The traditional holiday buying season arrived this month along with tips worth thinking about before you hit the mall or prepare to shop online.

The best advice remains making a gift list and a budget and then adjusting the first to coincide with the second. On larger purchases, it's good to heed speciality advice, including tips from Consumer Reports magazine.

The magazine's December issues repeats common advice that you should generally avoid extended-warranty purchases. And that often makes a lot of sense. You should think about what you are buying, how much it costs, how likely you are to need to get it repaired or replaced.

Consumer Reports maintains that most of the added-cost warranties don't make sense because most major purchases — large-screen TVs, washers, dryers and other high-ticket household appliances — don't break in the first few years anyway. And by the time you get to the prime repair time, the cost of the warranty may exceed or at least equal the cost of just paying for the repair.

These days, many credit cards offer customers an extended warranty just by putting that purchase on your credit card. But you need to check terms and conditions of your card to see if that applies.

And sometimes, expensive household purchases may warrant a warranty. Say, if you're remodeling your kitchen or house and buying several appliances from the same source: a refrigerator, range and dishwasher or a washer-dryer.

If you're planning to keep those appliances for as long as you can, it can be worthwhile checking how long the standard warranty is for and then investigating the cost of bundling several into one extended warranty contract.

I know of several cases where buyers enjoyed the protection of such a warranty when three to five years after some major household purchases, potentially expensive problems started cropping up. Just two or more visits from repair workers who give you the bill you would have paid for $300-plus is enough to cover that warranty cost.

Extended warranties make sense especially for dishwashers and ranges with electronic controls. If a control panel needs to be replaced, it will easily cost several hundred dollars, or more than half of the cost of buying a new appliance in many cases.

But if you are likely to sell the house or upgrade your appliances in less than five years, it's not usually worth the money to buy extra protection you're unlikely to need.

Some companies include a no-additional-fee annual service call for the extended-warranty customers. That can involve inspection for worn belts and clogged filters, and cleaning. Sometimes you may have to pay for parts, but that can extend the life of a major appliance.

Warranty coverage for smaller items — such as a garbage disposal or a boom-box stereo — don't seem to make sense. In those cases, paying extra for protection seems to be betting against yourself. By the time you pay for the warranty, you're halfway to paying the replacement cost for those smaller items.

The November issue notes that some tech-support can be worth its cost. In a review of laptop computers, the magazine gave "quick pick" ranking to Toshiba, Dell, Apple and Lenova models.

Under the Apple assessment, the magazine said the company "consistently offered the best tech support of all brands, but you must pay for it after 90 days." It suggested consumers might consider an extended warranty there.

Reach Robbie Dingeman at rdingeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.