Christmas and Thanks Giving are around the corner, people start to get busy planning for celebration, vacations, and shopping for gifts. Streets and shopping complexes around the country spend millions of dollars in decorating for Christmas in order to promote holiday atmosphere. This is one of the times in the year, retails, shopping malls, tourism and service sector could boost their sales profit by getting consumer to spend more. Decoration is part of the strategy to boost sales. In fact, it is much easier to get people to spend during this time of year, this could have many reasons and one of the reasons is emotion reactions. Thus we should be extra cautious when we spend during this time. 

1. Create a budgeting plan for the incoming celebrations.

   Do you have habit of keeping track of budgets for everything? Such as yearly or monthly budget on clothes, shoes, car, food, etc. If not, it’s okay, because not everyone does that. But if you tend to spend more during festive season, it is important for you to at least come out with one for festive celebration only. List out the budget allocated to celebration like Christmas dinner, gift, decoration, etc. With a budget plan in place, and discipline to follow it from time to time, not only you can avoid over spending, you can also save on a bunch from buying unnecessary stuff. Of course, the budget have to be somewhat cost justifiable and not extravagant.

2. Avoid mindless spending. It is smart to buy things on great discount but it is not smart to buy discounted stuff if it is unnecessary. I know it is very tempting to buy thing in great discount during festive seasons like thanks giving or Christmas, but those things aren’t what you need and most of the time you buy it on impulse. Have you ever regretted buying something during sales even you don’t need it? you buy it because it is cheap.
3. Understanding your own emotion. People celebrate during festive seasons. These festivals gives people high level of feel good emotion. Have you ever wondered why there are always so many people flocking the shopping malls and outlets on approaching festive seasons. Be there any sales or not, there will still be many shoppers flooding the malls, its like things are free. This is because festival makes people excited and feels good. People buy when react to certain emotions especially excitement, fear and greed. During the festive seasons, people get excited on prospect of enjoying holidays, vacation and meeting loved one. With a bit of incentive from retailer by giving great discount, it will trigger the emotion of greed in human. Besides, sales person can make things seem like great deal and it would be a loss if you don’t get one, usually they will tell you there is only few items left so grab it before stock last. This will trigger the emotion of fear in human, a person who hears this sales talk is afraid that he is going to lose the once in a life time opportunity to get this so called great deal.
4. Spend time preparing dinner. During Christmas or other festive day, it is not uncommon for restaurant or gift shop to hike the price. The reason of price hike might just because of some excuses to make more money or a more proper reason is because of high demand during the day as a result of more patrons and customers. Take florist for example, it is normal that the price of roses increase dramatically during festive days like Valentine’ day or Christmas. People are willing to spend dining in fancy restaurants, and give expensive gift to loved one. But in time like this, you need to be more cautious on dining outside. Remember the price of a meal could be double or triple and don’t forget you are bringing along your family as well, if you have any. Make your own special dinner, buy food and vegetable from Wal-Mart, Tesco or Giant that is on discount. Save money, live better – does this sound familiar to you? You can even save money by organizing a party, why not get everyone to participate in a potluck. Not only everyone is actively involved in shared organizing the party to make it better, it also improves bonding between friends.
5. Plan your travelling time.People spend a lot of time travelling before and after festive season, going back home and coming back to work. This is unavoidable because most people work away from home. The worst part is travel expenses increase tremendously if you don’t plan ahead. Air fare increase dramatically when approaching festive season, everyone else is looking for a seat in flight. Knowing the law of supply and demand, one should realize that price increases as supply is unable to cope with demand. This happens exactly to travelling options like flight. With this in mind, you should have planned for coming holidays far early, probably as early as the booking system allows. For people who drive across countries and states, it will be better to avoid peak hour travelling like after work, try departing earlier or very late at night. This could save you a lot of time and money as you can probably avoid traffic jam.