7 Ways to Save Money on Holiday Gifts for the Grandkids

Use these strategies to give without busting your budget

Cameron Huddleston,

AARP

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Published November 17, 2025

a wrapped gift covered in sale and reduced price stickers

Paul Spella (Getty images 2)

Anxiety over rising prices is prompting many Americans to tighten their holiday gift-giving budgets this year. Concern is highest among boomers, with nearly half of shoppers in this generation reporting they’re worried about gifts being more expensive, according to Bankrate’s 2025 Early Holiday Shopping Survey.

If you’re a grandparent, you can’t simply cross a few grandkids off your list to keep costs down. But there are some strategies you can use to make gifts for your grandchildren more affordable this holiday season.

1. Snap up bargains during Black Friday sales

The day after Thanksgiving is still one of the best days of the year to find great deals on certain gifts. Retailers mark down popular toys to attract shoppers to their Black Friday sales, says Kristin McGrath, senior editor at The Krazy Coupon Lady, a website dedicated to finding coupons and deals.

For example, Kohl’s typically discounts toys by up to 50 percent during Black Friday sales and offers bonus rewards coupons that you can put toward future purchases. Amazon, Target and Walmart also offer some worthwhile Black Friday sales.

“Those retailers are in competition with each other and a lot of times will be offering deals to compete,” McGrath says.

Compare prices online among those retailers, or use your phone to price-check while shopping in-store to verify you’re getting the best deals. You can also plan ahead by checking retailers’ sites or deal sites, such as The Krazy Coupon Lady, BlackFriday.com or DealNews.com, to find out when their sales go live. Some retailers roll out Black Friday deals as early as the Sunday before Thanksgiving, she says.

2. Check clearance sections

Some retailers offer aggressive post–Black Friday markdowns on holiday gifts that didn’t sell out, says Elisabeth Cook, a deal-hunting specialist in Lansing, Michigan, who’s known on social media as Liz the Clearance Queen. Kohl’s, Target and Walmart usually hold clearance sales in December, she says. And McGrath adds that the clearance sections at Dollar General, CVS and Walgreens are also good places to shop for deeply discounted gifts.

If you act quickly, you may find lingering summer and fall items on clearance racks for up to 90 percent off. Many won’t be season-specific — “There are a lot of items that don’t have pumpkins or ghosts on them,” Cook says — and can make great gifts for the winter holidays.

3. Cash in credit card rewards

If you use a points or cash-back credit card when you shop, you might be sitting on an untapped source of funds for your holiday shopping. “A lot of people have rewards they’ve forgotten about,” says Laura Adams, host of the Money Girl podcast. In fact, around 1 in 4 boomers and Gen Xers with rewards credit cards have unused rewards, a 2023 CreditCards.com survey found.

You can continue accumulating credit card rewards as you do your holiday shopping, potentially racking up enough points or cash back to offset the cost of any last-minute gift purchases you need to make.

4. Score freebies and rebates

You may be able to snag certain gifts, especially stocking stuffers, for next to nothing by combining coupons with in-store promotions and loyalty rewards. McGrath says CVS and Walgreens offer exclusive sales to customers through their rewards programs, which are free to join and easy to access through the drugstores’ mobile apps. You can often combine such sales and rewards with manufacturers’ coupons that are available in the apps.

Another good place to stack deals is Dollar General, which offers $5 coupons when you spend $25 or more on its website on Saturdays, McGrath says. You can create a free online account and add the coupon to it, then combine it with other coupons and cash-back offers available on the Dollar General website.

Don’t overlook store rebates. Many retailers offer them through apps such as Ibotta, Fetch and Shopkick.

5. Shop for secondhand gifts

Buying used products can help keep gift costs down — and your grandchildren, at least the younger ones, probably won’t mind. “Kids don’t care,” Cook says. “They just see the toy.”

You might even find new items still in their original packaging at thrift stores or online secondhand shops such as ShopGoodwill, OfferUp and Mercari.

Other websites to check include Toycycle, a toy resaler; Back Market, which sells refurbished tech products; and Vestiaire Collective, which sells designer and vintage clothing.

You can also join your local Facebook Marketplace group to find free items from people in your community.

6. Turn your hobbies into gifts

A handmade gift can offer more sentimental value — and cost a lot less — than buying a product. “I have a grandmother who loved to knit,” Adams says. “She would give us awesome stockings to hang on the mantel.”

You could also teach your grandkids a skill as part of their holiday present. A fun approach is to give them a “gift certificate” they can redeem for cooking lessons, piano lessons or whatever hobby you’d like to share with them. Adams says her grandmother taught her to knit when she was young, and she continues to enjoy it today. “I always think about her when I’m knitting,” she says.

7. Give an experience

Spending quality time together can be more meaningful for your grandchildren, and more affordable for you, than giving them the latest toy or gadget for the holidays. Consider taking your grandkids to a local museum, a free outdoor concert or a play at a community theater. Toys eventually get cast aside, but sharing an experience is a gift your grandchildren might never forget.

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Cameron Huddleston is an award-winning personal finance journalist and author of Mom and Dad, We Need to Talk: How to Have Essential Conversations With Your Parents About Their Finances. Her work has appeared in Kiplinger.com, Kiplinger's Personal Finance, Forbes Advisor, Chicago Tribune, Business Insider and many more online and print publications.