The Black Friday Calendar Isn't What You Think
Black Friday falls on the day after Thanksgiving, which lands on the fourth Thursday of November. In 2024 it was November 29th. In 2025 it's November 28th. The dates shift every year because they're tied to a floating holiday. Cyber Monday follows on the Monday after, giving the same rough discount window roughly three more days. Retailers opened the floodgates years ago though, so "Black Friday" now stretches across an entire month, sometimes starting the first Wednesday of November. If you're just looking for the dates and a basic strategy, here's the raw version. The actual Black Friday is the Friday after Thanksgiving. Cyber Monday is the Monday immediately following. Amazon's Black Friday event started around November 1st in recent years and runs through the weekend. Best Buy, Target, Walmart—they all pick different start dates. Some announce deals October 15th. Others wait until Black Friday morning at midnight. The one reliable tactic is setting price alerts 30 days before Thanksgiving. The data on major electronics shows the steepest drops usually happen the Tuesday through Thursday before Black Friday itself, not on the actual Friday. I learned this the hard way in 2019. I waited for Friday to buy a Samsung TV that was already at its lowest price the Wednesday before. By the time I checked back, the model had sold out and the Black Friday price was gone. My workaround was simple: I started tracking prices on camelcamelcamel and Keepa on November 1st, set alerts at my target price, and bought when the notification hit instead of waiting for a specific calendar date. Here's something most people miss about Black Friday pricing. Retailers use a technique called reference price manipulation. They inflate the "original" price by 20 to 40 percent in the weeks leading up to the event so the discount looks bigger than it actually is. The reference price has to comply with FTC guidelines, but enforcement is sporadic. A practical check is looking at the product's price history on Google Shopping or a browser extension like Honey. If the "was" price never actually existed at that level in the prior 90 days, the deal is mostly theatrical. I've seen this with KitchenAid mixers, Sonos speakers, and Dyson vacuums repeatedly. The real deals are on last-generation models being cleared out, not on current-gen products being "marked down."
Another counter-intuitive thing: doorbusters aren't always the best value. Those ultra-cheap items are loss leaders. The store pulls you in with a $20 Bluetooth speaker and hopes you spend $500 on something else. The smarter move is targeting the high-margin categories where retailers actually want to move inventory. Computers and peripherals during November, winter clothing in January, patio furniture in late summer. November is genuinely good for TVs and small appliances because manufacturers release new models in spring and need the fall quarter numbers. But the real edge comes from understanding return policies. Some retailers raise return window fees or restrict returns on Black Friday purchases. I had a friend buy a gaming console on Black Friday 2022, opened it, changed his mind, and got hit with a restocking fee because the receipt was marked clearance. The workaround is checking the fine print before you buy anything you might later want to return. Keep the packaging until you've tested the product for at least a few days. Here's the blunt truth about what doesn't work. Showing up at 3 AM in line. It hasn't been worth it since 2019. Everything moved online and the in-store experience degraded while the hassle stayed the same. Online carts expire. If you find a deal, add it to your cart and complete checkout within 10 minutes. Sites like Walmart and Target will release held inventory back into the pool if payment doesn't process. I've caught deals that way that were marked sold out for everyone else. The price match policy is another underused weapon. Best Buy matches Amazon and several major retailers. If you see a lower price elsewhere during the Black Friday window, bring the ad or show the live page at checkout. They don't always volunteer this information. You have to ask. Downloadable tools that actually help: Keepa for Amazon price history, CamelCamelCamel for Amazon alerts, Honey for coupon stacking, and Slickdeals for community-verified deals. The browser extensions do the heavy lifting so you don't have to manually check every product across multiple sites. I run Keepa on my laptop and keep three tabs open during deal hours—one for the deals site, one for my watchlist on Keepa, and one for the retailer's homepage. It cuts decision time from about 20 minutes per purchase to roughly 90 seconds.
The biggest pitfall is confirmation bias. You see a deal you want and your brain stops evaluating whether you actually need it. Write down what you intended to buy before you start shopping. Stick to the list. The average shopper spends 37 percent more than planned during Black Friday according to a NRF survey from 2023. Budget first, browse second. If a deal feels urgent because "it's only available today," it probably is, but urgency is a manufactured emotion. Most of these deals cycle back. Products appear at similar prices in December clearance events and again in January. The only exceptions are limited-quantity doorbusters on genuinely novel products. Everything else is noise. Online-only retailers like Amazon and Best Buy have largely replaced the physical rush. Their deals are often better because there's no regional inventory locking. If Best Buy has a TV in stock at one location and you're two states away, the app won't sell it to you. Amazon ships it. The tradeoff is shipping delays during peak periods. I always factor in a five-day buffer between order and expected delivery during the holiday season. If you need something by December 20th, order by December 10th at the latest. Late November shipments frequently get pushed to mid-December depending on carrier capacity and warehouse volume.
Get the Full Details
