12 ways to cut the cost of Christmas

Christmas can be trench warfare, a tit-for-tat battle of giving and receiving in which our personal finances can be shot to pieces.

Last year, Britons spent an average of £809 per household on Christmas presents, food and drink, holidays and decorations, according to research carried out by RetailMeNot, a US-based voucher company. We spend almost £500 on gifts, £220 on food and drink and £30 on decorations — roughly double the amounts spent by people in France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain.

It is time to call a truce. As we look forward to celebrating the first post-referendum Christmas, it may be wise to emulate our continental neighbours and halve our spending, mindful of the inflation shock that awaits us next year. To coin a familiar phrase, we should take back control. Here are 12 battle strategies to help you save money this Christmas:

1 Re-gifting

My first tip comes from one of the grand houses of England. My father-in-law was a footman to the gentry when he was young, and one of his regular duties was to polish up silver from the vaults for his lordship to give as gifts. You may not have a stash of silver, but, judging by the number of items on eBay in the immediate aftermath of Christmas, most of us have received unwanted presents such as perfume, candles, books or vases that have not come out of their packaging. These are ideal re-gifts. Just don’t give it back to the person who bought it in the first place.

2 Bargain bubbles

All the supermarkets have champagne on offer in the weeks before Christmas. At the time of writing, Sainsbury has Defontaine champagne at £12, but also has a “buy six bottles get 25 per cent off” deal that brings the price down to £9 (there is a 36 bottle maximum). Marks and Spencer has reduced its Louis Vertay Brut from £33 to £16.50 until the end of the year, and is also offering 25 per cent off six bottles, bringing the price down to £12.37 a bottle. The winner of the sparkling wine category of the Good Housekeeping Institute Christmas awards was the Morrisons Prosecco Spumante at £8.25 and the runner up was Lidl’s Allini Prosecco Spumante at £5.29. My advice? Get it before it’s gone!

3 Double up

At this time of year, lots of stores give vouchers to their customers that can reduce the cost of present buying (check the “promotions” bucket of your Gmail, and scour the ads that fall out of magazines). The best vouchers require no minimum spend — i.e. you can get £10 worth of goods with a £10 voucher. Be wary of meeting higher price hurdles — Eg £10 off if you spend £50 — as you could fall into the trap of “spending to save”.

If you also have vouchers for 20 per cent off, you can often double up. For example, a £55 nightshirt at White Company can be yours for £34 (ask the sales assistant to take off the 20 per cent discount before deducting the £10 voucher). Watch out for other offers that you can double up; the discounted supermarket “wine of the month” usually also qualifies for the “buy six, get 25 per cent off” deal.

4 Get it delivered

If you’ve never done an online food shop before, now is the time to start. Supermarkets are still offering discounts of up to £20 for a first online grocery shop so long as you spend their minimum — usually £40 to £60. These can also be used to double up with special offers such as wine deals.

5 Buy books online in store

Click and collect enables shoppers to pick up books at their local Waterstones bookstore for the discounted online price. As you do not have to pay until you collect the books, it is possible to order the books using a mobile phone while you are browsing. If the books are already available in the store, staff will often let you take them there and then, although the rules on the website tell book buyers not to go to the store until they have been notified that the book has arrived.

Food writers find it difficult to produce a new book every Christmas. Instead of buying the latest title, look for the author’s classics at a fraction of the cost. Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals by Jamie Oliver, for example, has a recommended retail price of £26 but is available online for £6. The more expensive the book, the more likely it is to be discounted online. For example, Le Manoir au Quat’ Saisons cookbook, published in October at £50, was available from Amazon for £17 in early November.

6 Take a student with you

It may spoil the surprise, but if anyone in your household is a member of the National Union of Students, you can get bargains if you take them Christmas shopping with you. A host of retailers offer 10 to 20 per cent off in-store or online on production of a valid NUS card. Amazon Prime also halves its annual fee. Register with websites such as Student Beans to obtain even more promotional discounts, such as 15 per cent off at Ted Baker, which could reduce a £485 suit to £412. Very smart.

7 Get free delivery

Amazon Prime offers free next day delivery and allows a 30-day free trial for customers to test the system. The full cost is £79, but I have used the free trial on more than one occasion and successfully cancelled it. It is best to cancel the next day — or as their website describes it, “do not continue” — to avoid missing the end of the trial and incurring costs. The free trial continues for the full 30 days. If you’re shopping on any other websites, before you check out, open another tab and search for the website name followed by “free delivery voucher code”. I am constantly amazed at the number of times this has saved me a delivery fee of £7 or more.

8 Leave items at checkout

When you buy online, your shopping is monitored. Retailers know when you add goods to your shopping basket and fail to check out. A recent study suggests that customers do not complete transactions when they see the high delivery costs at the checkout stage. It can pay to leave your order in the basket for 24 hours. Some companies will send you a discount voucher to help complete the deal.

9 Airport shopping

Travelling abroad on business before Christmas? If you do your homework before you set off there are bargains to be had in duty-free perfumes. You don’t need to lug your purchases around abroad either — you can buy on the way out, and collect from the airport upon your return. Not all the discounts are as good as claimed, so you need to check the best prices on the high street or online in the UK before you set off. FT Money Editor Claer Barrett recently saved 20 per cent on various Jo Malone perfumes by doing just that. Hopefully, one of them is for me.

10 Get your children to make stuff

Your artistic efforts may not be charming but your children’s will be. You can buy 50 white cards and envelopes for £5 from hobby shops or ten cards with a slot to take a photograph for £1.50. They can also make gifts — there are plenty of ideas online for all ages.

11 Buy the best — not the most expensive

We all want to serve the best food at Christmas, but that does not mean paying the most. Every year the Good Housekeeping Institute blind taste turkeys and all the other Christmas staples. It pits the produce from Lidl and Iceland against Harrods and all the other major food retailers and gets surprising results. This year, the Iceland luxury whole brined turkey with orange and thyme butter at £4.95 per kg came out top. Its mince pies at £1.50 for six came out top of the 25 brands tested. Asda’s cranberry and port sauce at £1.40 also topped the tables. The full results are available online here.

12 Don’t waste food

Christmas is the worst time for food waste because we all worry about family and friends going hungry or thirsty. The Love Food Hate Waste campaign estimates that families waste about £50 of food in a normal month.

At Christmas, it is easy to waste £100 or more, adding to the 61,000 tonnes of savoury snacks, biscuits and sweets wasted each year. Its website and app can help you defeat your profligate instincts by showing you ideas to use up leftovers (and a handy guide to those that can be safely frozen) as well as helping you plan and shop for specific meals. It may also save you the cost of a Weight Watchers membership in January.

Lindsay Cook is co-founder of MoneyFightClub.com, which offers online resources and consumer workshops. She is co-author of “Money Fight Club: Saving Money One Punch at a Time”, published by Harriman House