Low-Cost Christmas Cards

The first Christmas card was made by John Calcott Horsley in 1843, the same year that Charles Dickens wrote his famous A Christmas Carol. This great Christmas tradition of sending and receiving cards helps us stay in-touch with friends and family that we probably wouldn't communicate with otherwise. Sometimes with all the hustle and bustle of Christmas it's hard to find the time to make and send out the Christmas cards—and even harder to scrape up the money for them. The best way to go about saving money on Christmas cards is to make them yourself. Professional, ready-made cards with matching envelopes are usually much more expensive to begin with. Instead, be creative! Use ribbons, stamps, cut-outs, pictures, or whatever else you can think of to make your own cards. However, don't invest too much money on supplies and equipment because you might end up spending more than on store-bought cards.

If you don't feel very crafty, here are some other tips to save money:

• Email Christmas cards: If you really are looking to send money, send out email Christmas cards. Get creative and attach pictures.
• Don't send all the cards in the mail: Chances are, especially if you haven't moved around much, a lot of the people you want to give Christmas cards to live near you. Consider hand-delivering the cards that are going to people in your neighborhood. However, don't drive around to deliver all of them—you might end up spending more on gas than you would have on postage. Another way to save is by limiting the amount of cards you buy and send out in the first place.
• Buy a year early: Remember how all Christmas decorations go on clearance after Christmas is over? So do Christmas cards. Try to be on top of it and buy your cards a year early. You are bound to save a good portion off of the original price, as well as encourage yourself to get them out on time when Christmas gets closer. Buying cards early is especially a good idea when you don't feel like you're creative enough to make your own cards.
• Use a photo to make the card: You can either attach the photo to a paper or get creative with Photoshop or another photo-editing program to add writing on top of the photo. This way you can send just a photo and not have to pay for a card at all.

Hopefully these tips will help you to save some money but still get those Christmas cards out in the mail. Once you're done, consider making a binder and keeping your Christmas card each year as a fun reminder to look back on in the years to come.