For many across the nation, only one holiday stands between them and the year’s biggest shopping season. According to the National Retail Federation, people will spend about $630.5 billion this holiday season on Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa gifts.
New “shopping holidays,” such as Gray Thursday (Thanksgiving), Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Free Shipping Day, and Super Saturday, have all recently become quasi-holidays in and of themselves, locked and loaded with some pretty amazing deals. However, navigating these events to find the best deals can be a perilous journey fraught with gambles. You can either buy that TV on Black Friday or wait for a better deal, for example.
Fortunately, there are steps you can take to make sure you get the best deals possible.
Check Out the Deals Beforehand. – One of the first things you’re going to want to do if you want to get the most out of these shopping holidays is look beforehand to see what deals are out there. According to U.S. News and World Report, Target is the place to go for electronics and home necessities; Wal-Mart has some amazing deals on TVs and tablets; Macy’s is a destination for clothing and kitchen appliances; and Staples has the best bargains on laptops.
Do It Digitally. – The Internet is a huge place. Monolithic tech company Google has only indexed 200 Terabytes’ worth of data, which is only about 0.004% of the total Internet. Surely you can find some great deals out there online given its size. The best days to go online shopping are, naturally, Cyber Monday and Free Shipping Day. Adobe expects Cyber Monday sales to hit $3 billion this year, a record. Failing that, you can also hit the digital bricks on Free Shipping Day (December 18). Shipping costs can actually put a serious dent in your budget if you do a lot of online shopping, which makes this event so advantageous. To give you an idea of just how big Free Shipping Day has really gotten, consider the fact that consumers have spent over the past two years more than $1 billion on Free Shipping Day.
Don’t Wait Until the Last Minute. – The last and lightest tip you can use is to do it early. Don’t wait until the last minute to shop. You’ll have more time to find bargains and won’t have to deal with low inventories.
Holiday shopping can be stressful, but not if you take the right approach. So long as you plan out a strategy and don’t wait, you’ll be able to both save money and spend some quality holiday time with your loved ones.