Winning Strategies for Black Friday
Hello and welcome to Savings Circle. Where we help millennial professionals feel confident about managing their money. I’m your host
Vineet Prasad. In today’s episode, we’re coming up to the holiday season and that also means we’re coming up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday the signature shopping days here in the U.S. and with that, I wanted to share some strategies about what’s worked really well for me and clients I’ve worked with around planning for holiday shopping on Black Friday and avoid getting swept up in the kind of capitalist maelstrom and frenzy that often happens and often leaves people not where they wanted to be in terms of their budget and their finances. So with that, I’ll jump straight into the three tips I have for today
The first tip and this is going to sound really boring and fundamental but it’s super important is to make a list. I have used this approach for most of the holidays I’ve gone through and it really works. Just to create a list beforehand before you go on to any shopping websites of the things that are important for you to buy whether that’s gifts for other people or for yourself. It really helps to avoid a situation where you are going into a store or this Black Friday more likely going online and seeing all these things that the companies want you to buy that you might not necessarily need or even want long term. So making that list can be super helpful I’d also recommend setting a price target there for each item it’s a little it’s very easy when you’re on Amazon’s lightning deal page or something like that to say, “oh that’s a great price”, but if you already have something a the baseline of what you’re looking to pay for things, then you can just check against that and not get swept up.
My second tip is also related to that that the feeling and frenzy around Black Friday and that is to avoid going on the home pages or the kind of central location for the shopping apps. The classic one is the Amazon lighting deals. While that can be super exciting and is definitely set up to help our brains get really stimulated and excited around shopping can be really detrimental in terms of buying a lot of things that you don’t need or don’t want. So I would highly recommend when you have your list going solely based on that searching for those items specifically and not going to the home pages of whatever kind of your favorite brand or online marketplace is because they are very very good they have people that are very experienced in human psychology that is very good at tempting us to just buy things we don’t need and want so I highly recommend avoiding those home pages to keep yourself out of the frenzy.
The third tip I have is to consider buying some of the things on your list used that’s especially a good idea immediately after Black Friday because a a lot of people buy the latest and greatest things say for electronics for example if they’re buying a brand new tv and then they end up wanting to sell their old one. A good place for buying new things there’s, of course, Craigslist I personally really like the Facebook marketplace because you can see someone’s real identity before you meet up with them. A friend of mine has actually done some informal research on this and see that immediately after the new tech products are launched the one-year-old version there’s a big dip in the price and it’s still very you know good the product that you can get a lot of mileage out of I’ve had success with buying things used in the past. It’s also really good better for the environment because instead of something sitting around in the person’s place who bought a new version of this you’re just taking that old version you’re using it, and no more harm to the environment has to happen for creating this new item. I would recommend considering buying used and and and immediately after Black Friday is a good time for that.
Those are my tips for navigating Black Friday this year and managing to come away with the things that you want and need but not end up in a situation where you’re looking back and saying oh that was not great for my budget or my finances so that’s all for today if you enjoyed today’s episode I’d greatly appreciate you leaving a rating or review and if you ever want more tips on savings and personal finance, in general, you can check out my website savingsacademy.com and with that keep saving my friends, keep saving.
