Experts share tips for savings and safety during holiday shopping season

Ahead of Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday and the rest of the holiday shopping season, West Virginia University experts are offering advice to shoppers with gifts to buy.

Members of the WVU Extension Financial Literacy Education Team — Elizabeth Metheny, Jennifer Friend and Lauren Weatherford — are suggesting the best ways to make it through shopping holidays with all the gifts you’re looking for while saving money and protecting your financial information.

Quotes:

“Planning for your Black Friday in-store shopping is easier today than ever before now. Planning is also a crucial part of getting the best savings during Black Friday sales. Stores now offer sale extensions, online ordering for pickup, hard copy and digital product ads and maps that show item locations.

“The first step is determining what items you would like to purchase. Once you have made your list, compare advertisements from different stores to determine which store offers the best price, then create a map of which stores you will go to throughout the day. Having a plan not only saves you time and energy, but also reduces the temptation of impulse buying and ensures you get the best deals possible for the items you actually want.

“Paying attention to prices before the holiday season can also save you money while shopping during sales. Having an idea of the regular price of an item will help you determine if the sale price is worth rushing to purchase. Many retail sites allow you to save items ‘to watch,’ which tracks the price of items over time. Retailers raising the price of items prior to big sale events give the illusion of savings without saving you any money. This may convince you to purchase an item for the sale, not the need.” — Elizabeth Metheny, associate professor and Financial Literacy Education Team member, WVU Extension

“Try giving gifts from local businesses this holiday season, which supports your local community while also saving you money along the way. Small Business Saturday is a great time to visit the local shops in your area.

“When you purchase an item from a local business, your dollars are going to stay local. Small businesses are more likely to support other local businesses and causes, such as youth sports or schools. Small businesses also support the local economy by creating more jobs and hiring those within their community, and increase the ‘feel good’ experience of holiday gifting by providing unique, personal touches to your gifts.

“To find out what small businesses are in your area, take a drive or a walk through downtown or other commercial areas and look for new and unique storefronts. Social media also is a great resource to find local shops. By simply searching the name of the product you’re looking for in your favorite social media app, you can easily find places in your area that carry it. You also can try searching e-commerce sites by entering your city or state to find other small businesses in your area that may not have a brick-and-mortar store.” — Jennifer Friend, Extension instructor and Financial Literacy Education Team member, WVU Extension

“While online shopping is convenient and you can find great deals on Cyber Monday, it’s important to ensure that you’re staying safe while online shopping and avoiding scams. One easy way to do this is to only shop from reputable sites. Spelling errors, improper grammar and anything that just looks off are all telltale signs of scam sites. If you’re not sure if a site is safe, it’s better to err on the side of caution.

“One way to end up on a scam website is to visit links from social media or your email with a deal that seems too good to be true. Visit that website directly, not through a link that was sent to you, and if you don’t see that sale on the main website, it doesn’t exist. To verify a website’s credibility, look for https:// at the start of the URL and a small, locked padlock icon to the left of that. This means that it’s a secure site that has been verified.

“When buying online, always check reviews for the product and the seller. If you buy from a seller with zero reviews, there is no way to verify the product’s quality. Weigh the good and bad reviews against one another, remembering what factors are important to you.” — Lauren Weatherford, associate professor and Financial Literacy Education Team member, WVU Extension

Find additional financial literacy resources.