A year of gifts, so December is not a panic
Gift ideas arrive in June and are needed in December, and almost nobody writes them down. Keep a board running all year with who each idea is for and what it costs, and stop paying the panic premium.
The short version
Gift buying is expensive because it is compressed. Ideas occur throughout the year and are acted on in three weeks, at full price, under pressure. Keep a running board with the person, the occasion and the price, and buy things when they are cheap rather than when they are urgent.
A sample board
Gifts, this year
Ideas as they arrive, kept until the occasion. Bought when they are cheap.
- Items
- 6
- Bought
- 1 of 6
- Total
- $196
- Budget
- $404 left of $600
Open any item for its details.
$32BoughtWho for · SisterOccasion · Birthday, May
$58DecidedWho for · MumOccasion · DecemberWhere · Halden & Co
$22IdeaWho for · DadOccasion · December
$24IdeaWho for · NeighboursOccasion · December
$42IdeaWho for · HousewarmingOccasion · September
$18IdeaWho for · EveryoneOccasion · December
Board photos from Unsplash, by Paolo Nicolello, Victoria Berman, Kimberly Farmer, sooji min, Stephanie Harvey and Kari Shea.
Who it's for
Anyone who buys for more than a handful of people, or who has spent a December paying full price for hurried ideas.
What people use today
Santa's Bag and a dozen Christmas list apps, all of which wake up in November. The whole value is in the other ten months, which is exactly when a seasonal app is not open.
What a board tracks here
Fields you name yourself, on the item they belong to. These are the ones that decide a purchase and have nowhere else to live.
- Who for
- The organising field. A gift list without it is just a wish list.
- Occasion
- Birthdays are spread across the year and are the reason a December-only list fails.
- Where I saw it
- The idea arrives months before the purchase, and the shop is what gets forgotten.
- Already given
- Giving the same person the same thing twice is a specific and avoidable embarrassment.
Reading
- The Christmas Shopping List You Start in JanuaryStop starting from zero every December. A running list, a per-person budget, and the dates that matter: set up once and used all year.
- How to Tell Whether a Black Friday Deal Is RealThe advice is always 'know the price beforehand'. Nobody explains how. Here's what to record, when to record it, and what counts as a genuine cut.
Start one of your own.
Paste a link from any store and Vurra reads the page for a title, price and image. Free while Vurra is in early access.