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Perishables
By Daphne | December 13, 2007
Twelve days until Christmas and I am almost done with my shopping. I have a couple of things that are stumping me though. I do not know what to get.
There are still opportunities for free shipping so your gifts will arrive before Christmas. Amazon tells you how many days you have left to take advantage of free shipping in order to get it before Christmas. I got a reminder in my email box today from Smartbargains.com that shipping is free through today. Best Buy has free shipping for items listed in their recent circular.
All of these free shipping opportunities are nothing more than a way to get your business. I understand. When I went shopping the other day the salesclerks in various stores were very available and very friendly. There were not a lot of people out buying or even looking. Things were rather dead. I can understand that. About half of the items I purchased so far were purchased online because I saved money that way.
I saved up before Christmas and I have a spending plan in place. I did go a little over on a couple of gifts because I knew I would considerably spend less on the shipping than on the gift so that actually worked out in my favor. Instead of spending $10 on shipping I was able to send something in a card for less than $1.
Mailing gifts to people unless you are getting free shipping and honestly some places with great things do not offer those free gimmicks to entice you. If you want to order candy or food items these places often do not offer free shipping but if you do not have to wrap and prepare the gift yourself it is often worth it. I saw some wonderful goodies at Mrs. Prindables and Sees and Harry & David and when you factor in shipping, some things are over budget. Going over budget is a problem but the closer you get to Christmas, the less time you have to quibble over price if you want an item to arrive on time.
In order to avoid that, look for items that will definitely fit into your budget but with perishables delivery is the biggest factor in price. In that case, you can always send someone a gift card for the place and they can choose their own goodies. There are other ways to get around this… order things like nuts or non-chocolate candies. Even when you go look at fruit and floral baskets in the grocery store or gourmet stores the prices are much higher than the materials that go into them. For candy if you are buying certain candies you can still get a wonderful gift for under $30 but unless the person really likes the type of candy then do you want to spend half the price of the gift in shipping? I don’t.
When shipping a gift, make a selection where the person will be able to use the majority of the gift and not have the value eaten up in shipping.
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Topics: December 2007 |