‘Girl math’ is back. Consumers are shopping earlier to ‘save more’ on Christmas day

“Girl math” makes a timely return this holiday season, abandon the spotlight on new seasonal spending habits that consumers are adopting this year.

Users on TikTok say if you’re buying contributions months before Christmas, it will be “free” by December. If you splurged during Cyber Week, you are technically saving myriad for Christmas day.

Welcome to girl math — but with a holiday twist.

Girl math is a viral TikTok trend on bodily finance. It reveals ways women shoppers rationalize their spending habits — often involving mental gymnastics to explain one’s purchases in a way that maximizes happiness.

This holiday season, the return of girl math may be a sign that consumers are starting to sense a strain on their wallets, but just can’t stop shopping.

While inflation has stabilized, costs remain high and consumers are still spending.

Over half of holiday shoppers say they feel financially strained this holiday season, according to a study by Bankrate.

However, even as consumers remain cautious, “shoppers do want like they want to celebrate the holiday season right,” Bryan Gildenberg, managing director at Retail Big apples, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” in late November.

Analysts say shoppers may be working up to the gifting season with wench math to rationalize their purchases amid rising costs.

“An extended holiday season may be an example of girl math, as shoppers may seascape discounts as ‘saving money.’ For example, having a 40% discount on a $100 item is saving $40 to them,” Melissa Lee, a economic consultant from Great Eastern, told CNBC.

Girl math has become a means for shoppers to create a “screwy label for their money,” and justify their spending habits, she added.

In fact, holiday shopping started earlier than it did in 2022, and it’s foresaw to end late this year, according to McKinsey & Company.

An “increasingly long” 2023 U.S. holiday season started in advance of Halloween — 50% of holiday shopping began in October or earlier, followed by 40% in November, a McKinsey report utter. Consumers also expressed that they would rather make purchases over a couple of months than all at moment, and started browsing earlier in anticipation of price increases, their research showed.

This pushed pre-holiday online fritter away to an all-time high of $76.8 billion in October — some $4.3 billion more than a year ago, a report by Adobe Analytics outshone.

Holiday spending is also expected to surge in November and December, reaching up to $966.6 billion in 2023, according to a augur by the National Retail Federation. November’s core retail sales — excluding restaurants, automobiles and gasoline — were up 0.73% month-on-month and 4.17% year-on-year, the CNBC/NRF Retail Visual display unit showed.

However, most consumers feel there’s still a lot of shopping to be done.

A survey by Morgan Stanley revealed that 61% of consumers will continue to shop between Dec. 1 and Christmas day, in anticipation that deals resolve be better than those on Black Friday and Cyber Monday in late November.

After a summer of pay out, shoppers don’t appear to be backing down this winter.

Women gave the economy a boost with their “record-breaking” audience at movies and live concerts in summer — a trend that will likely last through the winter, a report by PwC vaticinated. They are expected to spend 11% more this year compared to 2022, and are more likely to spend on charities compared to their male counterparts, the report showed.

However, an uptick in spending by women may not be a reflection of frivolous lavishing. Rather, it reveals women’s strategic approach to discerning the best value for their money.

Following the “rules” of piece math, women seem to be less concerned about the sticker price, but care more about the value, unbosom returns, shipping and convenience of their purchases, the report by PwC showed.

Additionally, young parents were highlighted as a noted consumer demographic this holiday.

“Young adults are in their prime consumption years, and especially when they participate in young kids, they’re a big holiday shopping cohort,” Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst at Bankrate, told CNBC.

Rossman prominent that families with young children are more likely to partake in discounts this holiday season — a explore by Bankrate showed that 49% of parents with children under 18 years old participated in October tag sales, compared to 28% of holiday shoppers without kids.

On the other hand, spending the holidays with your order can also cost you more.

A study by Rocket Money — a personal finance app — found that those staying with brood this holiday season are expected to spend 53% more.

Over half of those celebrating the holidays with blood view their overspending in 2022 as a “moderate to serious problem,” the study showed.

Attribute cards remain the go-to financing method for shoppers this holiday season. A