Black Friday 2014: Your complete step-by-step guide

Black Friday, the biggest and most-hyped shopping holiday of the year, is approaching faster than ever. But whether you're heading out to shop Thursday, Friday, or skipping the crowds altogether and shopping online for Cyber Monday, our friends at DealNews.com are here to help you get the most out of Black Friday 2014. 

2. How to prepare

Charlie Riedel/AP/File
Ripan Bhowmik looks at cameras while shopping at Best Buy during Black Friday weekend in Overland Park, Kan.

Black Friday is no longer the 24-hour event it used to be. Instead it's become a week-long shopping extravaganza when even seasoned bargain hunters can overspend. That's where we come in. With multiple Black Fridays under our belt, we're here to tell you what to avoid, how to prepare, and how to make the most of the biggest shopping day of the year. Start with this 12-step checklist: 

1. Read and compare Black Friday ads

2. Use leaked circulars to showroom products before you buy them

3. Start shopping early (don't wait until Black Friday)

4. Decide if you want to shop online or in-store

5. Know your in-store gameplan

6. Check deals while in line

7. Avoid impulse purchases

8. But be flexible and come prepared with alternatives

9. Know which stores will offer price matching

10. Beware final sale items

11. Keep track of rebates and store credits

12. Be a polite customer

For more, visit the full Dealnews post here. 

2 of 14

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.