Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the holiday season and many people start their holiday by serving a delicious Thanksgiving dinner and end it by shopping. Unfortunately, an expensive Thanksgiving weekend means less money left over for the weeks ahead. Like most expenses, there are quite a few ways to keep costs down, and as usual, the most important one is to plan ahead. To help trim the fat from your Thanksgiving weekend budget, I am pleased to announce the release of MMI’s latest free eBook—Thrifty Thanksgiving.

When thinking about holiday spending, most people typically fast-forward to December’s big budget busting holidays. However, it pays to think thrifty all season long—starting with Thanksgiving. While a turkey alone might not tip your financial scale, holiday food, travel, decorations, and entertainment can really add up. Thankfully, Thrifty Thanksgiving includes a lot of ideas to help you trim the fat from your Thanksgiving budget. In addition to ideas on how to stretch your dinner and budget, Thrifty Thanksgiving covers:

-Step-by-step instructions for decorating on a dime
-5 ways to keep tradition
-5 ways to break tradition
-Travel tips
-Tips for staying in the black on Black Friday
-How to make the most of leftovers
-Ways to incorporate “thanks” into your Thanksgiving

Thrifty Thanksgiving also offers a holiday checklist to help you organize your plans. After all, a little planning can help you enjoy and tasteful and thrifty Thanksgiving.

The Thrifty Thanksgiving eBook can be downloaded for free by visiting http://Thanksgiving/MoneyManagement.org.

The fourth annual Regiftable.com story contest is underway! Regifters from around the nation are invited to share their regifting stories and videos for a chance to win prizes valued up to $500.

Regifable.com is a forum for all things regifting, including an archive of more than 1,000 consumer stories running the gamut from the heartwarming to the horrifying. In addition to this year’s regifting story contest, the site also offers a cool game (nope, I am not going to reveal Regifting Robin’s secret!), regifting facts, personalized gift certificates, free eCards, regifting party rules, a song to rewrap by, and much more.

We created Regiftable.com to give people a fun way to learn more about regifting, and to start the conversation on a topic many people are reluctant to discuss—holiday spending and financial worries. Holiday gifting this year may be particularly difficult as economic stressors continue to stretch family budgets.

So, it seems everyone is talking about couponing these days. Maybe it’s that I’m getting older, that I love a good bargain or the fact that I work at Money Management International, but I’ve jumped on the coupon bandwagon….and I’M SOLD.

The first step to successful couponing is to overcome those mental barriers. You may have a few of your own:

-Mom always told me it was a waste of time. Mother is always right, right? Wrong. The key is organization and finding just a few extra minutes to dedicate to saving. Just because it didn’t work for someone else doesn’t mean it won’t work for you.

-Coupons are only for the really expensive items. Sometimes, but the trick is to find name brand items when they are on sale. Using a coupon on a sale item equals savings.

-I have ZERO extra time. I’m hardly an expert, so I probably don’t spend nearly the time clipping as a real master. I’ve found that the key is just starting and starting small. You’ll find your comfort zone once you start saving.

-I don’t quite get how price matching works. I discovered that you can save money even when you don’t have a coupon. Start by collecting store flyers each week. I have found that the best savings are for beef, chicken, and pork. Take the flyers with you and simply ask your store to match the lowest advertised price. Just last week I saved over $6.00 on the price per pound match on a sirloin steak.

Check out these results!

When you’ve looked yourself in the mirror and made a dedication to saving, here are a few pointers to get started:

1. Research.
There are so many online resources out there for coupon trading, coupon selling, coupon printing, coupon clipping and coupon organizing. A couple of my favorites are CouponMom.com and Couponizer.com.

2. Take it one week at a time.
Push yourself to do a little more each week. The first week, just focus on one store flyer. The second week, plan a menu around sale items. Change can be tough and overwhelming, so start small.

3. Plan and organize.
Set aside some time to clip coupons, make a list and plan your meals each week. Get an expandable file folder or a binder with business card inserts and create categories to file your coupons.

4. Find a store that matches prices and/or doubles or triples coupons.
Price matching is where I’ve saved. Add a coupon on top of the price match and that’s a real savings.

Stay tuned. Good luck and happy saving!

Do you have any tips or tricks? What kind of savings have you seen? Tell us about it!