Xtreme Xmas money saving tips

Harvey Jones gives Scrooge a run for this money with these seriously stingy Christmas money saving tips. Not for the faint-hearted....

Scrooge always gets a roasting at this time of year, but that was before the credit crunch.

With the UK facing the threat of a second recession, Dickens' legendary old miser really is the ghost of Christmas present. Here's a few tips from Ebenezer that could save you from New Year penury.

A cheap way to keep the kids amused

Christmas is for kids, and what do kids love most of all about Christmas? Prezzies! The sheer atavistic glee of ripping through a stocking full of toys will never be replicated in adult life.

So, if you haven't done your Christmas shopping yet, don't bother to buy anything for any adults. If they seem a bit disappointed when they hand over your present, explain that you're trying to save money by only giving to kiddies.

As for the kiddies themselves, a couple of tangerines should keep the little scamps happy, it did in Dickens' day. If they complain, shove 'em up the chimney. That way they can enjoy the full Victorian festive experience.

After all, Christmas is a time for tradition.

What goes around, comes around

Christmas is also a good time to get rid of all your junk, so parcel up any clothes you've grown out of, books you've read and any other stuff you no longer want.

Alternatively, if you get a rubbish present early in the day tomorrow, rewrap it and pass it on later in the day (if you're careful, you can even reuse the paper, but remember to remove the name tag).

The truly versatile could even rewrap somebody's gift and give it back to them, expressing shock at the coincidence.

A Christmas catastrophe

If you find yourself in the fiscally uncomfortable position of hosting Christmas Day, there are ways of cutting your costs. You could declare it a Scrooge-themed party and save money by switching off the electricity, lighting a single candle and serving everybody a bowl of thin gruel with a glass of tap water.

Guests can get into the spirit by being miserable and leaving early. Better still, you won't be invited to host Christmas next year. In fact, you won't be invited anywhere, saving you more money on next year's gifts.

A nutty idea

If you're really feeling tight, save even more money by serving only Christmas pudding - tell your guests if they want more, they'll need to bring it themselves!  

Alternatively, invite vegetarians. That will save on turkey. If you don't know any vegetarians, simply declare that you have stopped eating meat, and it's against your newfound principles to cook it for anybody else.

A more sensible option might be to check out lovemoney.com's own, original frugal recipes for Christmas lunch: Roasted pheasant, sprouts, potatoes and stuffing for £5.24 per person or the veggie option of Portobello mushroom, port and stilton wellington for £2.22 per person.

Outscrooge Scrooge

There are plenty of other ways you can save on your yuletide offerings. In the unlikely event that you put too much food on your guests' plates, don't bin the waste, scrape off the gravy and serve it back to them in a cold buffet next day. They've got to learn to clear their plates!

Hide your kids' advent calendars and serve the chocolates with coffee after suddenly finding them on Christmas Day. Then,"lose" your only corkscrew so your guests can't get at your wine, and "find" it after they've gone.

More sensibly...

If all this seems a little extreme, and you're about to write me an unseasonably rude message below, you could save money by limiting your trimmings to roast potatoes and a couple of fresh vegetables, putting plenty of tap water on the table so they don't just glug the wine when they're thirsty, and serving Arctic Roll for pud. They'll be so sentimental about this 1970s frozen fave they'll forget how cheap it is.

Bread rolls will also help fill them up. Make your own gravy from the fat and flour, it's cheaper and nicer. And recycle any stuff lying about the house. If you've got an old bottle of Scotch and some halfway decent coffee, you only need a tub of cream to make a delicious Irish-ish coffee.

Another cheap crack

Save on crackers. Simply run up behind your guests and shout "Bang!". You can find plenty of rubbish jokes on the internet, so print them off, cut them into small strips, and distribute.

And you can make perfectly good paper hats from the local freesheet that is shoved through your letterbox every week, or they can stick their napkins on their head. As for the little toys and games inside, you will have more fun flipping peanuts into an old tin can. If anybody says they miss proper crackers, tell them everybody has to make sacrifices to save the planet.

Ebenezer Good

If you haven't got the nerve to be this stingy, do what I do, and praise your parents for their brilliance in preparing Christmas dinner despite being well into their seventies. "It wouldn't be the same anywhere else!" you tell them, and it wouldn't, because there is nothing more likely to dampen the festive spirit than being the one who ends up footing the bill.

If this sounds like I'm betraying the spirit of Christmas, you're wrong, because there's nothing more Christmassy than Scrooge, after all....

Share your tips!

What are you doing to save money this Christmas? Share your most extreme money-saving tips using the comments box below!

This is a lovemoney.com classic article, updated for 2011.