5 Tips To Avoid Last Minute
Gift Shopping In 2017
I think it's very unlikely that any of us think that last minute gift shopping is a good idea, remotely practical, or even enjoyable - yet we've all done it more than once.
We know that last minute gift shopping often leads to spending over budget (because we've reduced our gift options, and are led to doing things like ordering from overseas), it's stressful and even worse can lead to buying shoddy gifts we don't even like that much, which is basically a total waste of our hard earned cash.
Use these tips for avoiding last minute gift shopping to prevent gift shopping regrets;
1. Hire a professional. That's right, if you're cash rich and time poor why not invest some of your hard earned cash into one of those personal shoppers who will do most of the work for you.
2. Create a plan. At the beginning of each year create a table of the people you aim to purchase gifts and cards for over the entire year (birthday gifts AND Christmas gifts), what you aim to spend on each person, and what date you need to purchase their gift and card by.
Refer to your planner on a weekly basis to ensure you're ahead of the curve for gift shopping. Having a planner to hand all year will do wonders for keeping on track compared to not having a plan of any sort whatsoever.
As a bonus, the planner will help keep your purse in line also, because noting down your entire years gift spending all at once is an amazing eye opener about how much you may be spending on gift purchases each year.
3. Shop in January. January is mega sale season, and you've most likely just had a bunch of time off work during the Christmas holidays - thus should have plenty of energy for a good old online shopping marathon. Not only will you save lots in the January gift shopping sales, you'll gain a massive head start on birthday gifts for the year. Try your best to focus first on the early gifts needed for the first quarter of the year.
4. Be ruthless. Suffering from any dead wood? Get rid of them in January and cross them off the gift list. Once you've written your yearly spending plan and found out exactly what you spend each year on gifts and greeting cards, I assure you that you'll find yourself keen to curtail any unneccessary gift purchasing or the year and instead focus on the people that really matter to you. It will save you money, and it will also save you that oh-so-precious time.
5. Don't Forget The Ancillaries. When writing your gift shopping plan remember to fill in the ancillary gifts and cards that we all buy each year for a range of different people. This sort of gift and card purchase mounts up more than you realise and equals extra shopping time and indeed money. Examples of these include:
Valentines Day - Usually get a Valentines card or gift for your sweetheart?
Easter - You may not feel that you celebrate Easter, but do you find yourself getting a few choccy gifts for your neices and nephews and/or your own children? It still needs to go onto the gift planner.
Mother's Day - This arrives fairly early in the year and is going to be equal at least a card. It should be budgeted for and if you don't want to forget it and leave it until the last minute, it needs to be included in your planner. The same goes for Father's Day, which hits us around just one month later.
Anniversary Gifts and Anniversary Cards - First met, got married, etc etc. Do you know when your anniversary is? I'm talking to you, menfolk - yes you.
What other celebrations and traditions do you routinely buy gifts and cards for each year? Give it a good think over, and get them all into your planner. Once you've created the first planner, susequent years are far easier and you can look forward to organisational heaven and less stress.
