Holiday Shopping

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As soon as the snow fell and it got cold out, I realized the holidays are right around the corner which means time to buy presents! Shopping for gifts can be very stressful and it is hard to keep track of your spending. Last year I went a bit overboard and spent way more money on presents than I could afford. This year I'm going to have a game plan, have a budget, and make shopping less stressful. Here are some tips on how to make holiday shopping easy as pie.

Make A List
There is nothing more helpful than making a list of the names of everyone you have to buy presents for. This keeps you organized and stops you from over-buying. You can add ideas for presents to the list or wait until you're out shopping to find ideas. Lists also help to keep track of how much money you have spent so you stay within your budget.

Plan Out Your Shopping Trip
Don't just go to the mall and wander store to store expecting to find everything you need. Before you go shopping, plan out which stores you need to hit for certain gifts and once you have found everything you need you can explore other stores. This will help you keep your shopping trips shorter leaving more time for fun things like doing some Christmas baking!

Shop Online
If you want to beat those terrible lines at the mall, stay at home and shop online! This can be a great way to find cheaper deals on the items you want and it saves you lots of time. It's great to start by looking for items on the actual stores website and then searching for them on sites like eBay or Amazon. You might even save enough money to buy more presents than you thought you could!

Make A Wish List
Even though you're more focused on getting all of your shopping done you can't forget to make your own wish list! This makes sure that you will get the things you need and it is so helpful for the people that are trying to find the perfect gift for you. You can still go oldschool and make hand-writen wish lists or you can try one of the websites that make it easy to distribute your list. There are tons of these new sites, and on some of them you can create groups so that all of your friends and family can know what to get eachother. Try Giftster, it's a really good version of the online wish list!

I hope these tips are helpful and they make your holiday shopping stress-free! Coming up in my next post I will tell you all about my favourite stores for holiday shopping!