For the past four years, my job has required spending the days and weeks leading up to Black Friday reading through every advertisement and circular. This year, I’m nearly free of that task. Instead of monitoring sales and lightning deals and doorbusters in the early hours on Friday, I get to sleep in. And then, I get to shop.
I often get asked if a particular item will be on sale for the holidays. Sometimes, people will ask me how I shop, since I must know all the deals. But I can’t even pretend to have all the deals memorized; instead, I have a four-step method of researching Black Friday sale prices.
Check BestBlackFriday.com for sales
Instead of visiting every major online retailer that might have a product I’m looking for on sale, I visit BestBlackFriday. If you want to look at a particular store’s Black Friday ad, you can click on products to go directly to that retailer’s product page. If you’re not sure who has the best price, you can search by brand or type of item and it’ll show you retailers offering a sale price. KitchenAid. Beats. iPhone. Laptop. Just type it in to get the lowest prices all on one search results page.
Check Camelcamelcamel to compare Amazon’s pricing
I know that shopping on Amazon is not everyone’s cup of tea, especially with recent concerns about worker safety. But with its competitive pricing, it’s worth taking a look at what Amazon is charging for whatever items are on your list. I visit Camelcamelcamel to do this. I drop in a URL for an Amazon listing to look at price history for the past several months. That helps me catch any ridiculous price inflation that may have sprung up ahead of the holidays.
If I’m feeling noncommittal, I’ll browse through popular products for a broad look at current pricing.
Check Rakuten for rebates
By now I’m pretty sure what item I’m planning to buy, and from which retailer. Now it’s time to check for cash-back offers. To keep things simple, I stick to one cash-back portal: Rakuten. (You might know it by its old name, eBates.)
A cash-back offer for a particular brand doesn’t guarantee that I’ll shop with that retailer. If the price is lower somewhere else, but there’s no rebate available for that other store, I’d rather have the discount up front. I need to be confident that I’ve already found the best price before I check for an additional cash-back offer.
Double check shipping costs
Before I get to the final step of checkout, I make sure I know what it will cost to get the package to my door. This tends to be pretty easy at this time of year since so many stores offer free shipping for the holidays. But I like to know that any shipping cost that’s listed for my order doesn’t completely negate the savings I got from going through the steps above.
That’s it! That’s my entire system for evaluating Black Friday deals when I’m shopping for items on my own list. If you prefer spreadsheets, spreading all the holiday ads out on the floor, or some other method to figure out which deals are best for you this holiday season, by all means, don’t let me stop you. But my four-step method helps me get my shopping done quickly—which keeps me from overspending on the many material temptations of the season.