Black Friday shopping tips

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The Friday after Thanksgiving has served as the unofficial beginning of the traditional Christmas season since the start of the modern Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924. But the term "Black Friday" has been traced back only to the 1960s, having originated in Philadelphia in reference to the heavy traffic on that day. More recently, merchants and the media have used it instead to refer to the beginning of the period in which retailers are in the black or turning a profit. The news media frequently refer to Black Friday as the busiest shopping day of the year in the US.

While Black Friday is not an official holiday, many employees take the day off, which increases the number of potential shoppers. Weeks beforehand, most stores decorate for the Christmas season and stock up on merchandise. Many retailers open very early (typically 5am or even earlier) and offer blockbuster deals to attract people to their stores. In many cities, shoppers line up hours before stores with big promotions open.

Once inside the stores, shopping hysteria attacks as shoppers rush and grab the few on-sale items, such as electronics and popular toys, often offered at huge discounts.

The shoulder-to-shoulder crowds, long lines and parking lots filled to the brim are only some of the challenges that face shoppers this coming Black Friday. I asked some of my friends to share their shopping tips and strategies to make the chore pleasant and effective. Together with other information from the Internet, I've come up with a collection of helpful shopping advice, good not only for Black Friday, but also for the rest of the holiday season.

1. Santa's advice: make a list. The old Christmas jingle about Santa Claus making a list and checking it twice is still the best perennial piece of advice for shoppers. Write down the people you have to buy gifts for, their sizes and preferences, and possible ideas on what to give them. Based on the list, write which stores you'll visit and which gifts you plan to buy in each store. This will help focus your shopping excursion and help you save money as you avoid rushing from one store to another, buying "bargains" that usually turn out inappropriate for any of the people in your life.

2. Our finance manager's advice: pay cash. You tend to overspend and max out your credit cards when you shop with plastic. One radio talk show host once shared her holiday shopping plan of attack: "I always pays in cash, preferably $100 bills. It makes you think twice when you go to buy something. You really don't want to break a Benjamin." One good thing about shopping with cash is knowing that when you're out of money, you're really out of money. So, you shop more wisely and hang on to more green.

3. My brother's tip: if you have to use credit cards, use the one with the best terms and plan for paying off your bills as early as possible. Do you know that many people carry as many as five bank cards in their wallets and don't always know what the interest rate is on each card? Nor do they know that if they exceed their credit limit or pay late, their rate could jump to 30% or higher, and they could be slapped with a penalty as high as $39.

Watch out for the traps like the two-cycle billing, in which card issuers charge interest on balances you've already paid. In a recent study of credit-card companies by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), one-third of those surveyed use this billing method, which works like this: Assume that you start a billing cycle with a zero balance and charge $1,000 on the credit card (not unusual for holiday shoppers). You make a timely payment of $990, and expect to pay interest on the remaining $10. Instead, you're charged interest on the full $1,000. Even though you owed the credit card company only $10 for 30 days or less, the interest charge in this example from the GAO was $11.02.

So, if you're going to pay by credit card, use the one with the most favorable terms.

And as much as possible, pay your balance in full or plan on paying it all by Valentine's Day at the latest.

4. My bookkeeper friend's tip: Keep a running total of your spending. After a shopping excursion, immediately write down everything you've spent so far. It gives you a visual record of how much your holiday shopping is affecting your finances. If you used a credit card, automatically subtract what you've spent from your bank account balance. This ensures that you'll have enough money in the account to pay the bill when it arrives.

5. My artistic daughter's strategy: Be creative. Think outside the gift box. Instead of buying a single gift for every person, you can think of a single family gift, which everyone can enjoy. There are plenty of alternatives that are less expensive and more fun, than buying a gift for every sibling, in-law, niece, nephew and cousin. For example, offer your services as a free babysitter for three nights to your stressed sister and her husband, redeemable within the next three months. The best gifts don't cost money.

5. My sister-in-law's advice: Shop online. No shopping is worth more than your sanity. That's my sister-in-law's philosophy. So, for those who don't like jostling with crowds, waiting in mile-long lines, parking streets away and walking in the cold, avoid the stores and shop on the Internet. You can even do it during lunch break!

6. A wise man's tip: Keep the change! I read about a shopper who bent down to pick up a dime from the floor. A gentleman standing next to her struck up a conversation. He told her he always picks up coins (even pennies) and tosses them into a big jar, along with the change from his pockets every day. That's the money he uses to buy his holiday gifts—and every year it adds up to between $900 and $1,100. Wow! Start counting those pennies!

7. My cousin's advice: Be patient and be gracious. When shopping hysteria comes into a store, especially during Black Friday, tempers flare and nerves are so easily irritated. It's time to practice your patience and graciousness as you take your place in looooong lines, as salespeople snub you or give you the cold treatment, as cards are declined because the phone lines to the credit card authorization center are jammed, and as another careless driver steals your parking space. These things happen every holiday season. The stress is on, and we all need to be patient. (www.asianjournal.com)

(Published November 21, 2008 p.sf3 NC)

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