Holiday Guide 2015 Money Saving Tip #1

Luv Saving Money’s Holiday Guide is never just about gifts. There definitely are awesome budget friendly gift ideas but it’s also a guide to help you save some money during the holiday season. The holidays are expensive. Get nice gifts and save money, it can be done! You’ll find helpful tips during November and December to help you save money on gifts, decor, food and more so let’s get started with the first tip of the guide!

Use Gift Cards To Get More Bang for Your Shopping Buck. Here’s How:

There’s actually a couple ways to do this.

#1. Some stores offer rewards for buying other retailers gift cards at their store. For example, Giant Eagle gives you 10 cents fuelperks for every $50 in gift cards that you buy. During the holiday season they’ll often bump it up to 20 cents fuelperks for every $50 you buy. So if your vehicle has a 20 gallon tank and you’re filling up you could save $2-$4 on your fill up for each $50 in gift cards you buy. BUT that’s not all. Let me give you a scenario.

My oldest son has Madden 16 on his Christmas list. My middle son has a couple Nerf guns on his Christmas list and my youngest son has WWE 2k16 on his Christmas list. I know that the 2 video games will cost about $50 each. I’m thinking the 2 Nerf guns my other son wants will probably be close to $50 total as well. I also know I can buy all these things at Toy R’ US. So I go and buy $150 in Toys R’ Us gift cards at Giant Eagle and earn myself at least 30 cents off per gallon (60 cents off per gallon if I buy during a 20 cents off promotion) in fuelperks. Now I could take those gift cards directly to Toys R’ Us and buy those things I mentioned but I want to save even more money. So what I do is I jump online and shop through one of my cash back sites like ShopAtHome.com and use my gift cards to shop online. So now not only did I earn at least 30 cents off per gallon of gas in fuelperks but I’m also getting 1% cash back through the cash back site. And you could do this for a lot of retailers and some give a lot more cash back.

#2. Another option to save with gift cards is to buy gift cards from gift card swapping sites like GiftCareRescue.com (which I’ve personally used to both buy and sell) or cardcash.com. You can buy gift cards for less than the value of the gift card. For example, right now cardcash has a $15 Bath and Body Works gift card you can buy for $13.05. You’ll get the full $15 value but you won’t pay full price. AND you can still take that gift card and shop Bath and Body Works online through at cash back site to buy a gift if you like. ShopAtHome.com has 2% cash back right now and you earn 50 ShopGold points.

Even if you just want to give your recipient a gift card and don’t want to go through the cash back sites to buy a gift for them it’s still a good deal. #1 gets you cheaper gas and #2 gets saves you money right off the bat on the gift card purchase.

Charitable Gift Idea with World Vision

I received the below mentioned product to review and include in the Holiday Guide. Any opinions expressed are my own. Giveaway is sponsored by World Vision.

You know that person on your list who has everything? Or your grandmother who says “I don’t want anything, if you want to do something just make a donation to a charity for me” Or maybe you decide on a charity to make a donation to each holiday and you’re trying to decide which one to choose. For all of these, my suggestion would be World Vision.

World Vision is a philanthropic charity that allows you to choose a level of donation depending on your budget. You can choose for your donation to go right here to needs in the US, choose needs in 3rd world countries, or just make a donation and choose to have them put it where it’s needed the most.

Let’s say your budget is $25. Well there’s a lot of good you can do with $25. You could donate 2 chickens to a hungry family in a 3rd world family. This provides nutrition to families. And because chickens are easy to breed, it’s a gift that can keep on giving. Or for $25 you could choose to have it go in to help by a sewing machine to help bring women out of poverty by allowing them to make a living as a seamstress and learn a skill. You can provide care for 1 child providing things like nutritious food, clothing, or counseling. OR $25, thanks to donations from clothing manufacturers, can buy $300 worth of necessities for a child right here in the US. Of course if you budget is bigger there are tons of choices for that too. For $18 you can feed a family of 5 for a day!

