3 Reasons to Do Your Holiday Shopping Online This Year

It could really pay to skip the stores.

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Key points

• Shopping online could help you avoid impulse buys.
• It could also make it easier to track prices and snag the lowest ones.

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The holidays will be here before we know it, and that means one thing — it’s time to get moving on your holiday shopping. While many people put off holiday shopping until late November or even into December, this year, it pays to get started early.

Supply chains haven’t fully recovered from pandemic-era shutdowns, and popular items may be hard to find. The sooner you get started with your shopping, the less likely you’ll be to miss out on the items you want.

Now, when it comes to doing your holiday shopping, you have choices. You could spend weeks hopping from store to store, or you could do your shopping online. Here’s why the latter may end up being a better option.

1. You won’t have to deal with crowds

Stores tend to get more crowded as the holidays near. If you shop online, you can save yourself time and aggravation by not having to deal with throngs of people in your way.

Plus, let’s face it — avoiding crowded stores also means avoiding germs. And when you’re planning a holiday get-together, the last thing you want is to have to cancel plans because the person behind you on the checkout line coughed all over you and got you sick.

2. You may be less likely to fall victim to impulse buys

Has this ever happened to you? You’re roaming around a store adding items from your gift list to your cart when you stumble across the clearance aisle and start browsing. Fast forward 15 minutes, and you’re suddenly buying $60 worth of apparel you had no intention of purchasing.

While it’s more than possible to succumb to impulse purchases in the course of your online shopping, the temptation may not be as strong when you’re looking at a picture of an item as opposed to the item itself right in front of you. And if you manage to avoid impulse buys, you might close out your holiday shopping journey with a much lower credit card tab.

3. You may have an easier time tracking prices

You may have the goal of paying as little as possible for your holiday purchases — and that’s a good goal to have. But doing your shopping online might lend to that more easily.

When you shop online, you can add items to your cart and let them sit there for days and see how their prices evolve. To do something similar in person, you’ll need to visit the same stores multiple days in a row, and you may not have the time for that.

It pays to go online

Some people like the process of walking through stores, choosing gifts, and chatting with friendly cashiers. But if you’re not particularly drawn to that scenario, skip it and do your holiday shopping online instead. Not only might it save you time, but it could result in a world of savings. And at a time when life has gotten so expensive, the less you spend on holiday purchases, the better.