How to avoid rash spending on New Year's holidays

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

New Year and Christmas holidays are already close. Online stores and shopping centers in cities are beginning to vying with each other to offer discounts, promotions, grandiose price drops and things that you and your loved ones really need (at least, this is what it says in every second booklet that can be found in your mailbox, and in every third email). What to do with this massive New Year's shopping, and how not to spend all your money on very good, but completely unnecessary things for you?

1. Make wish lists

What you wanted for a whole year and what will be useful to you as a useful and necessary thing, you can buy at the New Year's sale. But to organize your thoughts, you need a list. Lists can be made in applications like "" and Wunderlist, or simply on paper. After a while, go back to the compiled list and reread it carefully: is there anything there that you can cross out? Even when choosing gifts for children, be attentive to their wishes.

2. Calculate your family budget

You should not buy something too expensive and pretentious if you only have enough money for this purchase, and that's it. The most sensible approach is to set aside a certain amount of money every month for the whole year for the holidays, so that by the end of the year you get the amount "in reserve". Don't spend more than 60% of your family budget on gifts. Holidays will pass quickly, and needs, like utility bills, food and other compulsory expenses, will not go anywhere. Our people still have a strange tradition of collecting loans and installments for the New Year, but I will talk about this a little later.

3. Draw a line between “want”, “can buy” and “will use”

For example, you may want a console, but you will play on it 2 times a month, because you come home from work late. A child may want an iPhone, but the parents' salary is only enough for a third of an iPhone:) You can even take out a loan and buy home a couple of speakers and a cool guitar at the New Year's Eve sale - but do not comfort yourself with the hope that working 10-12 hours a day for 6 days a week, you will have time and desire to play on it. And so you can cite and cite more and more new examples. The bottom line is simple: give and buy yourself and others only what, in addition to their fleeting desires or hobbies, you really like and will really be in demand, if not daily, then at least 3-4 times a week.

4. Use price aggregators

In the eyes of discounts, price tags and promotional offers dazzles right now. The closer to the New Year, the more difficult it will be to figure it out. Price aggregators (runet and foreign) will help you compare and select those goods that have really fallen in price, check the reputation of stores, compare delivery terms and warranty periods for the same gadget model or other gift you have chosen.

5. Carefully compare prices and read the terms of promotions in regular stores

Offline trading is another separate world full of its own pitfalls. Sometimes, after reading the fine print on the price tag, you suddenly discover that the seemingly sensationally low price is, in fact, 10% higher, because you still have to pay VAT, and even higher if you do not take out a loan to buy. If you choose a thing in the pre-New Year period, always ask the consultants in detail about the conditions of discounts and promotions, the price outside the promotional purchase, guarantees, the possibility of return and exchange, warranty periods and similar important details. Especially carefully you need to approach all these issues if you are buying a gift under the Christmas tree not for yourself or your child, but for relatives, friends, colleagues - i.e. other adults. After all, if they are faced with unpleasant surprises such as breakdown or repairs, or the need to return an unsuccessful gift to the store, they should not have any problems with this.

6. Avoid "cheap New Year" loans

Above, I have already mentioned the fashion for installments and herringbone loans. You shouldn't start the year with a bundle of financial obligations and debts: it's not about superstition, but about simple home bookkeeping. Having collected loans and payments, you, thereby, start your family budget in the new year with a negative balance. Who will fill it up for you if you are already spending more than you earned from the start? In addition, as a rule, New Year's installments and loans have rather strict conditions for non-payment, late payments, and early repayment. All the nuances of such agreements should be carefully studied, even if you nevertheless decided to take out a loan to purchase a New Year's gift (after all, someone can buy an apartment or a house "under the Christmas tree").

7. Buy products only in stores that cooperate with service centers

You gave your parents a great new TV - but if it breaks, the nearest official service center is only in the neighboring town. It didn't work out very well. At the same time, if you buy a TV with the same parameters, but from another manufacturer, whose SC is in your city, you could save on time, nerves, calls and sending broken equipment. In addition, online stores and retail outlets that do not provide a full-fledged official guarantee or agreements with the SC are likely to implement “gray” and “black” supplies of goods, for which there may not be any certificates and guarantees from brands at all.

8. 10 useful little things are better than 1 useless big gift

And finally, I would like to remind you that if a refrigerator has been junk in the house for a long time, and you bought a game console of the newest model for equivalent money, then this is not a very reasonable choice. The gamers in your family will surely be delighted with the gift; But when, after a month, the old refrigerator still burns out, the console will have to be sold, and the refrigerator will be bought. Or take out a loan to buy a refrigerator, because the new PS 4 won't freeze your food. If your children do not have comfortable winter shoes, and instead you bought them 2 sets of bakugan and a bunch of other games, then maybe you should tell your child that you need to start by asking Santa Claus about good warm boots?

And remember the main thing: it is not an expensive gift that is important, but attention to those whom you value, love, respect, remember and care about. Bright price tags and famous brands that try to drown this thought in you during the sales period are transient. But choosing a gift with intelligence, benefit and "zest" that will be pleasant to the recipient is a little art, if you like.