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how to take advantage of the January sales

planning

identify gaps

You need to make a plan of attack, and that starts, not at the shops but in your own home.

Firstly, what kind of shopping are you thinking of doing? Things for the house, electrical goods, new cds or dvds, clothes, Xmas decorations for next year? Consider whether you received any gift vouchers / certificates / cards for Christmas. What kinds of shops were those for? That will help you decide which categories to shop the sales in.

In any case you probably already have some stuff. Go through the things that you already have in each category and note any gaps. These are the things to buy in the sales. Identify all the things you need - these should get top priority in your list - and all the things you’d want or like to have - if you see a good bargain, you can then choose to buy those. Write everything down in a little notebook to take to the shops with you.

I’m looking for clothes, and going through my existing wardrobe I have the following gaps, compared to my ideal wardrobe:

• casual trousers (up to 2 pairs)
• work trousers (up to 4 pairs)
• fine knit sweaters (up to 3)
• long sleeved t-shirts (up to 3)
• chunky knit cardigans (up to 2)

So, with my clothes shop gift card I should be looking out for only those things in the sales. Since my existing clothes have worked out ok for the last 2 or 3 months none of these are strictly essential, if I can’t find things that I like.

In the electrical goods items, I don’t have but would like the following:

• microwave
• toaster
• freezer
• ipod
• printer
• george foreman style grill

Of those, probably the most urgently required are the microwave, grill and printer. I received some cash for Christmas that could be usefully spent on some of these items.

thinking about specific shops

Where exactly are you going to hit the sales? I have no car, and live about 45 mins walk from a major city centre, so that’s where I’ll be going. There’s one electrical goods store, so I’ll see if I can get a bargain in there. Otherwise, I’ll tackle the shop that I have a gift card for, and a couple of others that stock clothes in my difficult to buy for (short, round) size.

Maybe you’d be better off buying online? That could certainly work in some categories (not clothes so much) and might be a better use of your time. It’s not normally worth hitting more than one or two major shopping centres for the same types of items. especially clothes - the discounts don’t vary all that much from town to town.

setting price limits

It’s oh so easy in the sales to spend more than you intend to because the bargains are so good. Once you’ve identified all the things that you want or need, set maximum prices on them and write these down. This stops you spending more just because something has been reduced a lot even though it still costs more than you’d really want to spend.

With my clothes selection, I’d set limits on categories plus an overall limit - e.g. no more than £40 on casual trousers, no more than £30 on long sleeve t-shirts, and no more than £100 all together. I’d do the same if I was looking to buy books or cds or dvds.

With electrical goods, I prefer to set a price limit for each item, and an overall limit. I’m not going to spend more than £60 on a microwave for example.

research

Some things benefit from a little research in advance. This mostly applies to electrical goods. Do this before you go, and write down any suitable brands and model numbers.

hitting the shops

Time to put the plan into action.

Wear comfortable shoes and layers as the temperature can vary wildly. Take enough money to cover tea breaks and lunch out and ideally a reasonable sized bag with you. If you will be trying on clothes, wear something easy to change in and out of.

Only go into the shops that you identified previously. Don’t veer off the list. Stick to your price limits. Take a break every 2 hours or so. When you can’t carry on, stop and go home. There will be other sales.

Good luck.

advertising sells. unfortunately

I wonder whether I’m the only person who is not really interested in shopping for gifts this year.

It’s not really that I don’t want to give gifts to my friends and family, I really enjoy getting them stuff - thinking about what they might like and wrapping and so on. It’s just that for the last 5-6 months, I’ve very rarely been proper shopping (as opposed to food shopping). When I went browsing in the shops the other day after work, I found the whole experience overwhelming. There were too many people, and brightly coloured shout-y posters telling me about all the money I could save if I just spent my money in their shop.

my accidental advertising diet

I think I’ve inadvertently been on an advertising diet. I don’t watch a great deal of tv, and much of it is BBC, so ad free. And I have relative online advertising blindness. Most of the posters I pass on my way to work are either public service or for products I’m really not interested in, like car insurance (I don’t own a car).

This accidental advertising diet meant that when I was surrounded by lots and lots of ads, I had a bit of sensory overload. It was like the whole town was shouting ‘buy me, buy me, I’m a nice bright shiny bauble’.

still left me wanting to buy stuff based on ads

But, even though the ads in the stores in town overwhelmed me, they also made me feel like I wanted to buy things. I’m not sure exactly what things, but I definitely wanted to buy.

Fortunately, for Christmas shopping I need have to a list and buy for difficult people (aka men). So I didn’t actually get sucked in to buying things I didn’t need.

so I’m back to avoiding ads

I’m going to try and keep up this advertising diet, now that I’ve noticed it though. I don’t need to spend money on things that I don’t need, or want. I’m supposed to be a grown up these days, and I want to save my money for fun stuff that I actually do want, as well as slightly less fun stuff that I need.

are you spending less for no particular reason?

Really, my life hasn’t been materially affected by this credit crunch / recession / whatever so far. I’ve got a new job, but that was because I made a career shift. My house is worth more than I owe on it (probably) but my mortgage is only 21% of my take home pay, so I’m not struggling to make the payments. I have as much money (if not more) in savings as I did this time two years ago. My investments are down, but I’m in it for the long haul, so that has no real impact.

And yet, I feel like I’m matching the overall mood. I’m not so inclined to go out drinking, I haven’t eaten out nearly as frequently as I used to, I haven’t been to the cinema in months, and I am much less interested in international travel than I would normally be.

Some of this is because I feel the need to improve my house (to both increase it’s value and to improve it’s functionality as a home). I’m saving up for things like new bathrooms and boring fixes to the fabric of the place. I’m also trying to bump up my emergency fund - I never seem to get past the mythical £6k figure. (Around 4-6 months expenses depending on how frugal I could be.) And some of this might just be me settling down a bit as I approach my 30th birthday.

I’m thinking that on a personal note, it’s not so much of a bad thing if I’m spending less and saving (and investing) more. For the economy, as a whole, it’s not so brilliant - although the investing is good - but we’re in a bit of a prisoners’ dilemma. In any case, I’m not really cutting back deliberately, I’m cutting back because intuitively it feels the comfortable thing to do, and I can’t think of a logical or objective reason to spend more.

Is anyone else spending less in the recession for no particular reason? Or have you felt the effects more directly and are adapting? I guess it’s sort of consumer sentiment thing, but there must be a name for this sort of phenomenon. Let me know what you think in the comments.