Black Friday shopping used to be so easy.
But now you have so many different days to shop, it's tough to know which days are best for what products.
You can hit the stores right now for early Black Friday deals, thanks to Walmart's Deals for Days, and Best Buy and Target's Early Black Friday sales.
Or you can wait for Thanksgiving night online, or Friday morning, when stores reopen with more in-person sales.
Olivia Anderson is going to do it all from home, and make her purchases whenever she sees the best price.
"I mean I think its better to go online because you can easily see the prices, and easily see all the sales going on," she said.
But even if you plan to do most of your holiday shopping online, when should you do that online shopping?
Best days to save the most
To help make sense of it all, we turned to Joanie Demer, one of the founders of The Krazy Coupon Lady.
She says holiday sales have become confusing since the pandemic ended the big rush in stores.
"The differentiator used to be Black Friday was the day you would shop in stores," she said, "and Cyber Monday was the day to stay at home."
But that has all changed since 2020.
Demer's advice? Shop now, but for bonuses, and extra discounts she says it is still worth waiting for Thanksgiving night or Friday morning.
Despite all the early sales now underway, she says, "they are always gonna hold out a couple of extra doorbusters or layers of savings on Black Friday."
As a general rule of thumb:
- Early Black Friday sales are great for select items, such as a particular Chromebook or Dyson vacuum. All major stores are running these early sales right now.
- Thanksgiving night tends to have the best sales on electronics, such as 75 inch TV's, XBox and Playstation consoles, and headphones.
- Black Friday morning offers great deals on clothing and kitchen items like mixers and air fryers, as stores like Macy's andKohl'sopen early for traditional shoppers.
- Cyber Monday has good travel and experience deals, along with leftover Black Friday deals on electronics.
- Travel Tuesday, now the day after Cyber Monday, offers more cruise and resort deals.
The Krazy Coupon Lady has posted an extensive listof the best sales all week.
Why you don't want to wait too long
But the bottom line, though, is don't wait. If you find a great deal on a vacuum, air fryer, or TV right now, you may want to buy it to avoid the chance it sells out on Black Friday.
Demer says you may save a few dollars waiting until Cyber Monday for some things, but it comes with a lot of risk.
"There will always be a select few items that drop lower on Cyber Monday than on Black Friday, but for the most part personally I am doing my shopping before Cyber Monday," Demer said.
The easiest thing is to make a list of what you want, and check store websites to see when they will see the biggest markdowns.
And that way you don't waste your money.
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