Is Black Friday Worth It?

Growing up, I always looked forward to shopping on Black Friday. My family and I would wake up early, sometimes with only a few hours of sleep from the Thanksgiving night before, and drive to the mall or outlets to be one of the firsts to get in line for the big deals that only happen once a year. We’d be done shopping, returning to the car with bags in both hands and packing the trunk with everything we had.

Nowadays, the Black Friday deals are not as much of a steal as they used to be, and everyone is starting to notice. This is due to many reasons, including online shopping, competitive weekly sales, and rising economic pressures outside consumers' wants.

With online shopping on the rise, there has been a decline in in-store shopping. Consumers noticed that they were able to find better deals online than what they saw in-store, plus the convenience of not needing to leave their homes and having items shipped to their door. But this depends on the way a consumer likes to go about shopping and what they’re shopping for.

Black Friday deals have also raised the bar by extending sale dates from a single one-day-only to a Black Friday weekend until Cyber Monday. This lowers the expectation of a high volume of shoppers on Friday because of how widespread the sales are.

As inflation constantly rises, these deals don’t look as worth it as they used to. The cost of living in America is extremely high; families are struggling to stay afloat. Therefore, a sale of anything under 50% is not considered a true deal anymore. People would much rather save for living expenses than items they don’t mind waiting on comfortably affording.

Consumers are becoming a lot more conscious of the buys they invest in, as they should.