6 shopping tricks to make us spend more on New Year’s Eve

The anticipation of celebration is relaxing, and it is fraught with increased costs. Therefore, it is important to maintain common sense.

1. New Year’s attributes

For the holidays, shops are trying to decorate in order to give customers the appropriate mood. But garlands and lights are not just beautiful decorations. They serve as a reminder: the new year is rushing towards us. And the feeling of a fairy tale often turns off everything that is responsible for a rational approach.

In everyday life, you can keep track of the budget as much as you like, optimize expenses. But the holiday is coming soon! And in general we live once! Therefore, I want to buy this, and this is something, and I don’t forget the gifts.

At the same time, an attentive observer will notice: New Year’s attributes appear in stores earlier and earlier . And this is also a kind of trap. If the stores were decorated in the last two weeks of December, it would not be so easy to spend a lot of money during this period. But balls and tinsel appear already in the middle, or even at the beginning of November. In two months you can buy a lot, and even forget about something and buy a second time. Festive melodies and smells of pine needles, tangerines, cinnamon are poured into the same mill.

So that all these paraphernalia do not confuse you, make a list of what you need before heading to the store. And allocate a certain amount that you allow yourself to spend on spontaneous purchases. Still, accidentally grabbing something unreasonable from the shelf is also an element of the holiday.

2. Stocks that make you buy more

Before the New Year, stores hold many promotions . This is “three for the price of two”, and a gift for a purchase of a certain amount, and a discount for every thousand in the check. And these offers can be beneficial, or they can only empty your wallet.

To understand this, you need to slow down, count and think. For example, three cans of peas for the price of two seems like a tempting option. But only if you love this product. If you need one serving for Olivier once a year , it is better to buy just one and calm down. As a result, the total spending will be less.

Gifts and discounts, which are required for a certain amount of cost, can force you to buy more items than you originally planned. Moreover, you will not be very necessary to “finish off” the basket.

To turn the promotions to your advantage, it is better to study the store offers in advance, correlate it with your shopping list and then go shopping.

3. Discounts from overpriced

If individual store promotions can be turned to your advantage, then some of them initially do not bode well. These are offers, when the price of a product was first artificially inflated, and then a discount was made, but such that the total cost is higher or equal to the original one.

In order not to fall for the bait, you should follow the price changes in the store. Well, or conduct research on offers from different sellers before buying. Of course, this is justified if you do not take a stick of sausage, but something expensive.

4. Gift sets

Before the holidays, so many things have to be redone, and I want to somehow make my task easier. For example, do not collect a gift yourself, but buy a ready-made set. Often, brands specifically release several products in one New Year’s package so that they can be gifted. Sometimes the stores will assemble the boxes themselves.

Ready-made gifts can be very cost effective. This happens if they are part of a marketing campaign. Imagine: you are handing someone a set of some tools. The person is not familiar with the brand, but accepts the present and uses it. If he likes it, he will continue to buy these products. And so that you take this particular box as a gift, the price for it is made very attractive.

But there are other options as well. For example, customers are not only charged the full price for the funds, but also triple the price for the holiday packaging. Or, the kits contain unpopular or not very fresh products that are usually not needed for nothing. In both cases, it smells like a waste of money.

Therefore, it is better to calculate the cost of goods in a set and understand how profitable it is. Sometimes it is better to buy a couple of sheets of beautiful paper separately and wrap all your presents in it than to rely on someone. And, of course, check the expiration dates.

And here’s a life hack: if the sets are profitable in price, you don’t have to give them, you can take them for yourself. But it is better to do this not before the holidays, but after. There are usually very attractive discounts on leftovers, because boxes with Christmas trees and snowmen are no longer suitable for gifts.

5. Festive displays for those in a hurry

This technique is similar to the previous one, however, no one collects ready-made sets for you. But on the beautifully designed islands there are goods that are very suitable for each other. For example, champagne and caviar, cookies, festive duck marinade, and so on. Very convenient: you just row everything indiscriminately, and the shopping is over.

And it would be so, if not for two “but”. Firstly, excess goods that you captured purely by inertia may end up in the basket. Secondly, it is not a fact that the best representatives of their species are exhibited on the islands. Perhaps it is worth going in a row with caviar and finding there something more advantageous in terms of weight / price / quality ratio. Do the same thing along with alcohol. As a result, what you have chosen will get on the table, and not what needs to be sold to the store representatives.

6. Playing on stereotypes

The New Year has attributes, without which, it seems, the holiday will not take place. This is a Christmas tree and gifts, and also Olivier, champagne, caviar, soda, which Santa Claus brought in on a red truck. Moreover, many associations have been imposed on us by years of advertising, and not at all by traditions. And now we obediently buy at least a bottle of sparkling wine, although everyone is going to drink cognac and cola, herring for salad, which will stand on the table as decoration, and so on.

Naturally, marketers are also aware of existing stereotypes (after all, many of them are implemented by specialists themselves). Therefore, in stores, you cannot take a step so as not to stumble upon something associated with a celebration.

All these are unnecessary expenses. Therefore, it is important to separate the wheat from the chaff in time and understand that this is a holiday for you, and not you for a holiday. You make the rules. And make a shopping list too: feel free to cross out everything that turned out there, because you need to, and not because you want to.