Top Tips For Black Friday (Tomorrow)

It’s the same every year.

A few minutes after stores open in the morning, videos will be posted on Twitter of people fighting over a television, a fridge, or even grown adults stealing products right out of the hands of children.

What are we talking about? You guessed it – Black Friday.

Known as the biggest shopping day of the year, it’s always held the day after Thanksgiving in the US and it comes days before Cyber Monday, a day created by retailers to encourage online shopping.

Black Friday hasn’t always really mattered to Canadians, especially before the 1980s. It started out as a US shopping event, but Canadian retailers slowly started following the trend.

Some companies like Amazon and eBay start their sales well in advance of Black Friday itself, and others continue to offer discounts into the weekend and beyond.

Here’s a little nugget of information that you may not have heard before. The earliest evidence of the phrase Black Friday originated in Philadelphia, dating back to 1961, where it was used by police to describe the heavy pedestrian and vehicular traffic that would occur on the day after Thanksgiving.

Over the next few days, there will be fantastic deals advertised by companies right across Canada, but remember these few tips when you’re spending:

• Keep your purse close to your body or your wallet in a pocket.
• Save your receipts and monitor your credit card activity.
• Stick to retailers you know and preferably, have shopped with before.
• Ask for help moving and loading large items if needed.
• Never commit to a deal that seems too good to be true.