Saving on Christmas Pt. 3 – Buying for Kids

Buying for kids is a completely different ball game than buying for adults.  It can be very expensive or very inexpensive and no matter what you do they are still going to be playing with the box that the gift came in at the end of the day.  Now I do not have a ton of experience in shopping for my own child so I rely on the strategies of my mother and siblings.

Their first and most important step was to buy year round.  Do not let Christmas sneak up on you because you can get much better deals throughout the year buy purchasing when you see a great deal instead of purchasing out of necessity.  This allows you to have stockpile of gifts so that if an unexpected birthday party pops up you do not have to go pay full price for a gift that you will get no joy in seeing your child use.

Since we are in December it may not be possible to try the year long approach.  If you are buying for someone else's children a big hit is anything that makes noise.  I will warn you that this may start a gift war where your family member are now giving your children toys that make noise in retaliation for your noise making gift.  With that in mind noise making gifts are usually inexpensive.  I bought a voice changer for one of our nephews a couple years back.  He played with that little box for hours on end.  It was a $5 gift and was one of his favorites.  In the same vein ( minus the noise) I bought one of my nephews, who loves to be silly, a set of fake teeth.  He played with them till they fell apart.  That gift only cost us $3.  So the key really isn't noise but purchasing inexpensive gifts that fit with a child's personality, instead of caving to the coll new gadget.  This is how we keep from breaking our budget with 11 nieces and nephews to buy for each year.

--This is Part Two of a series of post on not overspending on Christmas.  The other two posts are:
Saving on Christmas Pt. 1
Savingon Christmast Pt. 2 - Buying for Adults