Each week the New Zealand Herald and Newstalk ZB's Cooking The Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's how to handle the notorious Boxing Day sales. Hosted by Frances Cook.

Everyone loves to grab a bargain, but the problem is that shops know that.

We're in an expensive time of year, but once you've cleared up the barbeque and polished off the Christmas cake, many people will then turn their attention to spending all of that Christmas money on the Boxing Day sales.

Boxing Day is one of the most heavily discounted days of the year for New Zealand.

It's also a top day for spending, but what really brings the craziness, is that people all turn up at once, right at the beginning of the day. Nobody wants to be the schmuck who only just misses out on the last of the heavily discounted stock.

But in all the excitement, it's easy to lose your head. If you buy rubbish you don't need, it doesn't matter how good the bargain was. It's still rubbish you didn't need.

I called up Sue Chetwin, chief executive of Consumer NZ, to find out how can you take advantage of the sales without the shops taking advantage of you.

We talked about how to create a strategy for what you need, avoiding losing your head in the excitement, and the way to make sure you don't end up hating your loved ones.

For the interview, listen to the podcast.

If you have any questions about this podcast, or something you'd like me to look into in the future, get in touch. You can find me on Facebook here https://www.facebook.com/FrancesCookJournalist/ and Twitter here https://twitter.com/FrancesCook .