With less than a week to go ?til Christmas Day, the latest Egg research finds that Britain?s last-minute Christmas shoppers could be looking at a ?594 million overspend.
This year nearly four million of us have left our Christmas shopping until this last week before Christmas, and this last-minute panic buying means we?ll be spending more than we intended to.?
According to the Egg poll, the last-minute shopper spends a staggering 39% more than they budgeted.? So with the average Christmas gift bill totalling ?385, this could mean an extra ?150 per late shopper, bringing our bill up to ?535.
Furthermore, the 800,000 of us who are planning to wait until Christmas Eve to buy their presents are four times more likely to buy an unsuitable gift than those who have shopped even two to three weeks ago.? But strangely, our budgets might fair slightly better than those who shopped earlier in the week, with a Christmas Eve shopper experiencing a 25% overspend, or ?96 based on an average present bill of ?385.
With one in 10 Brits being described as a ?really late shopper? it appears that women are as guilty as men.? And regionally the streets to avoid in the week before Christmas are in London (now there?s a surprise), where 16% of shoppers go for the panic buy, closely followed by the North West (14%).