6 tips to save money on your Christmas shopping

Christmas is great, but Christmas shopping can make you frustrated and sometimes poor 😊

This post is about how to make your Christmas shopping smart and save your money instead of spending it all.

Plan ahead

It sounds very obvious, but not many people do it. Usually, we are too busy with work, families, some chores. And then we rush through the shops right before Christmas hoping to find something nice and cheap and very fast. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like this. Start planning at least 1-2 months before the holiday. You need to count people you want to give your presents to, think of some gift ideas, and try to evaluate the budget. Put this information in a list. You can start looking online or in retail stores straight ahead as you can’t be sure the thing you need will not be sold out.

Have a magic piggy bank for gifts

It’s summertime, you are wandering around the stores, and you see a cool scarf with 80% discount that you know your friend would love so much. But it’s summer. Why would she need a scarf now? Just buy it. You might use it for some upcoming festive occasions, not necessarily for Christmas, but you’ll always have something just in case. A piggy bank for gifts can be a great holder for books, toys for kids, video games, accessories, and other different small things. Just don’t buy items that will spoil easily, or which termination date runs out the next month. Also, don’t stuff your box with something obviously useless. Otherwise, the magic will be gone.

Combine small inexpensive items in one nice present set

This is also helpful if you don’t really know what to give. You need a Christmas present for your 3-year old niece, but you have no clue which dolls are cool or what small girls like now? Don’t buy an expensive Barbie, she might like Monster High Dolls. Try to pick several small things and combine them in one nice package. This can be a book, a nice pen, a notebook, accessories for her hair (nice pins, ribbons, a hairbrush), beauty accessories like bracelets or rings.

Prepare one gift for a couple or group of people

You can save money by buying a slightly more expensive gift, but for a couple (or a group of people), not individual gifts for each of them. For instance, you can give a combined gift for parents, married couples or siblings.

Search online, including foreign online stores

Online shopping is great for saving time and money. We all know it. We also recommend looking at stores abroad. Some of them have free delivery globally. For instance, you can get some great deals for nice books on the websites of famous UK publishers. Shopping in Chinese online stores will take longer for your gifts to be delivered but will save your money. The key point here is to contact well-known shops, or you have a risk to be fooled by scammers.

Install an ad blocker on your device

All those online shops will follow you with their ads to the places you wouldn’t expect. Besides being annoyed, you might actually end up spending even more money than you planned. There is a number of adblocking extensions for a desktop. Free Adblocker Browser will let you browse fast and ad-free on your Android device, and similar applications are also available for iOS phones. Search the web using an ad blocker, and you will not be bothered by ads. FAB will also keep you protected against viruses, malware, and other scams.

Merry Christmas shopping!