Are All Black Friday Deals Fake?

<div class="user-question">Hey Frich! I've heard that a lot of the Black Friday deals are fake. Is this true? And how can we best navigate this?</div>

No worries my fellow Deal-seeking friend, I’ve got you. I spend a lot of my time questioning if I should be buying something that’s a big-ticket item. And honestly it’s almost more so near the holidays, when I feel like I’m legitimately hemorrhaging money.

Let’s prep ourselves first: when I do come up on a “Want” vs. “Need,” I start building a list in my phone of everything I “Want.” I then pick stuff out that I like and force myself to wait at least a week to see if I still want it. More often than not, I decide I don’t want it and can hold off for at least another week.

Eventually I started taking items off, or adding them to a separate “Black Friday” list. Aside from coaching myself out of some fairly expensive (and unworthy) buys, I learned quite a bit about what goes on sale vs. what doesn’t - and what gets labeled as a “sale” even when it isn’t in reality. This all to say, here’s how to figure out what’s on sale vs. what’s not.

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🛍️ The Foundation: Where to Go!

Keep in mind a lot of boutiques and custom stores will have a much harder time offering large discounts because they don’t have the scale to offer large and deep discounts without losing significant amounts of their revenue.

Stores like Best Buy, Walmart, Target, Amazon, and Macy’s will offer significantly larger discounts on the majority of their goods. If you’re looking to redo your wardrobe or build out your kitchen with some cool new accessories, those stores are your best bet.

Additionally, certain big-ticket items like televisions, espresso machines, and home electronics will only have deep discounts if you go in to the store physically. If you have the energy and determination to snag those insane deals (I once waited overnight at a Best Buy and grabbed a 50” TV for $100), I encourage you to do so.

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🛍️ Next: Where to Check on Deals

Once you’ve determined where you want to get your purchases, there are a few places you can go to cross-reference if the deal is worthwhile. Here’s a handy list of places you can check to get your deal validated:

1️⃣ Amazon: camelcamelcamel

This website tracks historical prices on Amazon, and if you copy and paste the website link to the product you are contemplating buying, it will share the historical price and show you if it’s still a deal.

2️⃣ Online Retailers: PriceSpider

This website allows you to search for and compare different shops and similar products simultaneously online.

3️⃣ Any Online Retailer: Honey

This is a browser extension that will automatically seek and provide coupons and discounts it finds available as you shop online.

4️⃣ Specific Deals you are seeking online: Visualping

This browser tool allows you to monitor specific product websites and pings you when there’s a price change.

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🛍️ Finally: How to Get to Shopping!

Here’s my process for how I prep myself before Black Friday:

1️⃣ Set a budget of how much you’re capable of spending. Review how much you’ve saved over the last 3-6 months and decide on an amount that’s both fair and doesn’t crush your long term savings goals.

Here's what I'm going to do: Based on how much my household spends and saves, we set a spend budget for ourselves that is both under our savings rate and makes me mildly disappointed in how much we can spend (which even though annoying is always my trigger for knowing I’m spending the right amount).

<div class="frich-tip">Put this money in a HYSA so it earns interest during the year leading up to Black Friday!</div>

2️⃣ Go through my list of items that I’ve earmarked for the occasion and select where I’d like to buy from / if there are overlaps in stores that might give me a bigger discount if I shop for them all at once.

Here's what I'm going to do: This year, I’m looking for a new espresso machine, and some patio furniture. I pared down my patio furniture list since I have a feeling I’m going to overextend myself over my budget.

3️⃣ Bookmark websites, track them on the above links, and make sure you’ve scouted the opportunity if you’re going to go to a store in-person.

Here's what I'm going to do: I take deep dives online typically, although the espresso machine I love is likely to be on sale at my favorite kitchen appliance store, so I may be making an (8am) trek over to shop in-person this year.

4️⃣ Get to shopping! I set alarms for whatever times I need to buy things and execute promptly online or make sure I have a little extra time if I’m going in-person to figure out parking. Nothing sucks more than showing up at a store only to find out you’re 20 minutes later than anticipated and the item is sold out.

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🛍️ Pro tips

If you end up having some spare time, here are some pro tips:

🌟 Some of your favorite investing platforms usually have sign-up bonuses and extra perks that tend to start around the holidays.

<div class="frich-tip">Frich recommendation: crack open your investment and banking apps to see if that pertains to any you are using for your own personal funds. Acorns often has good offers!</div>

🌟 Same goes with services that you subscribe to. Check out your favorite streamers, fitness apps, cooking blogs and check if they have any Black Friday discounts.

<div class="frich-tip">Frich recommendation: while you're doing this, make sure to check out RocketMoney to cancel any unnecessary subscriptions you still have. There's no better Black Friday hack than canceling annual subscriptions!</div>

🌟 Earn some extra cash from the year's biggest shopping day! Sign up for programs that offer affiliate links, and share these with your friends. You can even just use this link yourself, to secure an extra discount.

<div class="frich-tip">Frich recommendation: our favorite platform to do this is Kubyo!</div>

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Btw - here's how others are doing👀

Do you regret anything you've bought during Black Friday sales already?

😬17% Yes...

👏83% No!

I’m neglecting to mention something here, but it’s that this also doesn’t have to be a totally planned thing.

One of my favorite memories growing up was waking my parents up to drag them to the store so we could go shopping together. They always got me a little to-go cup of my favorite smoothie, and we’d spend more time window shopping than actual shopping… But it was something fun, energizing, and had incredible people watching if you do it right.

In the scenario that you don’t really have anything you want or need and enjoy being around others, Black Friday is usually the first day a lot of the big stores decorate for the holidays and dole out positive vibes in large quantities. Head out and hang out!

That being said, there have also been years where I sat on my couch and started watching my favorite movies (like Gremlins, if you’re looking for something particularly old and wonderful).

Both are healthy, and if you only have a handful of things, there’s nothing wrong with grabbing the popcorn while you tee up your purchases on your phone.

Happy Shopping,

Saira Rahman

VP, New Investor Initiatives - Fundrise‍