This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and Walmart Family Mobile. All opinions are mine alone. #Save4Summer #CollectiveBias
If you haven’t guessed by now, we are pretty frugal in our family. My husband and I are both pretty conscientious about where and how we spend our money. I know we differ from a lot of people in this, but birthdays and holidays like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day aren’t a reason for us to go crazy with our money.
Being frugal has meant small sacrifices here and there, but it has given us great freedom in our lives. While we don’t make a ton of money, we live very comfortably. We have no credit card debt and I am able stay at home with our boys…something my husband and I both consider invaluable.
This Father’s Day will be like most others in that we have the challenge to come up with a free or inexpensive Father’s Day gift.
Because I have some awesome friends with some awesome ideas I decided that, in addition to my own ideas, I’d ask around…you know, to bring you the best of the internet.
Inexpensive Father’s Day Gifts
1. Family photo gift: Photo gifts are awesome. Not only are they heartfelt and full of memories, but you can display them in your house year round. Check out these cute DIY Father’s Day photo gift ideas from That Chic Mom.
2. Chocolate: Always a classic (at least with my husband it is!). Baby Loving Mama has created these cute Candy Bar Wrapper printables that will turn your average candy bar into a cute Father’s Day treat!
3. Man-approved DIY spa treatment: Guys love the occasional pampering…they just don’t like other people knowing they love the occasional pampering. So, treat your husband to this DIY Coffee Scrub for guys from Happy Strong Home, just don’t tell all his friends. 🙂
4. The classic handmade card: Pinterest is replete with cute handmade Father’s Day cards, but here is one I’d never seen before. If you have little ones try this “You are My Superhero” handmade card from Formula Mom.
5. A man date to the movies: I don’t know about your husband (or you, if you happen to be a man), but my husband works pretty darn hard. After he works at work he comes home and works some more. He doesn’t really take time to hang out with the guys. If your husband is the kind of guy that just doesn’t take much time for himself, give him a night off, get him a gift certificate to the movie theater and encourage him to set up a man-date with a friend.
6. A new cell phone: I know what you’re thinking. Cell phones do not exactly fall under the inexpensive category. Well, they used to, and now they’re starting to once again. I recently picked up the Alcatel Pop Astro phone at Walmart and signed up on the Walmart Family Mobile plan. The phone with the activation sim card was under $100–quite a steal for a smartphone.
We’ve actually been thinking of changing over to a month to month plan for a while. Walmart Family Mobile plans are some of the lowest priced unlimited plans I’ve found. The service is just as good as what we have now, but we’d be saving almost $50 a month compared with what we pay on our current plan. $50!!! That adds up.
I hadn’t really shopped around for phones at Walmart before, but with a little help from a store representative, I found the correct phone in an aisle in the Entertainment/electronics section.
The phone is fairly basic as far a smartphones go. It would make the perfect gift for the dad who wants a smartphone, but doesn’t care about all the frills (super high photo resolution, huge memory allotment, etc.). Instead, it offers great battery life, access to great smartphone features and apps with a super-low price tag.
If, like me, you’ve never used the Walmart Family Mobile plans before, the service is very easy to set up. You’ll need to make sure you purchase a SIM card starter kit (included in the $100 price I mentioned–the phone is $65 and the SIM Starter Kit is $25) separately. The SIM Starter kit will have instructions on how to activate your phone. You can choose the data plan you want–I went with the $29.88 a month plan (for the first line) that comes with unlimited talk and text with 1 GB of 4G LTE data.
*Disclaimer: All prices for phones and plans included in this post are accurate as of the date of posting; however, these prices are subject to change. Please refer to http://cbi.as/8e03 or your local Walmart for current pricing.
So, now that we can save an extra $50 a month on our phone bills that’s $50 more in our pockets at the end of every month. Should I save it for next Father’s Day? Put it in our travel fund (if you know me, this would be my savings of choice)? Or maybe we should be completely practical and just put it into our retirement savings…yep, that’s probably what we’ll do.
Now that I’ve shared my frugal Father’s Day Ideas with you, what are your favorite frugal Father’s Day ideas? (See what I did there with that alliteration?)
About Amy @ Oh So Savvy Mom
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