Great Guide on How to be a Smart Shopper in this Gift Giving Season
Festive seasons are undoubtedly periods when we ought to share gifts with our family and loved ones. But while the gifts foster love and unity in our relationships, the costs account for how our pocket sizes will look like in the coming days.
Recent research conducted by the National Retail Federation (NRF) in 2020 shows that an average American spent about $997.79 on gifts, food, and decorations within that year. Unfortunately, another survey by Magnify Money in December that same year revealed that 31 percent (%) out of 1,171 Americans took on debt at the end of all their holiday expenses. Now, this shouldn’t be the case for you, thus, this guide tends to break down the best ways to be a smart shopper in this gift-giving season and save cost.
Let’s dive right in!
How to Be a Smart Shopper in this Gift Giving Season
Yes, it’s cool to share gifts with family and loved ones, but it’s rather crucial to monitor how much you spend on the gifts. This will keep you balanced both during and after this current year’s gift season.
A way to monitor and cut short your gift expenses this season is to be a smart shopper, thus, here are six (6) basic ways on how to be a smart shopper in this gift-giving season:
- Value your relationships
- Build a budget to buy gifts
- Stop overspending
- Shop with cash
- Consider making your own gifts
- Ask for money-saving gifts
#1: Value your Relationships
As you walk through life, it’s obvious that you cannot do everything all by yourself. You’ll definitely encounter periods when support and encouragement really matter even way more than money. At this point, make sure you maintain a good relationship with your loved ones by making them know that they mean a lot to you.
This you should do not just by sending gifts to them, but rather by showing up when they need you most; offer kind words of encouragement or advice when the need be.
Little things like this could cover up for you in cases where you lack the cash to satisfy them with luxury gifts.
#2: Build a Budget to Buy Gifts
The best buyer is not always a person who spends more; it’s more like the person who buys the most charitable gifts.
That being said, drafting a budget for your holiday expenditures and keeping room for gifts will help you avoid excess spending. As this year’s gift season gets closer, don’t jump into the shopping mall to buy gifts, try drafting a budget that will help you constrain your expenditures.
If you can craft a cool budget and keep to it, you’ll end up spending less and doing better than previous years.
When drafting your budget, first, you will need to draw a list of your loved ones placing the most charitable ones first. This will help you know those you can afford to disappoint if you don’t have sufficient funds for all of them.
But rather than disappointing loved ones, you can choose to take up payday loan alternatives to get the needed cash to cater for their various gift purchase.
Next, you’ll need to forecast at least favorite gifts per person placing cheaper and more significant ones first.
#3: Stop Overspending
You may not know how much you have wasted this year until you keep detailed records of all the extra cash you spent unwisely. Nevertheless, if you control your spending, you’ll end up being able to purchase more goods than you ever thought.
Overspending usually occurs when you are out of control or when you have huge money in the bank. Try detecting these moments and control the urge to buy unnecessary things.
Another thing that causes overspending is procrastinating till the last minute.
This is dangerous especially during gifting seasons because the prices of things will hike when the season begins fully. To avoid spending more than your budget, try buying your gifts as fast as possible.
Sometimes you might want to purchase gifts as soon as possible but the money isn’t yet available. Well, the best option for you here is to take up an instant loan no credit check offer which is basically a personal loan that could help you save a lot by shopping early for gifts for family and loved ones.
#4: Shop with Cash
If you’ve got like $20,000 in your account or prepaid card, you may not feel much stress if you eventually spend $5,000 from it whereas you were meant to spend just $4,000 thus, that’s money being wasted.
At the end of the day, you’ll only discover that you found it hard to control your spending when you only had to swipe your card before the cashier.
If you want to stay strictly within your preset budget, you should cash out the exact amount in your budget and do your shopping with cash. This will restrict you from overspending since you’ll bear in mind that your cash cannot cover your extra expenses.
While doing this, be sure to leave your prepaid card at home and pretend you forgot it or else, you may be tempted to use it when your cash runs out.
#5: Consider Making Your Own Gifts
When you buy gifts at the retail shop, you not only pay the manufacturer of the gift in question, you as well pay the wholesalers and distributors involved. If you put that into consideration, you’ll discover that you’ve wasted your money buying gifts that you can actually do yourself locally.
As you list out your gifts, it’s helpful to cross out those you feel you can actually do by yourself and try your hands on them.
Rather than spending huge amounts purchasing them, spend little on the basic materials you need to create them yourself. This will even sound better to your loved ones that you took out time to create their gifts yourself.
Moreover, it will not only help you cut down costs, but you’ll also end up getting more experience in a craft that can fetch you more money later in the future.
#6: Ask for Money Saving Gifts
To help save even more money, try getting money-saving gifts instead of mere random ones.
Money-saving gifts are designed in such a way that they can help save money spent on certain things over time.
Imagine getting a Whirley popcorn popper rather than a pack of candy for your cousin’s family. With the popcorn popper, they will end up making their popcorn themselves, thus saving them some extra cash; but with the candy, the taste of the candy would only last for a day.
This way, you are helping them save cost and the extra cash they save up next year may be used to purchase a nice gift for you.
Conclusion
Over the years, finance experts with good knowledge of how much gifting seasons can bring major financial pitfalls have thought of several measures to curb this mess. However, shopping smart this gifting season is imperative to maintaining a balanced financial life even after this gifting season.
Hopping into this gift season without following the steps earlier mentioned may be the pointer to your financial fallout next year. But if you stick to them, your results will make a major difference in your financial life next year and beyond.
The choice is up to you!
And yea, don’t shy away from getting a same-day loan when necessary, it could play a major part in actually saving you more by buying early on your holiday purchases.
