All we grown-ups that are usually responsible for the presents during holiday season probably know the horror. You leave the warm, cosy apartment to buy stuff for your loved ones and as soon as you set a step outside the door an icy, unwelcoming wind blows to your face. But I don’t mean the actual wind, of course I mean the stressful and oftentimes uncomfortable time of Christmas shopping. Here are five tips on how to turn the stress to pleasure.
1.) Set a budget and stick to it
This one sounds easier than it is. First of all you should outline how much you want to spend this year overall. After that you can form groups of family members and friends and segment your money. After that you can look for presents for each member of the groups. The important part is obviously to really stick to your budget. The worst thing you could do is saying to yourself a buck here and there won’t really matter, which might be true in single cases, but if you do that for everyone you will most likely burn more money than you planned at the beginning.
2.) Know what to buy for whom and find out where to get it
After the boring part, which is setting the budget, there comes the creative part of the work. Looking for presents – which is easier said than done. But if you think about stuff that your family could use or things that bring joy to your children I am sure you can’t really do much wrong. Use the internet to your advantage in that part. There are plenty of places where you can find the best price for anything, Bonavendi.com only being one of those.
3.) Go shopping when no one else does
Now comes the part where it gets tricky. When does no one else go shopping during holiday season? I would personally say during the week is obviously better than on Friday evenings or Saturdays. The best day is probably Tuesday. You might now think, “Shouldn’t it say Monday morning here?” – And you are correct, partially. Would you really get up early on a Monday, maybe if you even took a day off work to go Christmas shopping? That would probably be even more stressful than just going on a Tuesday. But there is a way to shop whenever you want, which leads us to the next point on our list.
4.) Buy online
Buying online brings a lot of advantages. You can shop whenever you want, wherever you want and even more importantly for how much you want. There are plenty of sales and bargains online, stuff you can fit to every budget and there are loads of ideas to discover. And the best part about it – you circumvent going out of your cosy environment to something you don’t like. Just don’t forget to purchase on time and think about delivery times to your location
5.) Save money buying used but useful stuff
In general, you should be eager to get your presents for the best price possible, in order to get more out of your set budget. One very simple measure to achieve this is to buy used things, be it online or at a flea market. People give away hugely useful and often hardly used stuff for a lot less than you would think. Buying online has the big advantage of being able to compare prices very conveniently. But going out offers something cool too – you come together with people and have the opportunity to negotiate for the price you want to achieve. This even creates great stories that you might even want to tell on Christmas Eve. This could make your loved ones even happier than any other present you would image.
