Christmas is still more than a couple of months away, but you might be contemplating starting your shopping for the event. After the recession, if you are comfortable with your money, you can always go ahead right now, but shopper news doesn’t seem to be very encouraging. Well, I really don’t want to disappoint you but with unemployment rate at almost 10 % and the foreclosure episodes still being quite frequent do you expect people to shop big this holiday season? In August, we might have rejoiced about consumer confidence rising up to 54. 5 %, but according to the Conference board report it has again plummeted to 53.1 % in September. A confidence index of 90 % is indicative of sound economic health for the nation. When our confidence is so poor, can we really spend much on shopping this year? The scene looks gloomy. However to make the best of your shopping deals you should keep in mind a few points.

Don’t Hope For Big Discounts

Last year you might have got about 80 % off on most articles during the holiday season. But now you’ll not. This year you can expect to get a discount of only 40-60 % and then again you’ll find this discount only in fewer stores than you did last year.

Wait Till Black Friday, Not After That

You can expect to get good bargains if you shop at the most appropriate time. The amount of inventory that they’ve ordered is much less than last year, by about 10 %. Now you’ll not be getting any discounts because retailers are waiting till Black Friday to see how much  of their inventory they sell and then fix the prices with some discounts but don’t expect them to be as much as last year. Go shopping after Black Friday and you can hope to see some of your favorite goodies more affordable. But don’t wait for a long time because you might risk arriving at a retailer only to see your favorite item sold out because inventories are less and in the holiday season you can expect the stocks to get exhausted soon. But, on the contrary some retailers feel that consumer confidence having plummeted down; people will more focused on saving money or spending it on more important things like saving their properties from foreclosures etc.

What You Should Buy

This holiday you can very well shop for electronic goods, women’s clothing and home decoration items because you can expect to get discounts on them from now to the end of the holiday season. However, you should wait a bit for purchasing electronic goods because the retailers will be slashing the prices only at the end of the holiday season. The reason the retailers of electronic items are going for a slash is because they are facing stiff competition from online sellers like Amazon, Retailers like Best Buy and manufacturers like Apple and Dell.

Don’t Bother About Dollar Value

The dollar value is expected to remain fairly constant in these coming months till the end of the holiday season. Even if it changed the pricing will not change accordingly because most of the retailers might have bought their inventories much before the starting of the holiday season.

On the whole it’s better for you to wait for at least a couple of months now, so that you see discounts and new stocks coming in. Read more on  tips to save for a holiday.