If you would like to learn how to make holiday money so you have more cash to spend and shop with, this article will show you some great money-making ideas!
The holiday shopping season has arrived!
And it’s now time to buy gifts for your loved ones.
However, the gift-giving season can take a toll on your financial health and push you toward debt, if you don’t pay close attention to every dollar you spend for the holidays.
Also, are you one of those people who are managing money with a pay cut this year? If so, then it’s not a good idea to take on additional debts when you are already in a financial crunch.
With saying that and during these trying times, holiday spending should not ruin your holidays either.
How can you still do holiday shopping without incurring additional debt?
For that, you first need to make a financial plan based on the following factors:
- Your holiday shopping budget.
- Your affordability.
- Your way of enjoying holidays.
- The number of people you are shopping for.
- The food you are going to indulge in.
As you can see it is absolutely necessary to start planning so you can have a rough idea of how much your holiday budget entails.
Once you have a clear idea of how much you need, take advantage of these money-generating opportunities below to help you shop wisely, and make extra money for this upcoming holiday season.
How To Generate Holiday Shopping Cash Wisely From Now Onwards
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1. Take advantage of cashback trends with sites like Rakuten.
If you would like to redeem more than you spend this year, now is the time to take advantage of cashback trends.
Cashback is a type of rewards program offered by different shops, credit card companies, shopping centers, and so on, that puts a certain amount of money in the customer’s electronic wallets, which they can then use for further transactions.
When you take advantage of cashback offers, you receive a cash rebate on the amount charged on the card or any such offer card that you join.
And since the cost of living is rising, the importance and popularity of these cashback offers are becoming all the more popular.
Here are some favorite cashback sites that can help you make more money while you spend:
- Rakuten – Rakuten is the best way to redeem cashback as it’s a worldwide cash-back service that gives you 1% to 10% cashback on your online purchases at over 750 retailers in Canada, including big names like Amazon, lululemon, Lowes, Sephora, and more. You can give Rakuten a try here.
- Top Cash Back – It has a smaller range of affiliated e-commerce sites but nonetheless includes big names like JCPenny, H&M, and Walmart. According to TopCashBack’s website, they don’t keep any of the commission that affiliated stores give them, but rather pass it entirely on to the consumer and thus have the most generous cashback rates among cashback sites.
- Swagbucks – Swagbucks not only offers cash back for shopping but also rewards users for doing other things such as surveys, rating videos and online games, and more. (You can learn more about Swagbucks in tip #2)
2. Earn and save money searching online with Swagbucks.
Now we are going to dive a bit further into how you can earn extra money on Swagbucks by simply searching online.
And since you get reward points through Swagbucks, you can easily use them to receive gifts, prizes and also generate holiday shopping cash if you simply search your way with it through the year.
Swagbucks is the premier rewards website and one of the leading search engines that offer money this way.
That’s right, it’s a search engine just the same as Google, Ask, or Bing alike, but the main difference is you get reward points just for searching the web through it.
It is quite a popular search engine already and it’s gaining speed since most people research online for a couple of hours a day already.
Plus, you can get a brief idea about its gaining popularity by the mere fact that Google sponsors this cashback search engine as well.
So, if you are interested in generating more holiday shopping cash this year, you should install the Swagbucks toolbar next to your Google toolbar and conduct all of your online searches through it.
The search results are almost the same, with variances here and there, but if you want to search for anything and make some extra cash, you can use Swagbucks itself for that purpose.
Once you get the search bar installed you can easily build your reward points every time you search for something using the Swagbucks search engine.
Keep in mind, you do need to set up a PayPal account in order to redeem your money. So while you are at it, make sure your PayPal account is linked to your Swagbucks account, and then you can use the money you earn to purchase your holiday gifts.
Here’s how to get 1000 free Swagbucks money when you start:
- Prepare to earn 1,000 Swagbucks a day by first installing the SwagButton.
- Change your default browser to Swagbucks.
- Install the Swagbucks app on your phone.
- Complete the to-do list Swagbucks offers you for 40SB per day.
- Watch videos.
- Play games.
- Complete passive searches on the internet.
- Complete the basic daily goal to redeem even more money.
- Refer and earn money. If you invite friends and promote Swagbucks, you can also get points for this. It depends on the referrals, and for each referral, you may end up earning 100 points. You can refer to Swagbucks through links, emails, and website banners. This option is a fun way to earn money for extra holiday shopping cash.
3. Take advantage of coupons & promo codes to save even more money online.
Collecting coupons can help you save a lot of money during the holiday season and also avoid you from incurring more debt.
With coupon codes, you may be able to save money on most things starting from your basic grocery items all the way to home-based accessories, including holiday shopping, books, and even items required for your pets.
Couponing can also help you to stay within your affordability, it’s just a matter of knowing how to use them to your advantage, using such sites like Honey.
You also may be able to save money on new products too as most companies offer discount coupons to promote their items during the holiday season and Honey will also be able to tell you this.
By signing up with the biggest discount retailer online at JoinHoney.com and linking it with your PayPal account, and if you choose to shop with honey for your holiday shopping this year, the Honey software will automatically find and apply promo codes at the checkout for you.
These are all promo codes and coupons offered from an arrangement of different stores that will give you the best discount in real-time.
