Zero-Budget Christmas: The Almost Entirely True Story of Our Quest to Do Our Christmas Shopping Without Spending Any Money by Jason Anderson has been a real fun and easy read. To me, it read like an extended well-written blog post about different methods to keep your budget in check during the holiday season. It rehashes a lot of tried and true methods and Jason sprinkles in anecdotes about his successes and failures with different methods.

I really liked his example of using his credit card to stockpile reward points he could use with Amazon to do a lot of his Christmas shopping. I actually have a CapitalOne Rewards card and use the points on things all the time. I especially love the purchase eraser, which will use your points to remove the cost of an already purchased item, so if you get a good deal, you can use less points to erase it than you would if you used a generic chunk of points to purchase the same item in advance.

I also enjoyed laughing at his struggle with thrift and second-hand store shopping. Mostly because I am actually like his wife Rachel, and my family does think it’s funny to give one another bacon playing cards and then call it a night (actually, we all love card games, so bacon playing cards would not be a bad gift on many levels).

This month’s giveaway also includes a bottle of Mod Podge. The theme for all of the DIY projects listed over the last month (with the exception of the Rabbit Hole post – no promises about anything in that crazy territory) was to find DIY projects that could actually be completed for less than $5. Sometimes I fudged it a tiny bit and nearly every time it was because of freaking ModPodge (FYI – you can make bootleg ModPodge out of water and Elmer’s Glue – tada, that puts every one of those projects under $5 – but it is just a tad lesser quality). So if you have any interest in honing your crafting skills, I’d suggest getting comfortable with the stuff. Like 75% of projects I came across require it (or the ghetto bootleg water/glue stuff).

 

So final plug for this month’s giveaway! A copy of Jason Anderson’s Zero Budget Christmas and a bottle of ModPodge could be all yours! Contest ends on November 30^th.
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