By the time you read this, I’m hoping it will have snowed. At least that is what the weather channel says. Putting it into perspective, I’m writing this a week in advance with the thought that Americans will have celebrated Thanksgiving the day before and it is currently Black Friday. Happy Thanksgiving weekend, y’all.
For today’s Freedom Friday, let’s have a look at shopping on Black Friday. Is it worth it?
In recent years, Canada has played host to Black Friday deals offered to Americans. That’s how I had purchased my new laptop last year. I managed to pick up one of those fancy IPS touch screen laptops. It’s a beautiful machine, fully loaded and made to last. Only, you wouldn’t have found me lining up in front of the store. Shortly after midnight, when the online specials had gone live, so did the thrifty shoppers with their clickers. I was one of them. I’d saved $200 on that deal alone. The next weeks leading up to Christmas, that same laptop had gone back up to the regular price.
Worth it? Definitely.
In 2010, as part of a promotional deal, an unknown site was raffling off several Apple iPod touch at half-price. To give you an idea how it worked, a shopper had to click an “I want one” button, fill in their credit card details in the form, and submit. The site had only 70 devices available, displaying also the amount of shoppers wanting one. The odds? 1,200 to 70. You guessed it. I won the chance to purchase the device at half-price. I saved $160. At the time, it was the best Christmas ever.
I’m also a finicky buyer when it comes to headphones. My ears are important to me, and how I feed them is equally important. Being a Tinnitus sufferer—that’s ringing in the ears to all you folks who are wondering—I make sure when I purchase headphones or earbuds that they are of the highest quality. Anyway, one year I’d wandered into the Best Buy in town to see what deals they had to offer in the audio department. I wasn’t expecting much. I figured everyone had already picked over the spoil. But to my surprise I found a top-of-the-line pair of Sennheiser earbuds stuck behind the cheapies stock on the shelf. I’m assuming someone had placed them there for safekeeping until such a time when they could come back and purchase them. Total savings for that purchase was $200.
There are other deals. Like the $250 my kid saved last year for his very first laptop, the $75 for my first Apple iPod classic in 2007, and the $90 for my second Apple iPod classic in 2009.
Adding it all up makes for quite a chunk of change. Is Black Friday worth it? I don’t know. You do the math and tell me what you think?
Do you shop on Black Friday? What did you pick up that made the day special?
Looking to God 