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Seeing Red on Black Friday?
By Anita |
As you know, Black Friday is the busiest shopping day of the year. In my local paper I read reports of how people arrived in the Best Buy parking lot on Thanksgiving afternoon so that they could spend the night and be among the first in line.
Thanksgiving afternoon.
Granted, some of the people saved hundreds of dollars on computers and whatnot. But to wait in line for more than 12 hours in 30 degree weather? And sacrifice most of the Thanksgiving holiday?
Sigh. I wonder how many of these people are in the red now, even though they “saved” so much money on their purchases.
The MasterCard press release for Black Friday is full of good cheer. I’m suspicious when a credit card company says that they encourage “responsible spending” and offer “robust consumer education programs” to help consumers reduce debt, but I’ll play along and list their statistics:
- Debit cards may help consumers stay on budget. More than one third (34%) of the consumers that were surveyed said they will use their debit cards more often than their credit cards.
- Consumers plan to spend $610 on gifts. I would’ve guessed a higher dollar amount. I wonder how many people actually know how much they spend or intend to spend.
- Gift cards are now the #1 gift. Makes sense, I guess, although it reduces gift giving to a business transaction.
In case you missed out on Black Friday, December 10 will be Cyber Monday - the busiest online shopping day of the year, according to MasterCard’s calculations. Approximately 69 percent of people intend to shop online for Christmas presents this year.
I hope Black Friday and Cyber Monday don’t leave you in the red this year. How do you avoid the Christmas debt trap? Do you have economical gift giving traditions in your family - traditions that don’t include gift cards, perhaps? Feel free to leave a comment below.
Topics: Credit Cards |
December 13th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Our extended family doesn’t exchange gifts among the adults, and we don’t buy gifts for the older (say, over age
nieces and nephews. We still get gifts for the younger ones. Thankfully, everyone, including the older kids who no longer get gifts from their aunts and uncles, are just fine with this. They get gifts from their parents and grandparents, and that’s plenty. But mostly, in the extended family group, the holiday is about spending a relaxing and festive day together, not about all the stuff. This is such an improvement over previous years when we were all buying stuff for all the cousins. I know there are some families who would be horrified to cut back like this, but I’ll bet there are more who would be relieved by it. So, I say, why not float the idea among your relatives for next year? They just might go for it.
December 13th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Don’t know how that smiley got in there. I meant to type, “say, over age 9.”