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Party Planning Doesn’t Need To Be A Haunt: Tips For Saving Money When Throwing A Halloween (or Seasonal) Gathering

November 9, 2022 Many of us enjoy hosting parties with friends and family for seasonal activities and Holidays but don’t want to break the bank doing so! For me and Krystal, a Fall Halloween event is one of our favorite gatherings we host each year with close loved ones. Here are some of our money-saving tips to ensure sure the fun doesn’t become overshadowed by ghastly receipts! For starters, I don’t know about you, but we love a good after-Halloween or seasonal markdown deal! This is one of the easiest ways to save each year as retailers slash the cost of their remaining seasonal inventory between 30%-75%. Over the past few years of owning our house, continue to embrace this approach with full-price items. For example, the cost of outdoor lighting and decorations can be pricy for something that is merely nice to have so this is one area where if it’s not bought with a store’s discount or found as a second-hand purchase (thrift stores, Facebook Marketplace, garage sales, etc.) it’s not really necessary for us. A few other deals like this we specifically look for with slashed prices are things like:
  • Reusable pumpkins for decorating your grazing table, or indoor and outdoor spaces
  • Baking molds and sprinkles; those cute but expensive themed party plates and napkins
  • Trick or treat items such as sets of mini activity books and puzzles, vampire teeth, bone-shaped pens, etc.
  • Halloween costumes or costume accessories – homemade, purchased second-hand, mix and match to create a new outfit, borrow from a friend, or peruse your local Buy Nothing groups
  • Seasonal or post-seasonal craft store supplies that can be a fun activity to decorate or paint together and display for more than just a year
Another cost-saving measure we will do is to opt to have a seasonal beer, cocktail, or wine tasting for the adults at our events. This is a fun way to enjoy drinks and sample things (like seasonal beer you may want to try but not commit to buying a lot of) but also ends up stretching the party planning budget! Selecting a themed cocktail or two and making them in large batches also saves a bit of money, especially when you can buy Costco’s big bottle of vodka or tequila! Parties are often a great time for us to also bust out a variety of tasty wine bottles we’ve scored for cheaper costs when traveling abroad or discovering a discounted price from our favorite local store Ray’s Liquor. And last but not least is the food! I don’t know about you, but we love putting together a fun and festive-themed spread! Halloween allows us to create themed food treats and some of the things Krystal likes to make that are cheap, easy, and always a party hit are things like Halloween mold rice crispy ghosts or tombstones, ‘dead man’s toes’ aka mini hotdogs in cocktail or BBQ sauce (I don’t know what it is that makes these so popular but it’s like the only times we all eat them is during a seasonal party or a Packer’s game), and chocolate covered Chow Mein spider cookies (recipe and photo shared in this week’s social media post). Meanwhile, we will also opt to prepare and put out spreads like veggie trays, meat, cheese, or charcuterie trays or shared items like dips, a taco bar, etc. that also save on cost. Lastly, take people up on their offers to help and answer when they ask you what to bring. Unsure of what to suggest? Creating a list of what we’d like to serve, purchase, or execute for the event ahead of time truly helps when people ask these questions! You might also be interested in Whew and wow! This has been quite a challenging and eye-opening process! It has been very hard to do this project as part of a couple when both of us appear to handle finances and money very differently. If I’ve learned one thing it’s that you can start out with very similar goals and desires but unless you are actually working hard towards them each week, they aren’t easy to maintain collectively! While we probably aren’t in last place, we sure aren’t in first either and that's okay. During the week of November 23, we wrote about how we were going to look into options for cost-saving measures. One of those measures was to analyze any balance transfers that may have been available to us. One of this balance transfers ended up being a very good offer, 0% interest for 18 months with a 3% transfer fee. It was time to take a couple small balances and one larger balance and combine them into what will be one card payment using this balance transfer offer. This past weekend, we took our annual trip down to Chicago, which was also paired with a trip to the theater. With being in Project Money, have been more conscious of our trip expenses and we heavily discussed if we just go down for just the evening or spend the night, like we normally do. With traffic and the unknowns of early winter weather, we decided it would be best to spend the night down there, and so we did. Something that stands out lately are the number of outlets competing for one’s time, attention, and especially our hard earned money. I don’t know about you, but it can be exhausting dodging solicitations and avoiding temptation left and right, especially around the holidays! It seems I can’t make a move without a text, email, phone call, commercial, mailer, advertisement, etc. attempting to draw me in on the next latest, greatest thing I supposedly ‘need’ to buy. Ah, consumerism. If it wasn't so cold out right now, we might not believe that the end of the year is fast approaching, but alas – it is! With that, we have been starting to crunch our numbers and see if we met our savings and debt payoff goals for this year and are starting to make some savings goals for next year. To assist with this, we have also started looking at what are current expenses are, current loan and credit card rates and seeing where we might be able to cut additional costs by either canceling services, negotiating costs and/or switching companies. Initially, we weren’t sure exactly what to write about for this week’s blog post. However, the subject came to us this past weekend as we were reviewing certain aspects of our finances. We both have credit card debt we are working on paying off and recently made sizable progress towards that goal. However, we’ve noticed that our low interest credit cards have recently experienced additional hikes in their APRs (and appear to continue climbing). For example, one credit card has now climbed to from 9.9% to 15.85% due to varying APR with the market based on the Prime Rate. Many of us enjoy hosting parties with friends and family for seasonal activities and Holidays but don’t want to break the bank doing so! For me and Krystal, a Fall Halloween event is one of our favorite gatherings we host each year with close loved ones. Here are some of our money-saving tips to ensure sure the fun doesn’t become overshadowed by ghastly receipts! I don't know about you, but I, Krystal, grew up in a pretty cold house during winter. We lived in a rural-ish area where natural gas did not run, thus propane was our main heating source, until my father installed a wood stove when I was late middle-school age. Nevertheless, the heat in our house was turned down low (better for breathing we were always told, too!) while we slept and were away at work or school. One thing we’re still working through is being a bit more proactive about unexpected house costs. Sure, we have small savings account for house expenses, but mostly this is to cover our homeowner’s insurance deductible. Like my father taught me with my car insurance deductible, I try to pretend this money just doesn’t exist, thus, why we need to plan better for those unexpected house-related costs.  This week’s two unexpected costs were our dryer needing a repair and our fence project taking a lot more money than expected. 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