Each year, the winter shopping season begins in earnest with Black Friday. The day after Thanksgiving where stores all over town and the internet advertise deals that seem too good to be true. Many, many people take this opportunity to start shopping for Christmas or for other items for themselves.
Let's look at 3 ideas that can help make your Black Friday experience more fun and less stressful on your finances!
1. Set Your Budget
First, set in writing how much you will spend for this event. I encourage you not to think of it as a "soft" limit though. Taking this seriously and treating your budget limit as a "hard" limit should help you keep within your budget. Doing so should help you feel better about the entire experience tomorrow and going forward, since you are helping to prevent feelings of buyer's remorse early.
Once you have your budget sorted out, you can then proceed to:
2. Shop Twice, Spend Once
I encourage you to look over the advertisements and all the deals. Take some time to do the preliminary shopping beforehand. Peruse the online or print ads for the stores you would like to shop at. Let your eyes wander over each page and write down ideas. Perhaps even start ordering them according to priority or desire.
This gives you the fun of doing the shopping once before the event and helps lead into the next idea:
3. Plan
Now that you have your budget limit, your list of items, and also list of stores, now you can set out planning what order each store will be visited in. Consider distance from home, from other stores, or even how many other shoppers you expect to see. You can maximize how much time is allotted to each store by limiting how many you visit. Planning out your store visits allows you to fully enjoy the time shopping there.
How would it feel to be calmly walking through each store with a plan in mind, free of the stress of trying to figure all these things out in the moments you are actually shopping?
Take these steps and move toward a more intentional, stress-free shopping experience!
