Giving Frugal Guides for Birthdays!
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Right after the holidays I already have to start planning birthday gifts as I have two friends in Feb and 4 friends at the beginning of March to get things for. Then the rest of the year, pretty much nothing till December! hahah...figures!
All my close friends (all born in March) are on tight budgets too, but not all of them are really good at doing research and coming up with money saving ideas (that's where I come in!). I decided to write them a mini "zine" which I will give each of them (quarter size about 10 pages with quick tips to save, websites, recipes and a few other articles). It's meant to be a quick resource guide. The zine mentions Dr. Bronner's Soap and Soapnuts, so along with the zine I will give them each a bag of soapnuts (purchase a small bag on their website for 1 penny each + shipping (you can only order two at a time, i already have two on hand) and a sample of Dr. Bronners soap (I had emailed them last year and asked for samples, i got 5 of them!). The zine also mentions the Entertainment Guide which I might purchase when they go on sale for $10 plus free ship (usually in Feb) for two of these friends (the others won't have use for it). So for 4 gifts, I will have spent under $30! If I don't buy the entertainment guides, these gits will run me about $2.50 each. I can photocopy the zines at work for free and all I paid was for the shipping of the free samples on the soapnuts. Since I have two trips coming up in Feb (Mexico & Montreal), I might have to stick with the $2.50 gifts! My friends LOVE my crazy homemade gifts and ideas, so it's sure to be a hit. For one friend, I will add a lotus tea light holder which I found for 25cents at a discount store.
So if you have any friends trying to live on a tight budget but they aren't so good at it, this could be a fun project for you and a great useful gift for them. It really only took me two days to write the content (as a lot of it is already information I use) and another few hours to put it together (I print the pages, then cut and glued onto folded quarter sized sheets, then photocopy). A quicker way is to use MS Publisher as they have templates to make booklets.
Good luck!
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