Hey y'all, it's Kyra. This season, we're releasing a special series of bonus episodes

that's all about gifts. So go check out our previous episodes like last week's about great

gifts for kids. Today is the last episode of our series and we're covering last minute gifts. We've all been

there at some point. Life kind of just gets away from you. The year flies by and then suddenly

it's the holiday season and you don't have a gift to give for a particular person. Luckily,

we do have someone on staff to help, Samantha Shea. A senior staff writer on our gifting team, Sam is literally the expert on last minute gifts

because she's the expert on gifts in general.

And she spent almost every day of the past year researching, testing, and hunting for the best gifts of this season.

Hopefully, you'll come away from this episode with items and ideas that will take some of the pressure off.

After the break, Sam is going to talk about all of the best items you've seen this year that will still blow away your loved ones and will be easily available in a time crunch.

Be right back. Today I'm talking with Sam Shay, a senior staff writer on the gifting team. Welcome to the show, Sam. Thanks. It's good to be here. So nice to have you back. And I am definitely happy to be talking to you today because I am one of the biggest culprits of last minute gift giving. What do you think are the most common pitfalls that

you often see people fall into when they realize, like, oh, they're on a time crunch and they

have to get something now? What happens a lot of times is people spend way more than they were

planning on to kind of get something quickly, make up for the fact that they're late, kind of

panic buying. I remember when I was in high school, my dad went out to the mall on Christmas

Eve and bought my stepmother like a mini TV for the kitchen in a crazy panic. It was like

worst gift ever. Actually, their marriage didn't last that long after that. No, but that wasn't why. But it was just like such an obvious panic by. It was like, okay, I'm going to spend a lot of money on something and that'll make up for the fact that I have not thought about this. Yeah. So I think that's probably the most common pitfall. Okay. But that does lead me to my next question, which is should you kind of expect to pay a little bit more just baseline if you are buying last minute?

Because sometimes you have to pay extra for faster shipping or maybe the smaller and less expensive thing that you want it, again, will take too long to get there.

Is that something that you should build into your budget?

And not necessarily. I think the panic buying thing is a trap you can easily fall into or the idea of throwing money at the problem. And, you know, if you have the money to spend, like, go ahead and drop it on it. Super expensive jewelry or electronics or whatever. But we also have a gift guide, for example, of stuff you can buy at the grocery store. That's talking, like, very last minute, like you're on the way somewhere.

But, you know, olive oil or fancy chocolate or fancy spices, a nice bottle of booze,

teens like a box of scratch-off lottery tickets, you know, just last-minute stuff like that.

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