Five Reasons to Shop Online This Holiday Season

It’s the most wonderful time of the year according to the famous holiday tune. So why are so many of so stressed out? Maybe you’re spending too much time in the wrong places. Here are some very convincing reasons to shop online only this holiday season.

Beat the Crowds

To truly beat the crowds when you shop in stores, your best bet is to go before 10 a.m. or after 8 p.m. When you shop online, you do it at your convenience. You can browse as long as you’d like, and there’s nobody in your way or crawling around you to grab the item you want. The only screaming kids are your own (and you can send them to their rooms), and you don’t have to fight for a parking spot either.

Locate Hard-to-Find Items Faster and Easier

If you are old enough to remember the Cabbage Patch doll craze, you know it was the beginning of mob mentality holiday shopping. This year, one of those items appears to be the Lego Creationary board game. Three places that had it in stock yesterday are completely out of stock today. I consider myself the queen of online research, and I can’t find it anywhere unless I’m willing to pay $60 to $100. I’m not. But here’s the deal, I can order it online and it will ship to me when it comes back in stock. I can also have the online stores e-mail me as soon as they have it back in stock. Granted, there is no guarantee any of these places will have it by Christmas, but I can always wrap a picture of the game and tell my son it’s on the way when he opens it Christmas morning.

Save Time and Money

I purchased six gifts tonight in about 30 minutes and got free shipping. I didn’t have to get out in the chilly or waste gas or run from store to store for an item nobody has in stock. I got to eat in my own home, which saves more money. Perhaps best of all, I don’t have a bunch of gift items cluttering my house when I’m still surrounded by boxes of Christmas decorations that have to go up. The gifts will arrive in about 10 days, long after I am finished decorating.

Truly Find the Best Price

When you’re in the store, you don’t know what impulsive sales the other stores may be having at the same time. Tonight, I placed at item in my online shopping cart and continued looking for other things. By the time I was done, the price of that first item in my cart had gone down. That never would have happened it if was standing in line at a store.

Gift Wrapping

How much money do you spend on wrapping paper, tape and gift tags? Why not spend the same amount of money and have the gifts arrive already wrapped? Do the math. It just may work to your advantage, and talk about a time savings.

You can save yourself many hours of time and stress by shopping online. That is my wish for you this holiday season.