1. Prepare a list of items you need and want to buy. Do some research of these items and determine how much money you are willing to spend on them.
2. Find out what specials are available. There are many resource available online, such as bfads.net/, blackfriday.gottadeal.com/, and slickdeals.net. My favorite is the spreadsheet developed by “akelnat”. See Black Friday Sales Locator for more details.
3. Validate your research with the ad from your local newspaper.
4. Find out the store hours
5. Prioritize the list of items and plan your shopping route accordingly. Sizzling hot bargains will disappear within the first store hour. At best, you can only shop 2-3 stores for these bargains.
6. Visit the stores a few days early to make sure these are the items you wanted and to familiar yourself with the store. You would not get much help from salespersons on locating the items on the mad rush hours.
7. Be there when the stores are opened and expect long lines. Stores open at 5AM.
8. If you intend to hit multiple stores, you have to minimize the time spent in each store. Make this a family outing. One person waits in line for checkout while others look for the items. You can spend as much as a hour waiting in the checkout line.
9. Above all, have fun.

This year, “akelnat” published another spreadsheet in fatwallet.com again. I downloaded the file and it was awesome. I made some modifications to the file so you can look at the sales by categories, in addition to by stores. You can download the modified spreadsheet and its pdf version by clicking on the following links:

• Modified Black Friday Sales Excel Spreadsheet
• Modified Black Friday Sales PDF File

We will update the file as new releases are available.

Happy Shopping!!

Note: The files were updated on Nov. 27, 2008 10:48AM CT. They contained promotions from the following stores: