My older son is only 5, so he hasn't been invited to too many birthday parties so far...but I know it's coming. For the birthday parties that he was invited to last year, I struggled with what to buy for the birthday boy. I didn't really know them very well, and I didn't really know what they had or didn't have (and neither did my son). I really hated to spend more on a birthday present for a relative stranger than I budgeted for my own nieces and nephews. For some of the birthdays, the birthday happened to coincide with a toy sale, but not always.
My solution this year was to start shopping for toys during the periods of time when toys are on clearance. I bought some toys for nieces and nephews during the after Christmas sales for birthdays this year. And this summer and fall I've been stocking up on the clearanced toys that retailers are trying to get rid of in order to stock their toy department for Christmas.
My son has a July birthday, so I was in Toys R Us for his birthday gift and noticed that the whole store had tons of clearance, plus you got an additional percentage off the clearance price (20%?). Then, I shopped Target during August when they had a huge clearance sale. Now, KMart has lots of toys (including board games, like Pictionary) on clearance with an additional 20% off. I've bought Christmas presents for most of my younger nieces and nephews, as well as random birthday presents for the future at huge bargains!
Next week, I plan on talking about how I save on cards by making them myself. What works for you when saving money on birthday and Christmas presents?
Sherry
Thank you for sharing! I definitely need to take notice to clearance more often. 😀 Do you get notices on them or?
"Cents"able Momma
I don't get e-mails about the clearance sales, but I either read about them on someone else's blog (like Target in August), if I'm passing the toy section at a store, I'll glance to see if there are a lot of clearance toys (like at Meijer and Toys R Us this summer) or one of my friends will tell me about clearance sales going on at a store (like at KMart).
I wish there was a way that the stores could e-mail us just about toy clearances :-).
Mrs. Jo
I even find gifts at yard sales! New-in-the-package of course! I'm surprised at how many new things you can find at them. This summer I found a package of brand new spill-proof paint cups, and paint sponges. There were 10 in the bag and it only cost me $1.25 for all of it! I packaged them in little birthday bags individually and got around 5 gifts out of it! Throw in some inexpensive brushes or paints from the dollar store and you have a VERY cheap gift! Also, if you like simple crafts, check out my blog to see more ideas like homemade hair bows and ribbon socks, etc.