With the Christmas shopping season nearly upon us, we will be out and about, scrambling to buy gifts for loved ones. According to Amar Cheema, assistant professor of marketing at the Olin School of Business, Washington University in St. Louis, it’s also the season when people are mostly likely to buy self-indulgent gifts for themselves.

Christmas sales, rebate offers and easy credit (sometimes with no money down and 0% interest for a specified term) all give the shopper incentives to buy that big ticket item he or she has been longing for. But only 40% of consumers actually send in those rebate forms and easy credit can encourage consumers to spend more than they can afford.

But according to Cheema, these discounts are not as money-saving as they seem and you are often better off waiting until the post-holiday sales when retailers cut prices to reduce inventories to buy yourself that large-screen plasma TV.

Read the article at NEWSWISE