Yesterday I discussed different ways to enjoy a frugal Thanksgiving. Now that you’ve got your bases covered for Thursday, what to do about Black Friday?
Black Friday marks a few things:
- The beginning of the Christmas shopping season.
- A day of sales and door busters to promote shopping.
- The name “Black Friday” came to be commonly referred to as the day after Thanksgiving from the Philadelphia cops describing the massive traffic incurred in Center City.
- Most stores do make profits all year round. But there are stores that do rely so heavily on the Christmas shopping season that it is truly when they get “in the black.”
Pretty exciting, eh? Over the past few years, I have developed a Black Friday ritual as follows.
The Week Before
For the week or two before, I will see if there are any deals I am remotely interested in. To do this, I use a few different resources:
A lot of the information is redundant, but the websites are set up a little differently which make each of them useful. I like to use Slick Deals the most because of the thriving community. They will go over all of the deals and say if they are actually good or not.
Slick Deals also discusses alternative deals for people who don’t feel like waiting in line for the BF deal. If you head in to the normal part of the website, you can search for some pretty awesome deals as well. I’ve seen a few alternates posted where the $89 camera is pretty much $105 right now if you use promo codes. For $15, I choose sleep! ;)
The Day Before
I typically have narrowed down my list to a few items, if any. Staples always has good deals on blank CDs, blank DVDs, thumb drives, and paper shredders. I need another thumb drive and my paper shredder has kicked it, so I’ll probably head there this year.
I’m also looking to see if any GREAT digital camera deals exist, because mine has been dead for a year or two. We’ll see.
Once I know where I want to go, I’ll coordinate with a few friends or family members. If I want 3 items from Staples and they want 3 items from Staples, I can get them all. That frees their schedule up to go to another store and get other things they want (plus anything I want). If you do this with enough people, you can scrounge up quite a lot of the deals with minimal effort.
The Catch 22
When I was in high school I found myself going just to go. I didn’t need anything in particular. But once I got to the stores I would pick something up just because everyone was grabbing at the items on the tables. I still have a reel of CDs from a Black Friday a few years ago.
Live and learn.
If you look up the ads and you don’t need anything… Enjoy sleeping in. Seriously.
Alternate Black Fridays
Times are changing. In the past 5 years or so (it seems), online Black Fridays have taken off big time. Instead of having to go into a store, you can just login to the website at whatever time they state and purchase items for discounted prices.
You need to be quick. I’ve seen laptop deals sell out in less than 5 minutes once they start taking orders!
Good Luck!
Happy shopping!
Do you have any pointers or rituals you’d like to share? Do you sleep in or head to the stores at 1am?
I'm MLR. After graduating from college debt free, I decided to write a blog encouraging people to adapt responsible and sensible personal finance rules.
November 24th, 2009 at 10:14 am |
I personally opt for the internet option. I will get up early on Friday, see what I can get over the internet–if there’s nothing interesting, I’ll go back to sleep.
However, I will get up early on Cyber Monday, and hopefully, take advantage of every deal I can find then.
This way, I save my gas, I can eat lunch at home, and most importantly, don’t stand in one line, deal with line unruly customer, or listen to one spiel about an extended warranty that I don’t need.
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November 24th, 2009 at 11:31 am |
Thanks for the tips and links, I don’t actually plan on taking part this Black Friday. Would rather be active and play football than spend on stuff i don’t need.
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November 24th, 2009 at 1:00 pm |
We do a lot of internet shopping, but we’ll hit the mall in the afternoon. Main goal – get 2 year old’s picture taken with Santa. Lines for that aren’t bad on Black Friday.
Kosmo @ The Casual Observer´s last blog ..Bad Coaching
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November 25th, 2009 at 12:52 pm |
This is *the* definitive Black Friday guide, MLR! Thanks for the tips.
Still, I can’t imagine anyone simply enduring the Black Friday madness just to do it – even if they are only in high school. :-)
Happy Thanksgiving!
Len
Len Penzo dot Com
Len Penzo´s last blog ..Talkin’ Turkey: Evaluating My Thanksgiving Dinner Scorecard
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November 28th, 2009 at 3:03 pm |
Glad this post went up, as this was the first year I participated in BF. Although, I can hardly call it participating. I went with my mom, who didn’t want to even wake up until 6:30. So technically, as a teacher who wakes up at 5:00 AM normally, this was actually sleeping in!
I went to Kohls and the local mall. Lines were of course longer than usual, but extra staff made them move pretty quickly. I did save lots of money on some specific items that I needed as gifts (currently, I cannot disclose the names of these gifts as they are going to MLR on x-mas :) In one instance, I saved over 50% on a pricey item!
The main problem was sticking only to what I needed. I’m not someone who spends a lot of money on clothing, but when I do see a good deal I’m awful at passing it by. I planned on getting one pair of boots for me, and then only gifts for others. Instead, on top of the great gifts for others, I also came home with 2 pairs of boots, a dress, and a sweatshirt. All great deals, but none of which I would have bought if I never went.
Conclusion: Not bad if you go in the later hours (i.e. after 6:00 when the lines and throngs of people have calmed down). Need to stick to my gift list better and stop shopping for myself!! Fun in part because I went with my mom.
HerLifeROI´s last blog ..My Black Friday Rituals
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February 11th, 2010 at 1:25 am |
Thanks for this nice article.
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February 11th, 2010 at 10:54 pm |
I was wondering what is up with that weird gravatar??? I know 5am is early and I’m not looking my best at that hour, but I hope I don’t look like this! I might however make that face if I’m asked to do 100 pushups. lol
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