5 Tricks to Saving Money on Thanksgiving Dinner

The holidays are expensive.  So very expensive, but they don’t have to be.  You may think I am kidding, but I’m not.  There are some really simple and really easy ways to save money during the holiday season that you can start implementing now, to make this your most budget-friendly holiday season yet.

So, let’s start with Thanksgiving.  Here are 5 tricks to saving money on Thanksgiving dinner that you can start to work on now.

1. Plan in advance.  Start planning your Thanksgiving meal now.  Talk to family and find out who will be hosting the holiday dinner and you may find out that you don’t have to cook!  If you are in charge of dinner, start planning your meal now so that you can start your shopping early.
2. Start your shopping now.  You have just over a month until Thanksgiving, that means that you are well within your timeframe that you can start shopping for your Thanksgiving groceries.  No, you obviously don’t want to buy your perishable items too early, but you can start buying your canned and frozen goods now.  There are already lots of good deals out there.  At my local supermarket, they had a sale on frozen, bagged cranberries for just $0.89.  You can bet I bought those early.  Also, keep your eyes out for canned veggies, and even frozen turkeys!  Not only are you giving yourself more time to find deals, but it will be less out of pocket at once which is nice.
3. Shop around.  Starting in late October, you will start seeing lots of great holiday sales.  Be sure to shop around and score deals where you can.  Many stores even offer free or greatly reduced turkeys when you spend a specific amount of money on other groceries.
4. Plan a potluck.  Why not plan for your Thanksgiving feast to be a potluck? With everybody bringing something, everyone will save money.  
5. Skip the alcohol.  Alcohol is expensive. Even a cheap bottle of wine will cost you $10+ (and one bottle of wine won’t cut it with a big guest list).  If you simply choose to keep alcohol off of your holiday menu and you will find that you save quite a bit of money.