According to a survey conducted by CEC Bank in partnership with banking comparator FinZoom.ro, more than 40% of Romanians say they will spend less during the winter holidays than last year.

When asked, “Compared to last year, do you think you will spend more or less on the holidays this year,” more than 40% of respondents said they would spend 10%-30% less. At the same time, about 27% claim that they will spend the same amount of money as last year. Only 23% of respondents claim that they will spend more on the holidays than last year, and more than 9% are undecided about the amounts they will allocate for this period.

Regarding the allocated budget, 30.5% of the respondents say that it will be between 500 and 1000 lei, while a quarter of the respondents will spend less than 500 lei. About 20% of respondents will spend amounts from 1,000 to 1,500 lei and only a smaller percentage of respondents allocated larger amounts.

For more than half of the respondents, the main expenses for the holidays will be on food, for 42% of respondents – gifts, and only less than 5% will allocate most of the money for the holidays. But even the main expenditure category, food, has a budget of less than 600 lei for 70% of respondents.

For other categories of holiday expenses, almost 50% of respondents will allocate less than 300 lei, more than 31% will allocate from 300 to 600 lei, about 13% from 600 to 1200 lei and slightly more than 5% will allocate amounts over 1200 lei.