Thrifty Thursday: Christmas Countdown 13 days

The super six at Aldi today are clementines (600g), Brussels sprouts  (750g), Maris Piper potatoes (1.5Kg), parsnips (750g), carrots (1.5Kg) and lemons (5). They are all 69p. That offer lasts until the end of the month with new offers beginning on the 2nd of January. I think we can assume they will be closed on the 1st of Jan.

Aldi’s Christmas opening hours

People searching for information find this blog by searching for Aldi’s opening hours at Christmas. So just for those of you who don’t know Aldi’s opening hours yet, they are in fact opening longer now. They are closing at 6pm on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. They will be closed on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, so stock up a bit for Christmas! They are also closed on New Year’s Day because it’s a Bank Holiday. The good news is they will be open until 10pm all next week (not Sunday that will still be 4pm). Your local store could be different and so check their website.

There are some goodies that might make a nice Christmas gift in today’s special buys. Beanies and onesies have been popular this year! Just the thing to wear when you’re in the bathroom taking a selfie!

The Sunday special buys offer more festive treats. I want to look at the suede moccasin slippers. I want those in brown should anyone have ideas about buying me some!

Leather goods like wallets and purses usually make good presents and they’re not too expensive these days. If you’re looking for things for children, look beyond toys. The Airfix starter kits and the radio controlled helicopter look nice, but probably wouldn’t last through to New Year. Little boys like to go exploring with a torch, so they make a good present. Batteries can be expensive, but you can get reasonably priced rechargeable ones now. I need some of those for my phones, but the lower capacity ones. Stationary can be a good choice of present for children too, encourage them to be creative with a sketch pad, pens, pencils and felt tips pens.

Chocolates and sweets can be reasonable in Aldi and Lidl too. The wine and beer can be quite good quality. I can recommend the Banks’s beer from Aldi. I bought mine and stocked up through the summer! It was 99p (500ml), but could have gone up for Christmas.

I had a look at turkeys, they have a bigger selection in the bigger supermarkets, but expect to pay about 20% more than Aldi or Lidl. A small turkey for a couple for example is about £10 in Aldi or £12 in Asda or Tesco.

The trend this Christmas is towards really useful presents. You can still buy little fun presents and put clementines into Christmas stockings. If you don’t want to buy me the suede slippers from Aldi, I wouldn’t mind this lens for my camera from Amazon! It’s only £172.99 and you would SAVE £197.00! Watch out for those offers claiming to save you lots of money. You save even more if you shop around or better still keep your money. Of course you could pop down to Curry’s and buy the same lens for £279.00 and save £120.99! What a price difference! Is Amazon the cheapest? The cheapest I have found is Digitalrev at £169.00. They also have a Nikon D3200 on offer at £299.00. That is a bargain. I paid well over £300 last summer.

I hope you understand the price differences between different retailers, both online and offline. The online ones tend to be cheaper, but not always and it’s hard to take things back.

They have lots of jumpers at Matalan including Christmas jumpers with turkey motifs. This is a very useful Christmas as we try to save money and survive the recession and so most sensible people will give those a miss.

Have you spotted a Christmas bargain? Making your own gifts? Saving on posting Christmas cards? Share  your ideas in the comments box. You can also follow me on Twitter and tweet your ideas!

Related articles

• Wednesbury at Christmas (mike10613.wordpress.com)
• Aldi to launch tablet just in time for christmas (hulaholics.co)
• Aldi and Lidl mince pies beat Fortnum & Mason’s in Which? taste test (theguardian.com)
• Tis the season (budgetbanquets.wordpress.com)

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