How to Shop on Black Friday, Get the Deals You Want, and Not Go Overboard

November 21, 2007 By Matthew Paulson

Have you ever considered that perhaps the single craziest day of the year, Black Friday, immediately follows one of the most relaxing days of the year, Thanksgiving Day? I guess we need time to relax and prepare before fighting through masses of people at 5:00 AM! On Black Friday, shoppers all across America will flock into their favorite retail stores in hopes of getting amazing deals on Christmas gifts for friends and family. If you don’t plan on sleeping in and enjoying a day off from work and are considering venturing out into the jungle of the retail world this Friday, you have to be prepared. You can get all the deals you want, save a substantial amount of money and not spend more than you were hoping for, but you have to go in with a plan.

The first thing you need to do is establish a budget for your holiday shopping. Take a hard look at your current financial situation and sincerely ask yourself what you can reasonably afford to spend on Black Friday and what you can afford to spend on Christmas presents this year. Don’t be fooled into the myth that you can’t have a good Christmas unless you spend a lot of money on gifts. People remember Christmas because they had some amazing quality time with their family, not because they got some new stuff. Come up with a reasonable amount of money that you can spend on Black Friday and who you all want to buy gifts for.

You will now want to take your Black Friday budget and head online. Google for all of the circulars for each of the major retail stores in your area. These could be big box stores, department stores, electronics stores, or just about any retailer you frequent. A good search might be something like “Best Buy Black Friday Ad” or “Target Circular Black Friday.” Chances are you’ll be able to find a copy of their advertisements if it’s not in your newspaper.

Take the circulars that you have collected and pick out which deals you want to get. Make sure the deals that you want do not exceed your budget. Write your deals down on a piece of paper to bring with yourself the next morning to serve as a checklist. Now take your checklist and prioritize it. Ask yourself if you could only get one of these deals, which would it be? Mark that as number one, and then go down through the list and prioritize them from most important to get to least important to get.

A great idea is to go get cash from the bank or an ATM machine the day before. Take out enough to buy everything that you are planning on getting and nothing more. The day of Black Friday, leave all of your credit and debit cards at home. This will prevent you from getting caught up in the excitement and rush of Black Friday and buying things that you had no intention of buying before walking into the store.

When you get up and out of bed before the crack of dawn on Friday morning, take your list and go to the store that has the deal that you want to get the most, go and get it and move on down your list. If the store is out of the particular deal you want, that’s okay. There are other shopping days in the year besides Black Friday. You can worry about getting a present for that person some other time. Just go down the list and try to get the next deal as quickly an efficiently as possible. Keep shopping until your list runs out or the Black Friday sales are over.

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