Five Holiday Shopping Tips, Black Friday Edition
Welcome to Saving Money with Andrew!
Happy Thanksgiving from SMwA! This special issue comes on Black Friday, with SMwA resuming its normal schedule on Monday, December 6th.
Some of my most memorable money-saving wins come from Black Friday (in past years, I’ve found incredible deals on robot vacuums and other electronics), but the special day is fraught with pitfalls and chances to overspend. Five useful tips:
Don’t Miss The Giveaways: Every Black Friday, there are generally at least 1-3 no-brainer deals, like discounted gift cards or promo codes to stores where you routinely shop. For example, Amazon commonly offers a deal in which placing a $10+ order on Black Friday will get you a $5 or $10 promo code usable on a future order. One good way to follow these deals is to skim through Slickdeals sometime during the day on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and also to take a look at Wirecutter’s Black Friday coverage. Don’t miss these.
Always Use Cashback: Always, always, always use cashback when shopping on Black Friday (or any day of the year). If you don’t know where to start, my Cashback Guide is a good place. I’ve saved over $2,000 this way by just adding one extra click each time I shop online.
Always Use Coupons: Coupons are less common in online shopping than they used to be, but it is always worth checking a site like RetailMeNot for coupon codes before placing an order.[1]
Make Sure You’re Really Getting A Deal: Unless you follow prices closely, it can be hard to determine whether your Black Friday deal is a good one. CamelCamelCamel is a cool website that lets you look up the Amazon price history for most items and see whether the deal you’re getting is a good one, or whether the retailer raised the price in advance of Black Friday to make it look like they are offering a deep discount.
Don’t Buy What You Don’t Need: This one is obvious, but it is easy to get caught up in the savings and buy stuff you don’t need. We’ve all been there.
And now…Andrew’s pick(s) of the week:
I enjoyed this article about the economics of Broadway plays and musicals. The majority of shows fail to recoup their investors’ money, a handful are great hits, and the real winners are the three businesses that own over three-quarters of Broadway theaters.
I hope this has been helpful. If you liked it, please share it on social media! Also, please send me your feedback, requests, and success stories.
[1] Note that Amazon, Walmart, and most of the major online retailers typically offer very few coupon codes, but they are much more common with smaller businesses. Also, clicking through RetailMeNot to another website can jeopardize your cashback (if you are using a cashback site as well), so I like to open RetailMeNot in another browser or an incognito tab in Chrome when I am looking up coupon codes.