Lunchtime today is the highest-spending hour of the year

If you go down to the shops today… don’t do it between 1pm and 2pm

Failing to prepare is preparing to fail, so they say.

But perhaps that’s a little unhelpful.

After all, most of us will have a few last-minute bits and bobs to pick up on our lunch-breaks today ahead of Christmas.

So many of us, in fact, that the hour between 1pm and 2pm today (Tuesday 23 December) is set to be the highest-spending shopping hour of the entire year, according to Visa.

Visa is forecasting that UK consumers will splurge almost £1m (£916,667) every minute on their credit and debit cards during lunchbreak today.

Visa reckons that we will spend £1.3bn on retail purchases in total today.

That’s significantly more than the £810m that UK shoppers spent online on Black Friday, according to figures from Experian and IMRG, or the estimated £720m on Cyber Monday.

Today’s last-minute land-grabs for sprouts and stocking-fillers will also add up to more than “Panic Saturday” over the weekend, when we spent an estimated £1.2bn.

Completely crackers.