Editor’s Note: This article originally published Dec. 8, 2020. Some information may no longer be up to date.
The COVID-19 pandemic has made many Americans’ lives a ruinous mess and caused 2020 to be a tumultuous year unlike any other, but holiday gift giving will mostly go on as normal, according to the results of our latest holiday money habits survey.
This should be encouraging news. After all, no matter what, it’s going to be a COVID-19 Christmas, or if you prefer, a pandemic Hannukah. The coronavirus has been everywhere this year, lurking around every corner, spoiling family get-togethers and foiling time spent with friends. Why should the holidays be any different?
Still, the next several weeks may not look drastically different than previous Decembers, as far as gift giving is concerned. CardRatings.com asked 1,000 Americans nationwide how they plan to pay for holiday gifts and how the coronavirus has affected their shopping. Seventy-two percent of respondents declare they will spend the same amount of money or more on their holiday shopping this year than in years past.
Of the 72% of shoppers who will spend more or the same amount, the breakdown is as follows:
- 51% of respondents plan to spend about the same
- 21% expect to spend more on holiday shopping
This means that, in spite of high unemployment reports and an arguably fragile economy, only 28% of shoppers will spend less on holiday giving this year.
According to the answers from a battery of questions about how the virus is affecting holiday shopping, there were other findings, including…
How much we’re spending this holiday season
The average total gift amount per person is almost $133 ($132.65, if you’re looking for exact numbers), and on average, consumers are spending almost $710 total. That either reflects how generous we are, or how inflation just keeps creeping up; or maybe a bit of both.
Do we feel pressure to spend beyond our means?
According to the survey, most of us don’t. At least, 73% of respondents said that they don’t feel any pressure to spend more than they have; 27% said that they do. This is an improvement over last year’s results, which found that a third of respondents felt pressure to spend beyond their means.
How we’re paying for holiday shopping
Paying with plastic, in either form, is used equally by consumers.
- 37% of respondents will be using debit cards
- And 37% will be paying with credit cards
Last year’s survey showed that 23% of respondents anticipated opening a new credit card account to help with gift purchases, versus just 14% of respondents who plan to open a new account this year.
Other forms of payment are much less common.
- Only 17% of respondents plan to pay for holiday shopping with cash.
- Showing us how much we’ve turned into a digital society, only 2% plan to pay for gifts using paper checks. (One would think the people paying for gifts with checks are perhaps grandparents giving money to their grandkids, and, indeed, most of the check-giving respondents are in their 60s and 70s, and one person who said they were paying for gifts by check is 93 years old. That said, there were a number of respondents in their 30s and one 20-year-old male who said they were paying for gifts with checks. So checks aren’t dead yet.)
- Lastly, 7% of respondents plan to use gift cards to pay for holiday gift purchases. This suggests possibly a new form of re-gifting, where some people are using gift cards they’ve been given over the year to buy holiday gifts for others. Or it may be even more likely that shoppers are buying gift cards at superma
