Wednesday, February 23, 2011

How to Easily Save Money on Holidays

What with all the Valentiney ooey-gooeyness floating around last week, you might be left wondering how we celebrated the holiday.

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Due to Tom being on his medical school rotations, he was scheduled to work the night shift all last week. As a result, I spent the "Day of Love" alone at home, and didn't even get to see him once all week. Wop-wop.

So what did we do?

It may be a little nontraditional and odd, but we postponed the holiday, which we've totally done in the past and loved every second of it. If a holiday falls on a weekday and it's just not going to work out, we'll put off celebrating it until a more opportune time - like the weekend.

What are the upsides of postponing a holiday?

More time. If everyone celebrating the holidays agrees to postpone it, then you've instantly got more time all-around to make sure you're adequately prepared for the upcoming celebration.

Better schedule. If the holidays falls on a bad scheduling day for you (like if your significant other is slated to work on Valentin's Day), you can schedule to celebrate the holidays during a better time for all participants. This also works well if you celebrate a holiday with several different groups of people - for us, we split up Christmas between two different states - Nebraska (Tom's family) and Florida (my family), and we trade-off year-to-year which family we spend the actual holiday with, and the other will agree to "move" the holiday to before/after the actual date.

Out of towners. If celebrating the holidays with guests who are coming from out-of-town, it may be prudent to postpone the holiday until a better time for them. Traveling is time consuming and expensive, and sometimes the cheapest flights are right on the day of the holiday or sometime after it, which can save your guests (and even you) some serious dough.


Cheaper gifts. No matter how you cut it, postponing a holiday is just cheaper. Why? Once the holiday has passed, many stores will put the holiday-themed gifts on sale, where you can make like a bandit for much less. Christmas ornaments for cents on the dollar, and Valentine's flowers and chocolates for c.h.e.a.p. Or, if you're like us, you can always take a little more time to whip up something meaningful for that special person.

Less crowded. Ever try to go out to dinner around a holiday, only to find that every restaurant has over an hour wait? It's not fun. By postponing a holiday you can avoid the rush and crowds and still enjoy your dinner.

Simple reasons, but all very valid upsides to postponing a holiday, whether it was forced or not. And these reasons all totally make me feel at least a little better about spending Valentine's week without seeing Tom -  because we'll be saving money this holiday! (at least that's what I keep telling myself, anyways).

What about you? Did you celebrate Valentine's Day on the actual day, or did you celebrate on a different date? Have you ever postponed a holiday? 


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2 comments:

  1. We changed the date, too. Scott objects to prix fixe menus on the day, so we'll wait until the day after to find a nice place with an actual full menu. He likes his steak!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good idea! Sometimes we have to move certain celebrations and it's no big deal.

    ReplyDelete

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