At this stage in the annual festival of shopping, there’s every chance money is getting tighter. A survey run by Hargreaves Lansdown a few years ago found that more than half of the people who are organised enough to draw up a budget for Christmas end up overspending anyway.
It’s hardly surprising, given how hard retailers are working to get us to spend our cash. However, if Christmas shopping is taking a toll, you don’t have to surrender yourself to a debt hangover in January.
Here are seven steps you can take to avoid the festive overspend.
Start with the money you have left – not including any space in your overdraft or credit available on cards.
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Then make a list of everything you have left to buy and mentally split your money between each purchase. This will reveal whether you’re on track, or whether you need to save some money.
You can get a better deal on the things you were always planning to buy – whether that’s by using price comparison websites like Pricerunner to find the best prices in the sales, or browsing Vinted and eBay (EBAY) for second-hand bargains.
When it comes to the food, you can trade down on individual items – doing things like swapping fresh turkey for frozen.
Alternatively, you can trade down to a cheaper supermarket. Aldi has been named the cheapest for Christmas dinner this year.
If you tend to get together with different groups of people and exchange gifts over Christmas, you could save some of it for the New Year. That way you can use your next pay cheque to buy things in the January sales. You might even be able to do some crafty regifting.
You don’t have to fall out – you can talk to family and friends about restricting presents this year. You could agree just to buy for children or to skip more distant family members.
For groups of people, you could suggest a secret Santa, so you only have to buy one gift. If you squeeze this conversation in before they’ve been shopping, they might be glad of the chance to save money too.
It’s not too late. If you’ve overdone it, there’s plenty of time to send things back for a refund. The stores aren’t forced to take returns if there’s nothing wrong with them, but most of them are flexible – especially around Christmas. That way you can buy a much cheaper replacement and stay within your budget.
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