The following is a guest post by Kyle James, who owns and operates a website called Rather-Be-Shopping.com which lists and organizes online coupon codes for over 700 stores, organized in 25 shopping categories.
According to the National Consumer Council, 40% of all retail sales happen in November and December every year. What an incredible number. Personally, I really look forward to the Holidays, and with three young children, it’s a true blessing to be able to see and experience Christmas through their eyes. But in all reality, it can often be a very stressful time for parents. Fighting the crowds and making sure not to overspend can be quite trying. But it doesn’t have to be. Here are a few tips to make this holiday shopping season easier, both on you and on your wallet.
~ Real Black Friday Opportunities – People get crazy when Black Friday deals come out. The problem is most stores have a very limited number of these incredible deals, and unless you want to stand in line all night long, you’re not going to be able to take advantage. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of Black Friday, especially when it comes to clothing. For the most part, consumers go ga-ga over the electronic deals, not the clothing deals. Because of this, my wife and I regularly go out on Friday afternoon and buy clothes for our kid’s at some really low prices. Try it this year, I think you will be blown away with the deals, and the stores won’t be nearly as crazy.
~ Check eBay.com – Perhaps my favorite holiday shopping tip is to check eBay.com the weekend of Black Friday. You will be amazed how many people buy stuff really cheap on Black Friday, only to turn around and try and make a quick profit by selling it on eBay. The best part is you get to sleep in on Black Friday, then check eBay later that weekend. It has been my experience that you will only pay a fraction more than if you had stood in line at 4am.
~ Go Social This Year – This year, more than ever, retailers will be using their Facebook pages and Twitter feeds to inform consumers of upcoming sales and coupons. So before you do any holiday shopping this year be sure to log-on to social networking sites and find the best deal possible. JCPenney.com actually announced that they will have exclusive Facebook Christmas coupons available this year. Make sure you don’t pay full price on anything.
Crystal’s Comments: I try to keep an eye out year round for holiday gifts for my loved ones, but usually end up buying 99% of them from Amazon.com and Ebay.com in November and December anyway, lol.
To give you an idea of the savings available, here is a small sampling of coupons from my website. Thanks Crystal for letting me contribute once again to your terrific blog.
American Eagle Outfitters.com
Save 20% Off your entire online purchase
Coupon Code: 20493061
Expiration: 10/04/11
See All Coupons For: American Eagle
Barnes & Noble.com
Save 15% Off Any 1 Item in your order
Coupon Code: X9F9N8C
Expiration: 9/30/11
See All Coupons For: Barnes & Noble
PetSmart.com
Save 15% off your entire online purchase
Coupon Code: 6FF15
Expiration: 9/30/11
See All Coupons For: PetSmart.com
One of my best kept secrets (although i don’t actually know how secret this is) is that you can almost always get the black Friday prices online on Black Friday. I don’t think this works for door busters. But on the majority of the sale items, you can purchase them for the same price online. This saves you the enormous hassle of driving to stores, waiting in traffic, standing in line, and fighting the crowds!
Starting early provides many more choices. Planning for your purchases or in my case, my wife makes some of the gifts just requires time. I like shopping online because i can use shopping bots to screen for the lowest prices.
Good point moneyforcollege – Many online stores will offer the same coupons on Black Friday that they offer on Cyber Monday realizing they have a fairly captive shopping audience on both of those days. From my experience you can always get free shipping + 20% to 25% off at most online retailers. Plus, you can do it in your PJ’s w/ a cup of coffee. Which for me (a guy) is the biggest benefit as every Novemeber I vow to never enter the mall parking lot.
I love to see this article lots of effort on it thanks for sharing God bless u
I love to see this article great effort on it lots of information on your blog i m very happy at your blog thanks for sharing God bless u
Your advice to shop for kids’ clothes on Black Friday brought back fond memories. Back when the kids were little and we were broke, one of the discount stores near us would offer buy one/get one shoes on Black Friday. So buying new shoes on Black Friday (with early Christmas money from the grandparents) became a holiday tradition.
We might browse a few other things while we were there, but there was never any pressure to find anything but the shoes, and it was a surprisingly low-stress way to go shopping on the “biggest sales day of the year”.
These are some great tips. I will be checking out some of these links in the upcoming weeks to be on the look out for some great bargains. Thanks for the links!
Shopping on Black Friday sometimes is too stressful for me, considering the number of people who go to stores to grab the sale. Yes, sometimes, it is not worth the effort and the stress you have to go through so most of the time, I shop online.
I’m pleased by finding the tips of early holiday shopping. I’ve to admit that you put a lot of effort and no doubt spend huge time to share your wealth of knowledge with us. Really good article!! Thanks for allocation.
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