Months ago, almost everybody was talking about Black Friday deals and Boxing Day sales. However, many had not thought about the next round of sales that seem too good to pass. These kinds of sales usually happen when stores decide to offload excess inventory to give way to items that would be in season.
For instance, September is usually the best time to shop for spring and summer clothes when stores begin a round of serious price-cutting. They have no choice but to drop the prices of the said clothes to make room for holiday wear and winter gear, lest they want their spring and summer collections to rot in their warehouses. The same goes a few months before spring and summer. Stores would go all out trying to offload their remaining holiday inventory to have more room in their racks and shelves for light clothing.
Nevertheless, these sales often leave consumers in a quandary. They ask themselves whether it’s worth trudging their way to the malls to get good deals when they’ve just stretched their shopping budgets to the limit.
Well, post-holiday sales are often the best times to score awesome items; thus, it’s somewhat hard to pass up on the chance. The following short list might help you decide what to buy, what not to buy, and how to stay a step ahead of all these stores offering insanely enticing deals in order to keep your spending in check.
The first thing you need to do is make a list. I know you’ve gone through several lists already while doing your holiday shopping, but you can never question the value of a list. Your list, no matter how long or short it is, will keep you from making impulse purchases. If you’re a certified shopaholic, then you know how impulse shopping can get you into so much trouble. That’s the last thing you want to happen. As much as possible, you want to stay within budget; therefore, work with a list, stick to it, and you’ll avoid overspending.
You probably accumulated several gift cards over the holidays. Now is the best time to make use of the cards. However, if the cards you received won’t score you a dress or two from one of your favorite stores, you might want to swap those for cash. Believe it or not, there are websites that accept unwanted gift cards in exchange for cash. That way, you don’t have to spend money from your savings to do some post-holiday shopping.
Department stores are the way to go for post-holiday shopping. You’d be surprised at what you can score from the clearance section of many department stores. These clearance sections don’t only offer steep discounts but you can also find quality, brand-name merchandise here. Moreover, many department stores offer coupons (which you can find online, in magazines, and in newspapers) to bring down the prices even more.
As mentioned earlier, retailers will try to clear out their stores of seasonal clothes to make way for garments appropriate for the coming season. Therefore, if spring and summer are fast approaching, that’s the best time to shop for sweaters, coats, and cute furry snow boots that you can use come fall and winter. You probably have your eyes set on a beautiful cashmere sweater but had to let it go because of the price, so now’s the best time to buy that sweater, since chances are big that its price has dropped down. The same goes during fall or winter; prices of spring and summer clothes would drop down, so it’s best to shop around these times.
Be wary of deals that seem unbelievable. You know how the saying goes. If deals seem too good to be true, these probably are. A case in point is a BTGOF or ‘buy two, get one free’ deal for some sweaters. If you analyze it closely, you’d find out you didn’t really get a free sweater but instead spent an extra $50. How can that be? Well, you’re only looking for one sweater, but the BTGOF deal sounded nice. Hence, you ended up paying two sweaters just to get one free. You’ve clearly overspent on something you didn’t need in the first place.
Post-holiday shopping is always fun but it’s never without loopholes. Keep these simple tips in mind when you go post-holiday shopping to make sure you’re getting the best value for your hard-earned money.
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