Some Insight From The Shopping Tutor

As fall and November come into view, get a tighter grip on your shopping skills as well as your shopping lists. Many retailers look forward to the day AFTER Thanksgiving as their BIG day in November. The day after Thanksgiving hails as the biggest shopping day of the year, competing stiffly with the day after Christmas. Many Christmas holiday promotions will appear on the shelves along with the Halloween ghosts and goblins, some even before. (Locally, one super discount store was putting up Halloween AND Christmas in side-by-side aisles. The Christmas decorations had signs being posted, “NOW 30% off”. The price must have been really high before the box was opened! Hmmmm. What does that tell you about prices?)

Therefore, the suggestions for this blog, one of my Shopping Tutors, are to encourage you to intensify conscientious shopping skills. This cannot be emphasized too often or too strongly when it’s your budget that is at stake. Holiday hype will continue to escalate in all areas. The word SALE will appear more often with greater intensity and inferred urgency. More retailers than ever will try to convince you that they truly understand how tight your budget is and that they have all the bargains.

Price awareness is a must if your budget matters! So that a “Scrooge” attitude does not mar your holiday happiness and shopping pleasure, plan in detail the amounts you can spend and in what category. Happily stick to your plan!

As the ads and media blitzes try to convince you that you may not be properly keeping up with what “they” say or show as the “only” way to have a perfect holiday, remember this key
thought - ADVERTISING USUALLY IS NOT REALITY - even though you are expected to perceive it as such.

Bonus Paragraph: Some Food For Thought as You Shop

One of our holiday traditions, as a family, is to go shopping with wish lists but no money. It is fun to tease about how I always want a brand new, red Cadillac AND a flowing, floor length fur coat. Of course “someone” can always throw in a gorgeous opal ring – heavy on the blue and fire in the ring. Larry always wants the latest, fanciest model trains. The family motto on these trips: Need has nothing to do with want. :)

As we go through the large one-stop-shopping stores and malls, it is always brought to the attention of our noses, the smell of food, especially baking rolls or other baked goods.

The next time you are in the vicinity of a large supermarket, particularly on a weekend morning, “listen” to what your nose has to tell you. One of the most powerful lures and impulse areas in the shopping arena is the in-store bakery. The smell of baking bread and fresh doughnuts is not an accidental sideline. By a show of hands let me see how many of you have succumbed to “that aroma.” I thought so. Almost all of us have. Planning the purchases to be made at the bakeries may help curb the power of that genie in the bread.

Here we go again. Make your lists and check that budget total fifteen times. Remember one of Barbara’s mottos is, “It’s the thrill of the hunt!


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