Thanksgiving is only 12 days away, but I’m prepared.
Not for the dinner — actually, I told Tim last night I had no interest whatsoever in cooking a turkey this year — but I’m up on my Black Friday ads, yep yep yep.
As I mentioned before, I’m a big fan of the leaked Black Friday ad sites. But this year, they’re becoming integral to my savings plan.
For three years now, Tim has lusted after the big, pretty LCD/plasma TVs. For three years now, I’ve turned him down hard with the promise of “When we’re doing better.” Well, this year we’re doing better, if still not completely out of debt.
So imagine my squeal of joy when I saw Target’s offer of a Westinghouse 40″ LCD 1080p TV for $298. I checked with a friend of ours who used to work at Target, and he said it’s a pretty good brand. So I believe Tim will finally have his object of desire. (It also seems like the appropriate time to upgrade, since we’re getting the PS3. We’ll really be able to enjoy the console’s quality graphics.)
In addition, for nearly a year now, I’ve been drooling over Tim’s iPod Touch, wanting one for myself. So I think I may finally take the plunge on that — even if they did just hike the price up by $30 thanks to an added two-way camera I don’t care about… sigh.
Once I did the math in my head, I realized that’s a pretty hefty chunk of money we’ll be plunking down. Granted, it will be for two things that we have been pretty patient about. But still, I figured there had to be a way to milk the savings a little more.
First I checked some sites that buy and sell gift cards. I had just used one to sell a gift card that had been sitting around, unused for 2 years. Now, instead of $43 floating in a plastic card, I will have $33 in an Amazon gift card to apply toward Tim’s PS3.
Unfortunately, none of them are currently offering Target gift cards. I figure that either Target has so many things that GCs always get used or people are having the same idea I am. Copycats.
Regardless, I went and checked out eBay. Sure enough, there were plenty to be had there.
Lately, I’ve steered away from eBay because, thanks to rewards programs, people now bid up over the asking price. Generally, paying more than face value for a gift card offends my moral sensibilities. But, in this case, we were going to spend the money no matter what. So I had Tim go ahead and bid on a $500 GC.
In the end, we got it for $510.01. Through Mr. Rebates, Tim will get $15.30 back and, as his referrer, I’ll get $3.06. So, we will end up saving $8.36. Friday was also double eBay Bucks day, which means we also got $20 in credit there. But I try not to take that part into account when bidding. It’s too easy to think of eBay Bucks as found money once they credit to your account.
In order to get one of the limited quantities of TVs, Tim has agreed to hunker down in front of Target around midnight — four hours before they open — with his trusty iPod and PSP at his side. For buying more than $100 in the store, he’ll also come away with a $10 GC.
So, okay, we’re not talking huge savings. But every little bit helps. And if you have your eye on anything big for Black Friday, I would definitely suggest checking out Plastic Jungle, Card Pool, and eBay/Mr. Rebates.