This time of year always causes stress for many across the country, and it all revolves around giving and receiving gifts: what do you give your mom this year, what crazy thing will you open from your in-laws and have to fake appreciation, how will you stay within your budget this year and still give great gifts. Giftster.com is a free way to alleviate all this stress and put the joy back in gift giving.

Giftster.com, a sister company to ZapTel.com, is a free online family gift list and wishlist maker created to help families give better gifts, spend money more effectively and stay within their holiday budgets.

You may be asking “doesn’t the thought count for anything?” In Joel Waldfogel’s book Scroogenomics, he examines what he calls a $14 billion problem with gift giving. The amount a person pays for a gift versus what the recipient values the gift at is a difference of $14 billion. This kind of makes the thought count after all. In this economy, who has that kind of money to waste?

For the past couple years, we’ve been beta testing Giftser.com to be that $14 billion solution reducing the stress around gift giving, making it affordable for everyone, and bringing back the joy that goes with giving gifts.

This is a great way for any family member to use – from young children to grandparents. One of my favorite aspects of Giftster is that it’s not tied to any one retailer. You can put anything – literally anything – on your wish list and share it with your group. It’s not only great for holiday gift giving, but is also fabulous for any gift giving occasion like birthdays, graduations, weddings, and baby showers.

Giftster is also a great application for families to use if they have a loved one going through medical treatment for a chronic disease, cancer, or other illness.  There can be so much cost involved with taking care of someone with a medical condition.  Families can make a list of both wishes and needs so the gift givers in their lives can give both useful and wanted gifts.

Creating a wish list is easy and sharing the gift list is even easier.

1) Press Sign Up on Giftster.com to set up an account. All you need to enter is your name, email address, and birthday. You’ll also be asked to set up a password for your Giftster account. You can also set up your account by logging in with Facebook.

2) Create a list by clicking on New List under My Lists. Here, you can add any items you want from websites, regular stores, salons or barber shops, even your mom’s or grandma’s recipes. You can get as detailed as you want as well by entering in the price, where the item can be found, and further description so the gift givers in your life know exactly what you’d like to receive.

3) Share your list by creating a group for your family and asking others to create lists, too. Click on My Groups and Add a New Group. You’ll be able to send an email to everyone you’d like to invite to view your gift list and in turn, they can share their list with you in this group.

4) Go shopping! View the lists of others in your group. Mark items as reserved to add them to your shopping list (don’t worry – the recipient won’t see what you’ve reserved or purchased, but others in the group will see that the item is no longer available).

5) Give great gifts. When gift giving rolls around, you’ll know for sure that you’ve chosen something meaningful for the recipient and have wisely spent your money.

You get all this from Giftster.com for free. FREE! Can’t get better than that.
Click here to check out Giftster.com.

Coming Soon – Giftster.com Wishlist iPhone App

Like Giftster on Facebook and be one of the first to know when the Giftster iPhone App is ready.