How to Survive Black Friday Shopping with Your Sanity Intact

With the Thanksgiving holiday fast approaching, it also means Black Friday, the unofficial first day of Christmas shopping, is quickly on its way. There will be Black Friday shopping deals at every store that cares to stay afloat this holiday season. If you follow these tips, you will escape Black Friday with some great deals... and your sanity.

Pre-Plan Your Black Friday
Planning out your Black Friday route is the most essential technique for maximizing your Black Friday thrift. The best aid in your Black Friday quest comes in the form of the annual SlickDeals.net Black Friday Excel spreadsheet. On the SlickDeals Black Friday spreadsheet, there is a list of all the advertised items that will be on sale on Black Friday, including the door-busters. Additionally, the Black Friday spreadsheet lists each store's opening time. The Black Friday section of SlickDeals typically arrives every year in November, and the Excel spreadsheet grows from there.

Kohl's, for example, opens annually in the middle of the night, which means you can get their Black Friday door-busters, quickly get whatever you came to buy, and head on over to another door-buster at Walmart or Target. Remember that you are limited to only a few brick-and-mortar stores, because of the synchronicity of opening times.

Arriving one hour past a store's opening, you will likely discover the advertised specials are out-of-stock, and lines snaking around the store. Standing in an hour-long line to save ten dollars is not the sanest way to spend your Black Friday.

Another great way to use the spreadsheet is to plan out your shopping list. Black Friday deals are used by retail stores as bait to get you into the store, lose your memory, and start impulse shopping. If you have a clear idea of what to shop for, only buy those items on sale. Never go into a Black Friday store without a plan.

Take A Friend Along
Friends are a great way to hack the Black Friday system. If you arrive in a store with an already enormous line, have the friend stand in line for you as one of you gathers the items on both lists. The line might even be huge enough that there's time for both of you to go shopping out on your own while one of you stands at home base. Just be prepared for some mean looks from people behind you.

Spend Black Friday Shopping Online
Online retail has its own version of Black Friday, for those shoppers who don't want to risk getting trampled at Walmart or have a Thanksgiving hangover. The thing about online shopping on Black Friday is the deals aren't as likely to be advertised beforehand. Additionally, there are better deals in general to be had at brick-and-mortar stores, but popular online retailers like Borders, Amazon, and eBay have a full slate of Black Friday deals.

The online retail world usually keeps its best deals for Cyber Monday, but the big online retailers understand that not everybody likes to shop amongst stampeding herds.