Make sure to add Honey to your browser and find out how much money you could be saving today. Automatic coupon codes are uploaded every single minute from thousands of different stores and it’s FREE to use to help save you more money this holiday season.
4. If you are highly disciplined with your money — make cashback credit cards work for you.
Cashback credit cards are quite popular nowadays.
Usually, credit cards offer cash back on purchases made through their cards because they are competing for your business and since people often buy quite a lot over the festive season, you can earn a substantial amount on your shopping this way.
As long as these credit cards don’t lead you to overspend, this is just another way that could help you generate a little more money for your holiday budget.
This cashback money comes from or is rather paid by retailers.
This is another form of advertising to popularize their companies in the marketplace but you can get cashback from a credit card by earning cashback rewards on purchases or taking out a cash advance.
Keep in mind though, that cash advances with cashback credit cards are known to have high interest rates and fees, so it’s best that you always use your better judgment and know what you can spend to generate the extra holiday shopping cash that you need.
5. Connect your credit card to the drop app if online websites are too intimidating.
Another credible source to generate holiday shopping cash without having to sign up with search engines is by connecting your credit card to the Drop app and choosing your favorite retailers to shop with.
Drop is an easy-to-use app, that lets you earn gift cards for the money you’re already spending. That is all you have to do.
You will earn points whenever you shop from those stores through the app.
Plus, you can earn points for referring your friends to this app as well. You can redeem those points for gift cards at Starbucks, Amazon, and Netflix.
6. Work in retail to make extra money for Christmas.
Every year, a few hundred thousand holiday jobs open up to get ready for the crowds, and that means during the seasonal holiday a lot of jobs will be looking for temporary employees to handle the extra volume.
So if you are looking to make some extra holiday cash for Christmas this year, pick up a retail job part-time in your local area.
A holiday job during the festive season can involve working in a place such as a pumpkin patch, a Christmas tree lot, numerous toy stores, UPS, or other courier services that are in need to handle the extra volume Christmas brings.
For most organizations worldwide, the holidays are incredibly busy, which ensures that most of them search for temporary job recruits to cope with their busy months every holiday season.
7. Change your lifestyle — minimize, cut back and sell.
Sometimes, just changing your lifestyle can help you save some extra money daily. You can cut back on your daily coffee runs to Starbucks, you can change up your monthly fitness passes and work out from home or you can also sell your unnecessary and unused items to see some more money in your hands.
We all have things that we can sell around the house, and there are several ways to sell your items. These comprise of:
- Craigslist – This notorious website known for flipping things may be one of the best ways to make money easily. And even though it’s the sure bet that you can sell things that you don’t need for money, always be safe when you are making transactions with strangers through Craigslist and try to avoid Craigslist scams if you see them.
- Garage/yard sale – This can be a simple way to sell several items simultaneously, plus you can do it from home. One drawback is that the pay typically is smaller and you will have to preplan to sell your items a little bit before the weather starts to get cold.
- Facebook – There are tons of unique groups available on Facebook to sell almost anything you want in your region. Facebook makes selling the things you don’t want really really easy. Plus you get to see the profile of the individual you are selling to, which can make things a tad bit safer but again always be safe.
- Thrift Shops – If you carry your item to a thrift shop, it is probably the quickest way to sell your items fast because they would probably give you cash for something they know can sell. Also, some thrift shops will pay for delivery if your items are of value, and give you on-site cash or store credit that you can then use to buy your Christmas gifts.
8. Always Pre-book your air tickets and hotels in advance to redeem special offers and discounts.
To save money on traveling during holidays, you will have to determine the exact time when you would like to take your trip, the activities that you would like to indulge in, the places and hotels where you want to stay.
If you can decide on all of these beforehand, you may be able to get the air tickets at low costs and even some discounts on the hotel bookings.
9. Start thrift shopping in your neighborhood throughout the year for unique gifts.
While shopping, try out the different thrift stores in your neighborhood. Who knows, you may even be able to find some completely new items leftover from the last year.
You will also be able to bargain on the price of these items in person which can give your holiday shopping budget some extra wiggle room to save even more money while spending.
10. Create a holiday shopping budget & Start saving money for holidays early.
Instead of spending extra money all year round, start putting it into your savings account immediately.
If you do this, you should generate a healthy holiday shopping budget that’ll make holiday shopping less stressful.
By creating a holiday budget, you’ll also find out the areas where you can cut down on your expenses and save your hard-earned dollars for the upcoming holiday season.
Plus, if you build a fund for your holiday shopping in advance and get your shopping out of the way before the prices go up, this too will help you save even more money.
So try to start saving more money than you usually do, that way you can expend as per requirements during the holiday.
And if this list of options in this article didn’t suffice? Make sure to try out these unique income ideas so that you can make some more money on the side from the comfort of your very own home.
There you have it! You can generate holiday shopping cash to enjoy a debt-free holiday this year by following a few ideas listed out in this article.
As always, I hope you have a wonderful holiday season this year. Happy shopping and happy holidays!
Author: Everything Abode
Welcome to Everything Abode, your daily inspiration for every activity at home!
Our goal is to inspire you to live an elegant and chic lifestyle from the comfort of your home.
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