How to Shop Smart on Black Friday (and Cyber Monday)
“While everything you see offline will be available online, it can be a lot more difficult to get
one of the truly rare deals online than if you’re first in line and guaranteed to get it.”
“The only place you should line up on Thanksgiving afternoon is on the line of scrimmage for a family football game,” Mr. McAllister said.
While it doesn’t find discounts for you or make sure you’re getting the best price, it does go
that extra mile to save you a little cash before you click “purchase.”
The downside to tools like these is that they require extensive information about where you’re shopping and what you’re buying in order to work.
Most people, myself included, tend to procrastinate on this,
but if you have a good sense of the things you want to buy for the holidays, Black Friday is a great chance to knock them out early while saving money,” said Shep McAllister, editor of Kinja Deals, a site that also tracks deals around the web.
For others, shopping at home — or not at all, as in the Buy Nothing Day campaign — is a pleasant alternative to
encouraging stores to force retail workers to work on Black Friday or even as early as Thanksgiving afternoon.
“Last year, we saw a decent amount of products drop to their Black Friday prices a couple weeks ahead
of time, so you can save yourself a lot of hassle if you start watching deals early,” he said.
“Last year, we saw a tremendous growth in retailers starting their deals Thursday — as in, we posted
almost as many deals Thursday as we did Friday, and a similar amount on Monday,” he said.