The holidays are quickly approaching; this means that you may already be in full holiday shopping mode. If you have fully recovered from your Black Friday shopping and you are fully into your holiday shopping let me ask you a question, what is your holiday shopping strategy?
I personally love to take full advantage of the holiday season because I love everything about the holidays. Well I love almost everything about the holidays. I love the decorations, I love the music and of course I love receiving and giving gifts; however I could live without the snow and the cold weather.
This is my holiday shopping strategy:
1. Shop Early. I am a planner, I like (actually I love) to plan everything in my life. I am one of those weird people who makes a list when I need to calm down. When the holidays come around I am all about the planning. I plan my meals, I plan my gifts and of course I plan my budget. I start my holiday shopping in early November so that I can spread my holiday expenses out over several different paychecks. I love this time of the year because it’s early enough to plan ahead and it’s close enough to the holidays to start getting great deals on all of my gift items. Right now I am definitely in full holiday gift shopping mode, however I am having a bit of trouble finding places to hide all of the gifts from my boyfriend Nick.
2. Make a List. I am always amazed by people who are running around on December 24 trying to find the perfect gift for their family and friends. I honestly don’t know how people do that because just the thought of it is stressing me out. Some people are too busy to go out and run around the shopping mall trying to find gifts for everyone on their holiday list. The way to avoid this is to make a list of the gifts that you want to buy for everyone on your list and factor in an approximate budget. Once you have set your holiday gift list you can start searching weekly flyers and online websites in order to find the best deals on all of the gifts you need. If being in a shopping mall is not an appealing idea you can also purchase all of your gifts online and have them delivered right to your doorstep (sometimes overnight).
3. Shop Online. One of the best ways to save money during the holidays is to shop online and use discount codes or coupons. Online shopping websites such as Ebates and RewardsRunner.com
offer discount codes and coupons to a variety of popular stores such as American Eagle, Bath & Body Works, The NFL Store, Godiva Chocolates and Best Buy. I recently purchased three sale items from Aeropostale through Rewards Runner and on top of the items being on sale I also received 30% off my entire order. Merry Christmas to me!
What is your tip to survive the holiday shopping season?
Photo by fleskw
My wife has been taking care of almost all the shopping so I might be off the hook for the time being. I know she is saving some money by looking for deals. We definitely plan ahead and make a list of how much we are going to spend on each person and then what we are going to get them.
Point two is an especially good one, you’ll be less likely to impulse spend if you know what you are going shopping for.
My boyfriend and I also like to plan ahead since we have to mail some of our gifts to loved ones. I also take care of most of the shopping but this year I opted for online shopping. I am trying to avoid the shopping malls as much as possible.
Thanks for reading.
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