The festive season is here, which means good wishes, plenty of cheer and quite a bit of spending as you make merry with your loved ones. Doing so with a little bit of smart planning will ensure that you don’t put a strain on your wallet and your personal finances as well.

Nilesh Gupta, managing partner at Vijay Sales, Arvind Singhal, chairman of Technopak Advisers and Kalpesh Ashar of Full Circle Financial Planners shared their views on ways to shopping smart this festive season.

“In consumer durables, the ticket size is very small compared to a large house or a car. A lot of discounts happen, a lot of freebies happen and most important is the equated monthly installment (EMI). Five years back people who were buying on EMI was 30-45 percent, today nearly 70-80 percent people are buying on EMIs. So there is no effect of the so-called downturn,” Gupta said.

Ashar said: “It is for everyone to think that it is their own money and just getting out of focus and doing something because there is a festive season or there is a grand online sale doesn’t add logic to your personal finance. So on those lines, what I would like to state is that, go ahead, do shop but keep certain points in mind and most importantly differentiate between needs and wants.”

“The last three months have been a mixed bag. The July to September quarter has been a cause of concern to many companies in consumer products including consumer durables, there would be some exceptions there," said Singhal.

"So the way I see it is that the current festive season is a make or break season for many companies, many categories of consumption and therefore we will probably see a bit more aggressive promotional effort from variety of companies than we have seen a year ago around the same time," he added.