Black Friday Shopping
Black Friday-the day the retailers look forward to all year long.
The Friday after Thanksgiving gives all the retailers a chance to celebrate or suffer, as it frequently sets the tone for the holiday’s profits or losses.
Last year saw a drop in holiday spending as the recession took hold, the first drop in years. What does this holiday season of spending look like?
Those of us on the other end of the professional marketers spear, who have to do our best to avoid over-spending during this day are in the cross-hairs. We will be bombarded by advertisements, and recommendations for who has the best prices.
Unfortunately this sort of hype works. Who can forget the video shots of those riots a couple of years ago, where someone was killed by a horde of shoppers.
Enjoy Black Friday
So how do we prevent over-spending, while still enjoying the traditions of shopping on Black Friday?
- Make sure you have a spending limit and stick to it. Maybe carry your money in cash (safely of course), leave credit cards at home-similar to what some gamblers do to keep from over gambling. You can only spend what you take.
- Make sure you have a list with prices of your planned purchases. Part of the fun of this day, so I am told, is the excitement of finding something you were going to buy, at a better price than you had planned to spend!
- To find the best prices, and decide where to shop, do your due diligence. Scan the shopping ads, and do your online research. See this earlier post where I reviewed several coupon sites on the web. See this question at Cash Commons, a great new site for personal finance questions on this subject.
- The best buys are early in the morning-you can’t be everywhere at once-so pick your battles-based on the amount of savings of items you have on your must-buy list.
- Enjoy the company of friends and family, make the day an adventure..
So let us hear from you folks out there, share with us your shopping stories.
Confess your sins if you spent too much-confession is good for the soul.
If you snag a great bargain, it’s ok to brag! Let us know.
Tags: " personal finance for nurses", budget busters, planned spending, saving versus spending
I never shop on “Black Friday”…too crowded. But my problem with Christmas shopping is that I see something that a family member would love, well over my self-set limit, and buy it anyway. It is easier to set limits on myself than to set limits on what I buy for my family. In fact Christmas is ALWAYS where I mess up my finances. I can be pretty frugal otherwise, but I really spend way too much at Christmas…except this year, no gift giving, sniff, sniff…except of course, I have already decided to break the rule made by others and buy my mother something extravagant!
[...] line that suffers if we don’t go out the day after Thanksgiving. We, on the other hand, risk blowing our spending plan for indulgence in frenzy and a New Year’s credit [...]
[...] For those of you shopping, I wrote a post on Black Friday last year-check it out if you need help keeping your spending jones in-check…And this post about [...]