Inexpensive Christmas gifting
Online platform Bunz facilitates trading between people via iPhones and host website
Playing Santa is rampant right now, even for those who definitely can’t afford it and others who had vowed to ignore the crazy consumerism.
As the holiday tunes get louder, the guilt, pressure and panic have set in, and suddenly spending is frightful. Actually, nearly twothirds of Canadians say their holiday spending is out of control, according to a new CIBC poll. More than half of Canadians expect to blow their budget, even though they say they can’t afford it.
Millennials are splurging more than any other age group, reports the survey. People aged 18 to 34 years old are increasing their spending by 39 per cent, from $399 on holiday shopping last year to $555.
Bah humbug to spending and owing. Taylee Buttigieg is well on her way to a zero dollar Christmas — as in nothing, nada! It’s not that she’s getting her Grinch on, it’s just that she is barter trading for all gifting this season.
The 24-year-old Toronto graphic designer is gifting for just over 40 people by using Bunz, a platform that facilitates trading between people via iPhones and bunz. com. Bunz members post items and services they’d like to trade for anything and everything — except for cash. With more than 1.2 million items to offer on and trade for, Buttigieg is scooping up items centralized under the banner of #GiftIt — a hashtag featuring items that are new, still in the box, or still with tags on.
She’s been trading for Christmas gifts since November and “my best trades so far have been a Nikon SLR telephoto lens for a $75 gift card, a vintage Adidas sweater and art print. Another was an aloe plant I propagated for a necklace from a popular Toronto brand, Vitaly. My nine-year-old cousin is obsessed with Paris so I got her a vintage print of the streets of Paris for a Lush bathbomb.”
Buttigieg is sure it will be a 100 per cent Bunz Christmas all the way: “One way or another, I’m going to make it work!” The money she saves will be used for trips in 2018.
Bunz spokesperson Amy Harper asks why not off-load some of last year’s gifts that you never got around to opening and get great giftable items in return? “The average Canadian spends $1.68 for every dollar they make which means that after the holidays we’re haunted by the ghost of Christmas gifts past.”
Give up debt and crowded malls, while decluttering, helping the environment, and meeting up with other locals, says Harper, and get great gifts, too.
Bunz started off as a Facebook page in Toronto last year and now with the Bunz app, it’s across Canada, and has seen nearly 200,000 members join the community, “many who are now finding items for holiday wish lists, exchanging them cash-free, for things they simply don’t use any longer.”
An inexpensive and debt-free Christmas adds major joy and peace of mind to the season, report traders.
Meanwhile, others are choosing to act their “wage” too and cut back on Christmas spending: Vancouver-based Katie Johnston is also a Bunz member and she is trading for Christmas gifts for her two baby nephews.
In the past year, she has traded clothing, wine, consumables like honey, flour etc., along with art supplies, plants, and beer. “Alcohol is a very popular commodity. My absolute favourite trade is a beautiful wood coffee table that I traded a six-pack for.”
She’s also landed a great espresso machine, a juicer and some cool desk lamps.
And when it comes to great trades, Halifax-based Matthew Hoadley has one to top them all. He traded a canoe for a car! He got a green 1999 Volvo station wagon, with 303,000 kilometres on it for his 12-foot (3.7-metre), red canoe — plus a set of paddles and life jackets.
“The Volvo still works great a year later! My biggest advice to new Bunz users is to remember that value is not monetary. The value is what you place on its need/ want in your life,” says Hoadley, 34, who also saves big time by trading on Halifax’s Queer Exchange, Halifax Buy and Sell, and Kijiji.