Black Friday is the day following Thanksgiving Day in the United States, traditionally the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. On this day, most major retailers open extremely early, often at 4 a.m., or earlier, and offer promotional sales to kick off the shopping season.
Most retailers offer incredible deals, often for the first defined number of shoppers or until a specified hour. You can get great deals if you are willing to deal with the hassle and crowds. Many stores have a very limited number of these items at incredible prices, and most people who get up early and wait in line don’t get the items they wanted.
If you decide it’s worth it to you, here are a few tips:
- Decide what you want ahead of time. You can see the ads for most stores online. See BlackFriday.com and BlackFriday.GottaDeal.com. Also follow @blackfriday on Twitter.
- Map out your route. If you’re going to multiple stores, prioritize your trips because chances are that you won’t make it to all the stores you want because of the crowds.
Don’t want to fight the crowds during Black Friday? Then shop online on Cyber Monday and you may save even more!
Some of the information from this article was summarized from “Score big on Black Friday,” in the Consumer Reports’ magazine ShopSmart.
