Black Friday 'Princess' Shares Tips On How To Save Big
By Mandi Woodruff
November 15, 2013 4:51 PM
Image courtesy of Katherine Cauley
Katherine Cauley, 33, has become something of a local shopping guru in her hometown of Rochester, N.H.
The mother of two heads up a popular couponing seminar
several days each year, teaching locals how to squeeze the most savings
out of Black Friday sales. For 5 bucks and a donation to a local
charity, attendees get 90 minutes of tutelage from Cauley and her best
friend, Renee Jerram. The pair has been couponing together for four
years.
Cauley got the idea for the seminar after years of
mastering the art of extreme couponing. She became so good at scoring
household goods like paper towels and toilet paper for free that she
earned the nickname "Princess of Paper Products."
"People had no
idea, you know, in a small town that you could coupon like that and save
so much money," she says. "When we started teaching classes, we had a
huge amount of people who were interested in learning how."
But racking up discounts at the grocery store is little league stuff for Cauley these days. Black Friday is her Super Bowl.
“I’ve
been shopping on Black Friday since I was a teenager, when I started
doing it with a couple of friends,” she says. “It’s the one night you
look forward to going out with friends and shopping all night. It’s an
adrenaline rush to see how many items off your list you can get.”
Each
year poses a bigger challenge than the last, and since Cauley will be
spending the holiday with her family in Georgia this year, she’s been
planning for weeks already.
We asked her to offer up some of her
favorite tips and tricks to get the most out of the Black Friday rush —
and make it home in one piece.
1. Check your expectations at the door.
“Not everybody goes out on Black Friday shopping for Christmas. If you
are, you are probably not going to be able to get your whole Christmas
shopping done that night. When we teach our seminars, we tell people the
first thing is that you need to be patient. You need to be organized.
Start with one store and work it from there. Obviously, you’re not gonna
build up a stockpile like mine overnight. “
2. Leave the little ones at home.
“I personally won’t take my kids out to go shopping on Black Friday.
It’s the busiest shopping day of the year, besides the fact that you see
people getting trampled. I have an 8-year-old and a 4-year-old and
they’ve never gone out with me. Usually, that’s because I’m shopping at
midnight or 1 a.m. and it’s pretty cold. You could be standing out there
six to eight hours in the cold.”
3. Make the wait as comfortable as possible.
“I waited in line at least five hours for a TV at Target once and we
were one of the first 10 people through the door. You have to dress
appropriately for the weather. We bring a lawn chair or something that
we can stow in the car. They give you plenty of time before doors open
so a half hour before, you can get rid of everything you don’t need and
put it back in the car.”
Katherine usually packs her SUV on Black Friday. Here's her haul from last year.
4. Don’t bother carpooling.
“I usually end up going with a group of people but it’s hard to carpool
on Black Friday. Depending on what you’re getting, that car can fill up
fast. Usually, I take my SUV because it has more room in the back.”
5. Keep your eye on hot items that will go quickly. “We’re in need of a TV for our house and TVs are always a big-ticket item. But with Walmart’s new in-stock guarantee,
that will make it a lot easier. My husband loves to cook, too, so I’ll
be looking for small kitchen appliances, like a crockpot and a griddle,
probably at Kohl’s. Appliances always have deep discounts on Black
Friday.”
6. Don’t sleep on Black Friday ads.
“All the store ads are being released now so it gives you time to look
and plan. You’ve got to do your homework ahead of time. I check on BFads.net and Blackfriday.com, but there are a lot of other sites and they all have the same ads."
7. Don’t trust everything you read online.
“Ads can change, too, so get newspapers on Thanksgiving day for sales
fliers. [Since some stores are opening early] that’ll be another
interesting thing this year to see whether newspapers come out with
Black Friday fliers on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving or on Thursday
like usual.
8. Go mobile. “I think it’s silly
to be printing coupons and carrying paper ads around. I take full
advantage of mobile coupons. I still have a coupon binder for everyday
shopping, but on Black Friday that’s the last thing you’re going to want
to carry around. You may have a laptop in one arm and a TV in the other
and you don’t need to worry about that.”
9. But don’t leave store ads at home.
“I carry some store ads and I keep them folded up in my pocket. That
way, you know what you’re getting and where you’re getting it from and
you have the ad with you so there’s no question about it.”
10. Approach Walmart with caution.
“Before they started breaking up their store deals to run at 6 p.m. and
8 p.m. instead of all at once, I’d say Walmart was the craziest on
Black Friday. I was pregnant with my son one year and I had gone out
shopping for a Power Wheels and it was the worst experience. People were
pushing carriages over and one person pushed a carriage right into my
stomach. I think that’s why Walmart has changed the way they do things.
They don’t want the mad rush.”
11. There's always Cyber Monday.
“We were just talking about this at home and I don’t feel like there
are as many good deals this year. They just don’t seem to be
over-the-top good. So, if you’re only looking for one or two items and
are just saving a few dollars, it’s probably not worth going and being
in line for hours out in the cold. There’s always Cyber Monday... Not
everyone’s going be out on Black Friday so a lot of toys and things like
that will go on sale the week after Cyber Monday. Sometimes prices will
drop even lower than Black Friday.”
The takeaway:
Even if you haven’t drunk the Black Friday Kool-aid, you can still find
great deals on holiday buys in early and mid-December. Retailers
generally wait until the first week of December to slash prices on toys,
brand-name TVs and winter duds, according to the experts at Dealnews.com. And thanks to Free Shipping Day (Dec. 18), you’ve got an excuse to ditch the mall altogether.
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