DON’T panic! Panic costs money. And at this time of year it’s easy to panic and spend a fortune. We get caught up in the sudden realisation that shops are going to be shut for – oh, at least a day – and feel we have to rush out to shop for England.

Even if you have Christmas all wrapped up, presents bought and labelled, fridge and freezer groaning it is still quite tricky to remain smugly at home and resist the siren call to spend, spend, spend.

And on what? At this stage of the game you will have long stopped thinking straight and sensibly.

Instead you’ll probably dash out and buy things they don’t need for people who don’t want them with money you haven’t got. Stay at home and have a drink instead. It’s cheaper and more fun.

This year has been a bit different.

In the long run-up to Christmas we have been canny shoppers. We’ve stayed at home and been frugal, using up our leftovers and knitting our own lentils. We made a conscious and national decision not to spend money.

And didn’t it scare the stores?

They were the ones who panicked and were forced to make big reductions to tempt us. And even that didn’t work. Even on days of 25 per cent reductions, stores were busyish, but a long way from manic.

But last weekend we weakened.

We swarmed to the shops and bought plenty of bargains. Excellent. So let’s just quit while we’re ahead.

Don’t leave home without a list.

Only buy what you really want. Resist the temptation to throw in yet another set of flashing antlers, Santa mug or festive car cleaning kit, just because they’re cheap. If you don’t really need them or no one really wants them, then they’re no bargain at all.

And don’t let the sound of Jingle Bells work like a jungle drum to get you to a pitch of spending frenzy.

Figures this week showed that one in ten adults – around a staggering 4.5 million of us – still haven’t paid for last Christmas. What hope is there for a Happy New Year? So don’t let’s make it worse than it need be.

A few years ago, a week before Christmas, I was taken suddenly and dramatically ill. It meant that I was in no fit state to battle round the shops and fling money at all those last-minute essentials. Christmas, I thought, would be ruined.

Not a bit of if it. It made no difference whatsoever.

I think in the end we struggled by, without the cranberry sauce and minus yet another box of After Eights and maybe a few of the sort of stocking fillers that go straight from the stocking to languishing at the back of a drawer, unloved, unnoticed and unremembered before finally getting flung out years later.

The only difference it made was to my purse. I had saved myself a small fortune.

Which is why ever since, apart from the fruit and veg and perishables, I do no shopping in the last week before Christmas. There is absolutely no need. Try it and see.