Thanksgiving Giveaway Contest Update, and Black Friday Recap

Happy Cyber Monday! It’s back to work (or school) for many of us. Hopefully you had a great weekend, and if you’re here in the U.S, a great Thanksgiving Day as well!

Speaking of the holiday and shopping, I have a couple of updates for you:

Squirrelers Thanksgiving Giveaway Contest

Thank you to everyone who entered the Squirrelers Thanksgiving Giveaway Contest!  The giveaway closed on Thanksgiving day. There was a tremendous response, with more entry forms completed than I had expected.

The next steps are for me to continue getting the entries processed and organized, and then have the winners selected through random.org. At that point, I’ll contact the winners. They will have one week to respond and confirm acceptance. If there is no response, or a winner does not want his or her prize, a new winner will be randomly selected.

Sponsors: I’ll let you know when you your winner has confirmed, so you can coordinate sending the prize.

Once again, here are the prizes to be awarded, along with sponsors:

• Grand Prize: $100 Amazon Gift Card, from Squirrelers
• Your Money: The Missing Manual, by JD Roth (Sponsored by Budgeting In The Fun Stuff)
• $10 Amazon Gift Card (Sponsored by Young and Thrifty)
• $10 Amazon Gift Card (Sponsored by Wealth Informatics)
• I Will Teach You to Be Rich, by Ramit Sethi (Sponsored by PF Firewall)
• $25 Amazon Gift Card (Sponsored by Invest It Wisely)
• $25 Gift Card to a major retailer (Sponsored by (Barbara Friedberg)
• $15 Amazon Gift Card (Sponsored by KNS Financial)
• $20 Amazon Gift Card (Sponsored by Money Crashers)
• Control Your Cash: Making Money Make Sense (Sponsored by Control Your Cash)
• $20 Amazon Gift Certificate (Sponsored by Out of Debt Again)
• 2 separate prizes of If I’m So Smart…Where did All My Money Go (Sponsored by Doug Warshauer)
• $20 Amazon Gift Card (Sponsored by Everyday Tips and Thoughts)
• $25 Starbucks Gift Card (Sponsored by Couple Money)
• $50 Wal-Mart Gift Card (Sponsored by Mr. Rebates)
• $25 Cash via Paypal (Sponsored by Maximizing Money)
• How Rich People Think (Sponsored by Financial Samurai)

 

Stay tuned!

My Black Friday Shopping Experience

So, on Thursday night I had to run out to get a few basics. I stopped at the local Walmart around 9pm, and it was next to empty. However, I saw these barricades and yellow tape at different points in the store, which appeared to be set up in anticipation of a huge crowd that would be coming. I talked to the cashier on the way out, and he mentioned that there would be tons of people coming in by midnight; in fact, they would arrive well before.

By the time I left the store it was probably just 15 minutes later, maybe at 9:15. As I walked to the parking lot, I noticed a small wave of people that had stepped out of their cars and proceeded to walk toward the store. Looking further out, I saw headlights of multiple cars, as another stream of shoppers was descending upon the store.

Clearly, the hysteria was just around the corner.

As I drove off, I saw a Toys R Us storefront with those same type of barricades and yellow tape all set up. No customers were there yet, but apparently they were expecting a big line at some point in the early morning hours.

So, with this long set up, that Thursday night experience motivated me to achieve the following Black Friday shopping haul:

Nothing.

Zero, zinch, nada.

I decided not to go out and fight the crowds, no matter what the excitement might be.

I recognize that for many people, Black Friday shopping is a sport. They train for the competition by becoming knowledgeable about who is offering what deals, at what locations, and at what times. Taking that into account, and considering that I don’t have any pressing shopping needs (besides some clothes), I decided to stay on the sidelines.

Hey, at least I can know that I had the ultimate bargain Black Friday: I SPENT NOTHING!

What about you?

Did you partake in the shopping festivities on Friday?