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Rochester Local

Don’t Be Left Empty-Handed: Prepare for Holiday Shopping and (and Shortages!)

How to Prepare for the 2021 Holiday Season

As we’ve learned over the past year, COVID-19 is the gift that keeps on giving. Even though the vaccinations have helped people feel safer traveling and getting together with others, the Delta variant is a grim reminder that COVID isn’t going anywhere. If that weren’t disruptive enough, the pandemic has also played havoc with the supply chain, resulting in skyrocketing prices and shortages in retail stores everywhere. 

Despite all these challenges, we’ve already dealt with one challenging holiday season in uncertain times, and things are actually better than they were in 2020. In other words, having a happy 2021 holiday season is going to be a breeze compared to 2020. The only catch is you’ll need to plan and be flexible. 

holiday budgeting

Start Planning Early

Speaking of planning, the first thing you’ll need to do to make your 2021 holiday season enjoyable is to start planning as soon as possible. Thanks to the disruptions COVID has caused to the supply chain, there will be a lot of items that may be in short supply this year from foodstuffs to holiday decorations, so the sooner you figure out what you need, the sooner you’ll be able to order it and the less likely you’ll be racing to different stores to get an item, or worse, discovering that the item is out of stock everywhere. 

Planning will be especially important if you’re planning on traveling during November and December. A lot of people who didn’t travel in 2020 are anxious to visit friends and family this year, and that means the airports and highways will be even more crowded than they usually are around this time. 

While you might not be able to avoid travel-associated hassle entirely, you can at least mitigate it. Plan out your dates as early as possible, and if your plans include flying get your tickets purchased as soon as possible. When you’re buying your tickets, you should also spend a bit more money to buy flight insurance, since the increased numbers of people will make cancellations and interruptions to your flight more likely. 

Make a Budget

While you’re planning, you should also review your budget and update it for the holidays. To be honest, most financial experts recommend reviewing and updating your budget once a month anyhow, but it’s especially important to make sure your budget is ready for the holidays when your spending will significantly increase. 

Having an updated budget will help you see how much the holidays will cost and give you an idea of what you’ll be able to afford without having to rely completely on your credit card. However, your holiday budget will also give you the opportunity to direct more funds toward your holiday spending. You can use the funds you usually spend on eating out, for instance, and have that much less to pay off on your credit card at the end of the month. 

Perhaps the biggest advantage of having an updated budget, though, is that it will take the worry out of your holiday spending. Instead of trying to ignore the looming specter of your next credit card bill, you’ll know how much you’re spending, why you’re spending it, and help keep your spending under control. It’s a surefire way to make the holiday season less stressful and more enjoyable. 

Prepare for Shortages

According to some financial experts, if you didn’t get your Christmas gift shopping done in September, you’re in trouble. Most of us, of course, haven’t thought that far ahead yet, and most children are still fixated on what they want to be for Halloween, so the odds are high that you’re going to run into a shortage of something. It could be as minor as not getting an ugly Christmas sweater this year, or it could be as major as discovering that most of the items on your child’s gift list are out of stock until February. 

Fortunately, there are some ways to deal with the shortage. One way is to encourage your child to make a huge gift list, with everything they can think of. This will give you more options for gift selection, and if you can’t get your child everything on their gift list, you can at least make sure your children all get some of what they wanted. 

You may also want to look into alternate gifts this year. Instead of going all-in on toys, for instance, you could have Santa give your entire family a gift, like a trip to an amusement park. You could also invest in one big item for all your children, like a basketball hoop, that they’ll be able to use throughout the year. 

Accommodate in-Person and Virtual Family Members

Most of us became intimately acquainted with virtual meetings and visits in 2020, and while many people are finally feeling safe enough to travel during the holidays, a lot of people are still not quite ready to get out and mingle with people. 

If someone in your family or extended family is still abstaining from social events, try to include them in the festivities as well. Get a family virtual meeting started and sing carols, play holiday trivia or even do a party game like charades. It’s worth pointing out that a lot of popular board games, from Settlers of Catan to Monopoly, are available to play online via a laptop or a tablet computer. 

Rediscover Your Traditions

If there’s been one good thing to come out of the pandemic, it’s that we’ve all gotten out of the ruts we’ve been in for years and had a chance to reexamine almost every aspect of our lives, including our holiday traditions. Now that you’re not sheltering in place, though, you can look at your old holiday traditions, as well as the new traditions you created last year, and figure out which ones work best for your family. 

One fun way to do this is to have a family meeting and have everyone discuss which holiday traditions they like and which ones they wouldn’t miss. For instance, you and your family might want to keep putting up the new Christmas lights you got last year, especially if you got LED lights to help keep your winter costs manageable. On the other hand, you might not want to keep some of the new dishes you tried for Christmas dinner, or you might just want to continue your new tradition of going out to eat on Christmas day.  

Have a Happy 2021 Holiday Season With First Alliance Credit Union

Even though the 2021 holiday season won’t be as challenging as last year, it will still have its challenges. However, with a little planning and a little flexibility, you can ensure you and your family will still have a lot of fun. 

You can also ensure you have a happy holiday season when you become a member of First Alliance Credit union today. In addition to saving money in our traditional savings accounts and money market accounts, you can also use online banking and the First Alliance mobile banking app to transfer money between accounts, send gift money to your loved ones with Zelle or just keep an eye on your holiday spending.  

Plus, with our uChoose Rewards Credit Card, you can earn one point per dollar spent on every purchase, online and in stores! Then, in January, you can redeem all the points you earned from your holiday spending to treat yourself to cool stuff or cash back! 

 

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