It’s the day after Thanksgiving: a good day to “Opt Outside” and buy nothing

Thanks­giv­ing has come and gone, and the media, in con­cert with most retail­ers, is amp­ing up the pres­sure on every­body to go out and buy stuff.

Amer­i­ca’s retail­ers actu­al­ly start­ed the “Black Fri­day” hype weeks ago with pro­mo emails, full page spreads in news­pa­pers, tele­vi­sion spots, and social media ads, so the term “Black Fri­day” is even more of a mis­nomer now than it used to be.

“Black Fri­day” has seem­ing­ly evolved into “Shop Till You Drop November”.

Still, the day after Thanks­giv­ing con­tin­ues to be breath­less­ly pro­mot­ed as a day to head to the store to get great deals — or go online and do the same. (“Cyber Mon­day”, for all intents and pur­pos­es, is just an exten­sion of “Black Fri­day”).

With all of the pres­sure to BUY, BUY, BUY!, it’s worth remem­ber­ing there is no law that says you have to go out and make a pur­chase today. Much of what’s being adver­tised as on sale or a good deal isn’t actu­al­ly a good deal.

As Bri­an Chen recent­ly not­ed in a piece for the New York Times:

We all know the drill by now.

Retail­ers’ sales pro­mo­tions begin weeks before Thanks­giv­ing, with a smat­ter­ing of mod­est deals that even­tu­al­ly build up to the shop­ping bonan­za that is Black Fri­day — the day after Thanksgiving.

That is fol­lowed by Cyber Mon­day, a so-called online shop­ping extrav­a­gan­za that takes place the Mon­day after Thanks­giv­ing weekend.

To whet shop­pers’ appetites fur­ther, it has become increas­ing­ly fash­ion­able for online retail­ers to build up antic­i­pa­tion for Black Fri­day with so-called flash deals. These last only a few hours, putting pres­sure on con­sumers to make pur­chas­es with lit­tle or no research.

Yet, how­ev­er you shop, the chances of snatch­ing a great deal for a qual­i­ty item are slim, large­ly because Black Fri­day is main­ly for retail­ers to clear out unwant­ed goods and because best-sell­ing prod­ucts rarely drop much in price.

Empha­sis is ours.

Seri­ous bar­gain hunters know that Black Friday/Cyber Mon­day is sim­ply not the deal-clinch­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty it’s por­trayed to be in mass media. Years of rep­utable research sup­ports the con­clu­sion that Black Fri­day is a good day not to shop.

Shop Till You Drop Novem­ber is all about exag­ger­at­ed dis­counts. Check the price his­to­ry of an on-sale item with a tool like Camel­Camel­Camel, and you may find the item had a sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er price at a dif­fer­ent time of the year. It pays to do your home­work before part­ing ways with your hard-earned money.

But an even bet­ter idea is to not wor­ry about buy­ing new stuff at all, at least not today. The day after Thanks­giv­ing is a great day for activ­i­ties like:

• Going on a hike (as REI sug­gests with its Opt Out­side cam­paign)
• Vis­it­ing with fam­i­ly and friends
• Play­ing a board game

Instead of going shop­ping, enjoy the pos­ses­sions you already have, and learn some­thing about where they came from by watch­ing The Sto­ry of Stuff:

There will be plen­ty of time to pick up gifts, if you’re so inclined, before the win­ter hol­i­days hit. We’re a month away from Christ­mas and Hanukkah. And retail­ers aren’t going to stop invit­ing you to browse their wares between now and then.