A while I go I asked for your help in putting together a food basket. Today I want to tell you why I did that.
At the beginning of the month Walmart challenged me to sponsor a family’s Christmas with $250. I took this challenge with my own added kick that I would buy not only their gifts but also their holiday meal. To identify a family I contacted my local Salvation Army. They have an “Adopt a Family” Program for the holidays. Families of a certain income level get to participate and create a wishlist. The family I was assigned had four children and two adults. For the children I was asked to buy two toys and one item of clothing and for the adults one item of clothing. I spent in total $211 on the gifts and clothes and $38 on the food basket.
I had a lot of fun completing this special challenge. It was an educational activity for my three year old to go shopping for others. For me it was a nice shopping exercise. I usually shop when things are on sale or deeply discounted. But because of the timing and short notice I had the prospect of having to pay full retail price for things *gasp!*. Basically what I did was do a little bit of more research. I was also pressed for time so I gathered local stores’ sales circulars and had them price matched at Walmart. I was still lucky to find a few items on rollback or clearance and every little bit helped.
I made a video of this activity that is posted on the Walmart website. Since I created this video for the Spanish version of the Walmart website the entire video is in Spanish. So if you want to check out how I sound when I speak Spanish see it here!
Finally, if you would like to sponsor a family’s Christmas consider this: you can save $250 a year by putting aside $5 every week. That’s not a whole lot when you break it up like that is it? Furthermore, this could be a good family activity. You can use it to encourage your children to save and to help others. And, you can also teach your children to be smart shoppers by buying gifts throughout the year when you find them on clearance.