If you’re someone who isn’t opposed to the idea of giving a charitable donation in someone’s name as a gift but really kinda want to also give them a gift, there’s options for that too. When you donate $45 or more you can have the option of choosing a Mango Wood beaded bracelet as a gift that you can then give to your recipient. Wouldn’t it be nice to give them a handcrafted gift with a note to let them know you made a donation to a needy family? Or a donation of $75 or more you could choose an Ethiopia Sumatra coffee blend complete with an olive wood spoon to give the your recipient. $100 donation could get you a Vietnamese tote to give. An $85 donation could get you a sliver vines cuff to give like the one I received to review.

This is a beautifully made cuff bracelet crafted by artisans in India. It’s adjustable and made well. Initially looking at it, I thought, there’s no way this going to fit my wrist. But it does have a little stretch to it to allow you to get it onto your wrist but have it stay on once it’s on. There are a few hand crafted gorgeous pieces to choose from if you like, to go along with your donation. I also thought the Royal Silk scarf was beautiful too. Or the Christmas Star ornament. You don’t have to choose a gift to received if you don’t want to but the option is there.

To see what causes your money can help and see just how far your donation can go visit World Vision catalog. You can also follow World Vision on twitter: @WorldVisionNews and/or @WorldVisionUSA You can also find World Vision on facebook

GIVEAWAY

1 Luv Saving Money reader will win

A Silver Vines Cuff bracelet

US only

World Vision Holiday 2015

We Tried the I DO 3D Art Pen

I received the below mentioned product in order to complete a review for my Holiday Guide. Any opinions expressed are my own.
Welcome to the official kick off of the Luv Saving Money Holiday Guide 2015. Here’s you’ll find budget friendly gifts, affordable holiday decor ideas, holiday deals/coupons, and pretty much anything for the frugal conscious during the holidays. Follow the list in the right side bar for an updated list of holiday guide posts or just search the term “holiday guide” in the search bar.

We’re kicking this off today with a new toy to hit the market for the holidays. It’s meant for ages 8-99 according to the box. You may have heard about 3D pens. Maybe even saw youtube videos of some amazing art made with 3D pens. But 3D pens aren’t even everyone’s budget. If you have a budding artist, a teen with a 3D pen on their list, or you’ve been wanting to try it out for yourself maybe you could start with the IDO3Dart pen

We received the I Do 3D Pen 4 pack that came with 4 different color pens, a plastic drawing sheet, a spotlight, and a 3D Guide Map. This packages says it can make up to 20 projects. This would of course depend on how big your projects were and how much ink you use. We started with a smaller project from the 3D Guide Map.

I’ll be honest it wasn’t exactly what we thought it would be. The pens are prefilled with their corresponding color. They don’t seem to be refillable. It uses a special ink rather than the 3D printer filaments. You can put the clear sheet over the 3D Guide Map patterns. Once you draw for a bit you need to use the spotlight to dry the ink. Then we started building up once all the pieces were completed. We connected the pieces by, sort of, sautering the pieces together with the ink and spotlight. This process does take some time.

I Do 3D pens are available in 4 packs, single pens, and a 7 pen deluxe set which is a Toy R’ Us exclusive for $39.99. I Do 3D can also be found at Walmart and Michael’s for the 4 pen set at $19.99-$24.99 per set and Walmart, Target, TRU, Amazon, Michael’s, and Kmart for the single pen set at $7.99-$12.99 each. Visit IDO3Dart.com for more details

This product did not work as quickly an easily as it shows in the commercials but what ever does? This is a project that is going to take some time. Perhaps a few session to get a completed project done depending on the size of the project. For once, I agree with the age recommendation. My 6 year old son tried this and got a bit frustrated with it but my 11 and 13 year old enjoyed it. This would make a great gift for a teen or tween that likes to work with their hands and is imaginative.