Lowering the Cost of Holiday Shopping

Reading other personal finance blogs this year is helping me to personally minimize my Christmas spending. I use credit cards for almost all (if not completely all) of my holiday shopping, and I do a lot of that shopping on Amazon. (I'd do even more of it if Borders Gift Cards had more flexible amounts to choose from, but don't get me started). So here are a few things I'm doing this year to help keep my costs down. We're not talking big money here, but every little bit counts.

I didn't find out about the Amazon A9 discount via a personal finance blog (though some have mentioned it) but from a long forgotten techy type blog (maybe a.wholelottanothing.org?) many moons ago. For several weeks, I have been sure to have A9 selected in my Firefox "search box" so that all my quickie searches are done there and I therefore currently qualify for the 1.57% (half of pi) discount on Amazon purchases.

Thanks to Jane Dough, I have $5 extra to put in the Amazon giftapalooza pot too (every little bit counts). Sadly I missed out on the previous survey while I was traveling. I took Jane's advice and put it right into my Amazon account so I wouldn't have to dig it up when making my order. Very handy. Thanks again, Jane!

I can't find the original post now (if it was you...let me know!) but someone back in November (I think) remembered to check on credit card award point balances and made good use of them (vague, I know). I wish I had acted on it then, but I did make a mental note to do the same. I realized I could turn 7500 Diners Club points into 3 $25 Amazon gift certificates which I did last week. The rub is that it takes them a while to mail (yes...*mail*) them to you so I may not get these in time to use them for present shopping. (I hate it when I procrastinate). Anyway, I had always associated them with airline and hotel rewards so I'm glad I looked closely.

Over at Personal Finance for the New Age, I was informed of a Discover card promotion that gives 5% cash back for online purchases Nov 25th to Dec 31st. Fortunately my Discover card does qualify for that promotion so all online purchases -- and definitely the Amazon purchase -- will be made with the Discover card this month. (If the merchant doesn't take Discover, I'll still use my Citi Dividend Card for 1% back). So that's like getting a 5% discount on all christmas shopping ;)

I will also try to qualify for the Amazon Prime promotion during my big order, but I'm not counting on that.

Also, I don't think I'm actually buying anything from Ebay this year, but if I do, I'll be checking Slickdeals.net for Ebay coupon codes first. These expire 12/18:

• C23-GiftGuide $15 off $100+
• C22-GiftGuide $5 off $50+
• C11-GIFTGUIDE 10% off ($25 max discount)

Consolidating as much holiday shopping as possible on the Discover card will also allow me to keep track of the spending and will help me keep it in check. We do have a basic budget this year (our first) but I'm a leo...so this could be my achilles heel! (yes, I know leos aren't the only ones who like to be generous at christmas )

So that's basically a list of the little things that will help me...any one else have some more tips?