subject: 5 Tips To Avoid Going Overboard With Holiday Shopping [print this page] While shopping malls are preparing themselves to lure you to spend your precious mullah, get ready to safeguard your bank balance with some smart shopping tips for this holiday season.
With Christmas and New Year here, you cannot afford to waste any more time thinking, researching and then hunting for the right gift for all your near and dear ones.
So, rather than wasting your valuable time and money in these worthless pursuits, lend an eye to the following shopping tips brought to you by The Money Times to simplify your shopping expeditions and also to avoid going overboard with it:
1. Budget Your Shopping
The spirit of Christmas does call for gift giving, but you surely dont want to do so at the cost of your own financial security, right!
So determine the maximum limit that you can spend these holidays on gifts. Remember you have the other regular expenses too. In fact, you might end up spending more on gas and food this month so make sure you have some extra money to meet these expenses.
Once you have determined the total amount you can spend on gifts, start assigning an amount against the names of each person you wish to make a gift to. Make it realistic and recheck to make alterations, if required, to match the total. Most importantly, promise stick to it.
2. Choose Cash Over Credit
You can end up end up exceeding your budget by many folds if you choose to pay through your credit card. No matter what, stick only to your debit card or cash to pay for all your shopping expenses.
Whether it is buying holidays or gifts, never fall into the buy now pay later trap. You will only end up spending twice your budget and keep repaying all your life due to the exorbitant interest rate applicable on all such expenses.
3. Shopping is Not a Competition
Dont ring up your friends and sisters to inquire about how their holiday shopping has been proceeding so far.
Dont allow others shopping list to have any sort of bearing on your own. Comparative shopping can be detrimental especially if you tend to get into the competitive mood.
Make sure you shop for the right reasons ,and scoring the highest points by shopping the most is definitely not one of them.
4. Dont Fall for Retail Credit Cards
Special credit cards dedicated to shopping from a specific retail outlet is one of the best marketing gimmicks that these shops have come up with in order to tempt customers to over spend. Beware of them!
It is natural to be tempted by an offer promising 10 percent to 20 percent off on purchases, but the impulse purchases that it generates goes much beyond your savings.
So, most often such cards only give rise to a win loose situation where you loose and the store wins.
5. Compare Prices Before You Shop
Before you start shopping and paying for it too, it is a good idea to dedicate a day or two simply for window shopping.
You can also take along a notepad to write down the various items and their respective prices at different locations. Once this is done, come back home and then decide what is to bought from where.
One more option that you must check before taking the plunge is the internet. Look for all the offers and merchandise available in the virtual market. Compare their costs with the goods available in the malls and then base your decisions on the results of these comparisons.
Remember to add shipping charges on merchandise bought on-line and expenses on gas for those to be bought from the real markets.
Using these tips to shop this festive season can help you save both your sanity and mullah.
