Black Friday vs Extreme Couponing

I'll come right out and say it, "I love black Friday." If you have ever seen an episode of Extreme Couponing, then you have an idea of how I approach black Friday. Most people... strike that... All people on Extreme Couponing are at least a little crazy. They horde newspaper inserts. They take ridiculous amounts of time organizing their coupons. They sucker friends and family into going shopping with them when they go on a buying spree. In short, these people are obsessive about their habit. And for one solitary day each year, I'm the same.

So it was, on Wednesday, the day before thanksgiving, I had called dibs on a neighbor's newspaper advertisements for the following day. The holy grail of newspaper insert days came and I would carefully review each and every one of them for over two hours, scouring the pages for the best deals on consumer products and clipping the adds of the items which caught my eye. After narrowing the list of thousands to less than fifty, I then sorted, and performed a "Do I want this item, or do I NEED this item?" check. We were down to just a dozen items. I then sorted again, arranged by store, time store opened, and value of the deal. Finally, I crosschecked with amazon to make sure I couldn't get the same deal without fighting the crowds, and eliminated anything that had a minimum quantity disclaimer on it. Hey, I'm willing to go to some extra effort to get a good deal, but I will not be on tv in a WallMart pepper spray fight for a video game.

After all this, I was left with the list you see above. I checked with Sarah, made sure she approved, and then guilted my buddy Travis into going with me as a body guard. We didn't head out until around 9 AM, well after the door buster crowds had left, but well before the lunch rush. We hit our 4 stores and checked for 6 items, the crowds were large but not crazy, only one of the products I was looking for had sold out, saved an average of over 50%, and we were home in less than 90 minutes. Take that Extreme Couponers.

I have to wrap this up quickly now as Cyber Monday is coming to a close and I don't want to miss a deal...