How did we get tricked into accepting Black Friday as the holiday that comes between Thanksgiving and Christmas?  Just as we have been convinced that Thanksgiving has to be a glutton-fest of rich food and Christmas is a time to max out our credit cards for toys our children will quickly forget, Black Friday is really just savvy marketing that plays on our sense of getting the best deal, no matter what it takes.

It’s all hype. What we have forgotten is that Black Friday is so named because it puts retailers in the black.  Those “deals” that we have been standing in the cold for 4 hours in the middle of the night to get are carefully plotted, and in the end consumers end up overspending anyway on items they didn’t need.  Among the things that retailers won’t tell you, the quality is simply lower for products slated as Black Friday deals.

Meanwhile, online deals have gotten significantly more competitive, even from the same retailers that feed the Black Friday craze.  Save yourself the trouble and spend Friday morning shopping with a cup of coffee and your laptop.