January sales in November - ACT NOW...

...if you have the cash available!

I get the feeling that this week, was the week the wheels came off the bus. Instead of talking tax cuts, suddenly there was talk of tax increasing. Instead of talking going into recession, it was as if the shutters came down on the high street. The big retailers have their tin hats on, bracing themselves for a rubbish Christmas. Woolworth's looks like it won’t even be sold for a pound, and is fighting off liquidation. The American car giants suddenly looked very small and of course, just to compound matters I had a cold.

The big news this week is retail - January sales have been brought forward to November to try to give the flagging stores a shot in the arm pre Christmas. I have to say that I am a tad cynical about the timing of these sales for the following reasons. Its all about timing. Who, in a downturn, has enough cash to go and spank it up the wall at Marks and Spencers on a Thursday night on the 20th in the month? If you are paid monthly you tend to be paid towards the end of the month. If you are paid weekly, then you tend to get paid on a Friday. The timing really struck me as odd on this. Almost as if they wanted to capitalise on the publicity but not too much. Hmmmm, not just a piss take, an M & S piss take.

Waitrose have half price Christmas nibbles. Waitrose! And hang on Christmas nibbles, IE party food, in November? Unless you are going for a St Andrews day spectacular then surely it would not be the most productive buy.

Debenhams – slightly better, a three day spectacular this weekend. Still before the majority of monthly peeps get paid but those on a weekly wage might have been able to capitalise.

Looking through the Times newspaper yesterday the adverts for 20%, 30%,40%, 50% off read like a roll call of the high street. It all makes me rather glum as I can’t spend a penny on Christmas until next Friday, that is when I get paid – will anything be going on then?

Well, one thing that came to my attention was the 40% Threshers offer. Now Threshers have got it dead right, this offer goes on until 2nd December, and it is all Wine and Champagne. Come Friday one of my things on the list is to bolt to Threshers get 6 bottles of decent wine and that will be my “thank you for inviting me to your party” present when I turn up at someone’s do. Go to http://www.thedreamoffer.com/ for the voucher.

Another tip on that note – plan your shopping before you leave the house. Don’t just graze round the stores at your local out of town supermall and come back with a load of crap of Christmas. Be a bit inventive and type things like “GAP voucher” or “M&S discounts” into google and you’d be surprised what you might find.

Want another tip? – god, I’m on fire today! – that’s what comes of no sleep and three pots of coffee. Try http://www.moneyoffvouchers.com/ and http://www.myvouchercodes.co.uk/ for good measure. Personally I wouldn’t even leave the house to shop this Christmas, do it all online and save yourself the hassle of trying to compete for pavement space with some militant mum ramming a buggy up your heals or Italian tourist flaunting the Euro/Pound exchange rate by walking as slow as they possibly can in front of you on Oxford Street. No thanks – a glass of wine, cut price wine at that, and a PC and a debit card is all you need to get it sorted.

How about another one? Lord, I really have eaten my weetabix today - before you buy anything electrical or generic to most stores do a price run on it. http://www.kelkoo.co.uk/ is good, as is http://www.pricerunner.co.uk/ They are worth using if you want to make sure you are shopping around without actually doing any of the hard work.
And with that, I’m going to go and research the Christmas presents I need to buy so I can line them up for payday!