Gift Shopping Hack
by blogrdoc
Gift exchange during the holidays is a big deal in my family and for that reason, I’ve come up with this shopping tip. I do realize that I may have to revoke my ‘man’ -card with this post, but that’s okay, I’m very secure in my manliness.
The Problem with Buying Gifts At the Last Minute (especially for the holidays)
- You will likely make an unwise impulse purchase
- Selection will be low
- Prices will be high
- You waste time, energy, gas driving around looking for that ‘perfect gift’ or good deals
The root cause* in all of this is lack of planning and not giving yourself enough time.
My Gift Shopping ‘Hack’
Always have an eye out (year round) for good deals for people you will likely buy a gift for.
By doing this, you can usually solve all the problems listed above. When it comes time to give your gift, you can be confident that you haven’t wasted your money on a gift that won’t get used and it will actually be appreciated. If you are the kind of person that just doesn’t go to shopping malls, I’m not saying to go out of your way to do this. I’m just saying to keep an eye open in the case that you happen to see it. Once you make it a habit, it becomes a mental-microautomation that you don’t even have to think about.
Gift Shopping Hack Example
Today we went to Costco to buy some household stuff, but a couple items grabbed my attention. One was a Nautica long-sleeve dress shirt (picture above) and the other was an Armani ’synthetic’ fabric type navy blue short sleeve shirt. I bought 2 of the Nauticas and 2 of the Armanis. There were all at $9.97 each.** Though the price is low, this is not a ‘cheap’ gift since it’s actually really good quality and pretty stylin’. Moreover, my dad and uncle would probably appreciate the fact that I was thinking of them (albeit for the sake of saving money, but hey - give me a break - I’ve got a lot of mouths to feed!) As another example, I’ve had my sister’s B-day present ready for a couple months now, leaving me plenty of time to put it in the mail so it gets there on time.
*Note that ‘root cause’ is yet another engineering phrase that will crop up in this blog. As engineers, we often seek to find root cause of our problems to prevent them from happening again. (e.g.: David’s white board was always dirty with month-old notes and chicken scratch drawings. Root cause: there was no easily accessible eraser.)
**The lady working there claimed that the Armani’s were marked down from $60. I jokingly accused her of inflating the mark-down price. She was not amused. oops!
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4 Responses to “Gift Shopping Hack”
By Sam Crockett on Mar 25, 2008 | Reply
This is something my mom often does (I’m not question your manliness). She is always on the look out for quality items that are marked down.
Since I’m not one for going shopping at malls or department stores Amazon.com is my outlet for last minutes gift purchases. They usually have fairly priced items, and combine that with Amazon Prime to get the items shipped free to anywhere in two days.
By blogrdoc on Mar 25, 2008 | Reply
When I was in high school or in college, some of my fondest memories would be to go to the junk bin in the record/cd stores and look to see there was any unrecognized ‘goodies’. I’ve just always enjoyed looking for ‘diamonds in the rough’. It’s kinda fun (to me). It might be an asian thing. I proudly brandished my $10 dress shirt to my coworker yesterday and he was not impressed.
By Rx4Life.info on Mar 25, 2008 | Reply
I always love a good bargain myself.
Unfortunately for me, I can’t buy gifts early because I just end up “wearing” the gift that was suppose to go to my brother.
By blogrdoc on Mar 25, 2008 | Reply
Hee hee… not sure if anyone noticed … I claimed in the original post that I was buying a gift, and then in my comment above, I admitted to wearing it! I always trust my wife to hide the gifts from me.