up the same post week after week.

3. For every link you add, please visit the link before you and one other of your choice. If your links are consecutive visit the blogger before you and your choice for the 2nd link. It’s impossible to build relationships when no one communicates! Please don’t link and run!

4. By linking up you give me permission to share your posts and photos on this blog and social media. Each week I will choose a featured blogger and possibly another post such as the most popular post. I will only feature you and the most popular posts if you have followed the rules (otherwise I’ll move on to the next most popular post). All features will be linked back to the original source.
5. You also give me permission to email you a quick reminder that the party is live. You may opt out anytime. I don’t spam my readers with emails.
6. Answer the community building question below so we all get to know each other! That’s the purpose of being here! 🙂

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Community building question: What is one simple way you either save for the holidays or pay for the holidays?

I also like to stock up on gift cards for teachers, friends, and family when restaurants have their holiday promotions on gift cards.  My bonus dad loves Buffalo Wild Wings as does my stepbrother so last week when we were at BWW they had a promo of spend $25, you earn a gift card back from BWW.  I did 2 of these and now we have some money to use after the holidays and I’m tired of cooking! 😉  Win for all!

Have you enjoyed what you read here today? Do you have friends or other women you know that could benefit from this resource? If so, please do me a favor! I have included the links below to share with other intentional women! They’ll be glad you did!