Black Friday 2008

Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year. Many stores hold "early bird" sales with "door busters" being a big incentive to get you to their store first. Typically the ads for Black Friday Sales can be found in the Wednesday paper before Thanksgiving. We can then decide which store we want to hit first to make it in time to get the best savings from early bird sales.

Often times we just glance at the papers before deciding which store we are going to visit first. We may choose because of location or just because it is the store we visit first each year. Thanksgiving can already be a hectic time and we may not have the time or energy to put a lot of time deciding which store may provide us with the best savings.

Wouldn't it be great if we knew in advance which stores were offering the best deals? This year there are quite a few websites that already have ads for Black Friday Sales. We can't be completely sure that the ads will be accurate when the sale hits, but what will it hurt to do a little planning? How do we know where to go to find the ads?

After browsing around several sites that have ads listed, I think www,blackfriday.info is the most useful site that offers some early Black Friday ads. You can look at ads from stores such as Sears, Harbor Freight, Office Max, Toys R Us, Walgreens, and ACE Hardware. You can choose to get email alerts when other ads become available. This site also allows you to put together a shopping list from the various ads.

You may want to check out the site right away because some of the ads have already been pulled. According to the site, Big Lots has already requested that their ads be pulled from the site. So, that is already one less store that you look at.

Sears, it seems, will be having some good sales. The "door buster" sales are marked with an asterisk. Some featured items are MP3 players, jewelry, home theater equipment, toys, craftsman tools, clothing, tires, DVD player, televisions, and video game systems. There are items you can buy for anyone. If nothing else you will get an idea of where to start. We all know how Black Friday shopping is. The crowds are large and vicious. The lines are long. By the time you get out of one store, you may have missed the best sales at another. Planning ahead can save you some cash and make Christmas a little less stressful at a time when money is pretty tight.

Another site you might want to check out is www.theblackfriday.com/bestbuy_blackfriday.shtml. Here you can find details on how a 250 word description of your Black Friday traditions could win you $1000 in Best Buy merchandise, VIP treatment, and a camcorder from Best Buy. What would you buy with $1000 from Best Buy? I think I'd have a hard time deciding but I am sure I could come up with something.