Posts Tagged ‘gift list’

Using a Christmas gift buy list

Ever had that? You think that you have a bunch of gifts, more or less divided equally among recipients, but when it comes time to wrap those gifts you realize you have a whole bunch of nothing for one person, a pile of tiny stuff for the other, and one really big expensive gift for yet another?

What happened is that you have been shopping by intuition and impression. You buy what you think you need for the people you thought still need "stuff".

The solution: a Christmas gift buy list.

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The Christmas gift buy list

Think of a Christmas gift buy list as a sort of inverted wish list. instead of a list of gifts somebody would like to receive, you have a list of gifts that you intend to give.

It works like this.

Following our year-round Christmas gift shopping routine you buy a gift. As soon as you come home you store the gift in your designated Christmas gift box. You then write the gift on your Christmas gift buy list.

If the gift is intended for a specific person, either write his or her name behind the gift or use a separate page and list the gift there. Which solution you will use depends on how many people you are shopping for.

Additionally you can write both the value and the price of the gift.  Sometimes you will pay a lot less for a gift versus what its real value is. Writing down the value helps you to estimate how much value each person will receive this Christmas versus what you paid for that person’s Christmas.

Gifts that you can’t assign to a specific person yet go on the Anyone list (or you write Anyone behind the gift entry) where you write anyone behind. This is your gift stash.

Bring Your Christmas Gift Buy List

Your Christmas Gift Buy List should be portable. If possible you should have it on you or bring it with you at all times. You never know when you walk in on what seems to be in good deal  When you have your Christmas Gift Buy List with you, you can quickly reference it to determine if you really should buy someone yet another gift.

Or, sometimes you run into a nice gadget or other tiny stuff and then you might want to check your list to ensure you’re not buying one person a whole bunch of nothing.

Use For Christmas Gift Budgeting

By noting both the value and the price of the gift you can use your Christmas Gift Buy List to budget this year’s Christmas and set yourself a fixed maximum amount of money to spend on each gift recipient.