Taking Advantage of Black Friday Sales

As an expat American married to a non American, I haven't been doing much celebrating Thanksgiving, since it isn't often done here, but some years I do go to Thanksgiving dinners with friends and family. This year I was invited to one, but wasn't able to go because we're busy packing up our house since we found out this past Tuesday that we are officially getting the keys to the place Monday morning!
We set a moving date for Wednesday and the house is crazy!

Anyhow, people have talked about the sorry state of affairs in my country, that Thanksgiving isn't celebrated here as a country, but this country has imported the so called "worst part" of Thanksgiving- Black Friday. People have issues with Black Friday since they feel it encourages consumerism, but I don't think so...
Or at least it doesn't have to.

Stores in general like to entice people to shop there by making sales, and Black Friday is no exception in this. Impulse shoppers can really hurt their finances if they see things on sale and all of a sudden realize that they "need it" when they would never have purchased it had it not been on sale.
When grocery shopping, if there are things you anyhow would be purchasing and then find them on sale and stock up, you saved money in the long run. But if you buy things that you never would have purchased had they not been on sale, it doesn't matter how good the sale is, that still is extra money that you wouldn't have spent otherwise, so it isn't saving money.


When it comes to Black Friday, you can end up saving yourself a lot of money if you don't get sucked into the consumerism craze, buying so many things simply because "they are on sale", even if they aren't such a good price (yes, sometimes Black Friday sales in one place are more expensive than their equivalent at cheaper stores not on sale, so price compare).
To use Black Friday to your advantage, if there are items that you anyhow need to buy and were planning on buying in the near future, look for those items on Black Friday and hopefully you can spend much less on them than you would have otherwise.

Walking into stores can be a huge headache and encourages impulse buys, but if you search online for Black Friday sales (or Cyber Monday) and put in specific parameters of what you are looking for, instead of browsing stores for whatever piques your interest or what seems like a good deal, you may be able to get some great deals.

Since we are moving soon, we had a shopping list of things that we were planning on buying anyhow for our new place, and fortunately a friend reminded me to check for Black Friday sales for them. In the past 24 hours we purchased:

A winter coat for myself.


I have very specific tastes in coats, and for years I've had coats that I hated so much that I refuse to wear them. I end up just wearing my husband's fleece jackets but I really wanted a coat that I liked, so fortunately my friend Michelle helped me find coats in my style and at affordable prices, so I bought this at a Black Friday sale. I'm really excited for it to arrive.

I also bought myself an office chair, shown at the top of this post, since I'm using such a broken and gross chair right now that I am planning on throwing out instead of bringing it to our new place.

Our washing machine, which we bought free, is on its last legs, and barely works. We've wanted to replace it for a while, but decided to wait to have it for our new place. We found one on sale that is energy efficient (as an A rating) and has a quick wash setting which ours doesn't have, and bought that.

Our dryer is currently dead, so we bought a new one that has a condenser, since in our new place the dryer won't be in a room with a window, so it can't have an exhaust pipe. This is also an A energy rating, and we spent a little more on one that the water that condenses goes down a pipe into a drain, so that I don't have to remember to empty the condenser each time.

For so long our oven has been broken but we've put off replacing it. The oven hasn't heated up at all, and out of the 4 gas burners, only 2 have been working, and not well at that. We've been using a toaster oven as our oven, which is a pain. So again, new place, new oven, and fortunately we found one with an A energy rating, and a decent price. When picking it, we specifically went for one that was aesthetic, since the oven will be at the end of our kitchen area and right where the living room starts, so it is especially important that it looks nice. We chose a chrome colored one to match our color scheme.

We didn't get a new fridge, even though ours is really old and ugly, because it is still fully functional, and it is very large. To replace our fridge with something similar would cost nearly 2000 dollars if not more, even with Black Friday sales... so we decided to hold off on that purchase for now. Though I'd gladly take suggestions of how to turn an ugly fridge prettier. If we want to paint it or otherwise change the color of the outside, or replace handles, any suggestions of how to do that?

Last but not least, we're looking at couch sets for our living room. We had looked into second hand couches, but none of them were good enough quality or what I was looking for, so they weren't worth spending the money on them... so we're looking on price comparison websites with their Black Friday deals and I think I might have found a couch set I like that is easily cleanable, but have to decide still if we're going to get that one or try to find something else.

Best thing about ordering these things now and our moving date is that these things will take 5 business days for delivery, which means they can go directly to our new place, so we don't need to pay movers to move these things from our current house to there, so we're paying less for moving.

Really excited!

Black Friday can definitely put a dent in your pocketbook, but if you play it right, you can actually have it make a smaller dent in your pocketbook than you would have had otherwise.

How was your Thanksgiving?
Did you/do you buy anything for Black Friday/Cyber Monday? What are your tips for making sure you don't buy into consumerism culture and buy just because it is on sale, but truly use Black Friday/Cyber Monday to save money overall?