How to Buy Holiday Cards for Less Than Five Dollars

Holiday cards. The holiday cards now are so personalized, yet so standard and unpersonal at the same time. Instead of a cute dog with a santa hat on and nice personalized message handwritten inside, we personalize them with our photos. We send them out just to check off a list. We no longer write a message. The person on the receiving end loves to look at the photos and “catch up”. Maybe it stays on the fridge for the holiday season, but then it quickly finds the trash in most homes! Let’s be honest, even if it had a handwritten message, it would probably find the trash at some point.

Last year I drastically shortened my list so that we could save money on these cards. My goal one day (when my daughter is older), is to go back to handwriting a message, but for now the standard “personalized” cards will have to do. To save money I only sent out 25 holiday cards. With my Shutterfly promo code, it cost me $21 last year.

This year, I was going to do the same thing, however, it came out to be over $60 (and yes that was with my promo code)! Holiday cards have gone up drastically in price. I was having to pay over $2 for each card since I was buying so few cards. For a moment I considered not sending cards at all- after all they only get thrown in the trash!

Then I had an idea! I know I’m not the first person to come up with this, but I was SO PROUD of myself. My holiday cards this year, cost me less than $4!!!!

Our trick to getting holiday cards under $5:

1. Go to Shutterfly and pick out your favorite Holiday card

2. Personalize the card – go through all of the steps!

3. Click to “preview” design

4. Do a print screen of the preview

5. Open an editing software like microsoft publisher, or paint- paste in your photo and crop to be just right

6. Go back to Shutterfly and click on prints- upload your saved photo of the holiday card

7. Order 4×6 prints for $0.15!!!!

You’ll have to buy a pack of envelopes in addition to this, but do that at Target. 25 cards comes out to $3.75! I ended up splurging this year and getting 35 cards! I spent $5.25 on beautiful prints!

Grandparents, aunts and uncles are also getting some special prints included in addition to the holiday card.

We saved so much money on this. Such a huge win! Now, my goal is to still write a nice message on the back. Maybe my 2 year old can help me! 🙂

Happy Holidays!