Lazy Man and Money

My Black Friday/Cyber Monday Haul (2018)

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In personal finance circles, it’s popular to tell people to avoid the Black Friday crowds… that it just isn’t worth it. I try not to tell other people what to do, but for years I’d tell them that I’m staying away. I wouldn’t go to Wal-Mart or Best Buy, but if there was a small Staples or an Office Depot out of the way, I’d give those a shot. Usually, I did well on those second-tier deals.

If you want to deal with the crowds and it works for you, then so be it. I hope you aren’t part of the small handful of people who get some kind of injury.

It seems like I’m reading that more and more are just shopping online from home. I even read one story that the stores were empty. While I was out shopping at one place, a shopper there told me that the standout deal for an amazing laptop at Staples was still in stock – more than 5 hours after it opened. Maybe the pendulum is swinging towards online, leaving a better opportunity in the stores.

I wasn’t very excited about this year’s Black Friday. It seems like most of the deals were about gaming, televisions, smart speakers, or tablets. I don’t do any gaming anymore and I have more than enough of all the other items. In fact, we don’t need too much of anything, because we tend to keep things and use them for a long time. The cookware that I’ve had from 2005 still cooks, but it is starting to show its age.

While I’m not sure you’ll find the deals I choose particularly interesting, I noticed an interesting pattern when I reviewed them.

  • Cuisinart TOA-60 Air Fryer Toaster Oven, Silver

    Our old convection toaster oven was about 10 years old and it really showed it age. The problem is that it still works. Instead of the Amazon $200 price, the local Navy base had it for $100 (and no sales tax). It also would match the silver kitchen appliances we have in the house we bought 7 years ago. Finally the reviews of the air frying feature were really good. It’s certainly a splurge, but hopefully one we’ll be happy with.

    I wonder if we can get anything from our old one at a yard sale. Would you buy an old, not-so-clean, convection toaster oven for maybe $5?

  • Oversized Wall Clock

    We’ve been looking for a traditional clock for our nautical-theme living room for awhile. It’s ideal for starting to teach our kids how to tell time. Normally, it would be $40, but I saw it for $15 on Slickdeals.

  • JBL Headphones

    I never seem to have anything better than the free headphones they give you on an airplane and one ear never works. I only use them a couple of times of year when I travel (and usually just read a book instead). At $8, this appears to a deal on their $40 headphones. I’m familiar with the JBL brand and it should be reasonable quality, but I don’t know if they are really $40 quality. For my use, it solves a (minor) problem at a reasonable price.

  • Osmo Genius Kit for Fire Tablet

    This is a cool augmented reality learning kit for kids. I had been interested in it for awhile, but it was only for the iPad for a long time. I couldn’t see spending $350 or so on a special tablet, just so I could spend another $99 on this. However, it works with our Amazon Fire HD 10. There was a brief window where the price was $35, if you applied a 50% coupon code on the product that was already 30% off ($70 on sale).

    I think the deal was available for 10 minutes and I happened to refresh the browser on Slickdeals at the right time to get it. I hope they don’t cancel it due to a pricing mistake.

    We certainly need this, but with two boys age 4 and 6, I think they’ll get a lot of use (and learning) out of this.

  • Kids Headphones

    We need something with a decibel limiting feature and a sharing port so they can watch the same movie on that Amazon Fire. These were $6 each with a couple code that I happened to catch at the right time on Slickdeals. (I was pretty lucky, but I’m sure I missed a lot of stuff because I wasn’t refreshing Slickdeals all the time.)

    I was prepared to pay $15 each, but this saved us nearly $20.

  • Think Geek’s Cyber Monday Promotion (Promocode: DOTCOM)

    This is a late update to the list. I saw that Think Geek was running a 50% off everything on the site. I did a quick switch for anything Pokemon and found some great stuff for the kids. Almost everything was around $5-8, which is a bargain for almost anything related to the franchise. Pokemon’s take over of our lives is nearly complete.

My wife bought a few other things at the Navy base and some other places, but she didn’t tell me much about them. (Hopefully not to spoil Santa’s surprise.) We also picked up some less-than-exciting things like gift cards while we were already at the place or a can opener that we needed, but wasn’t on sale. The above were just the notable “deals.”

The pattern was that most of these things were just dumb luck. The toaster oven is the only item that I saw ahead of time and thought, “This would be a good home upgrade, we should give it a shot.” The rest were impulse items. They were impulse items with a good purpose, but still lifestyle inflation splurges that aren’t really necessary.

At home, I’m famous for not buying a lot of stuff throughout the year. This is the time of year where I catch-up.

Off the Beaten Path Black Friday-ish Deals

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Remember when Black Friday was fun and didn’t mean risking life and/or limbs? Maybe not, but somewhere around 15-20 years that was truly the case. I remember shopping with my mother to get an eMachines computer with her. There was still crowd back then, but everyone got most of their deals.

Damn I’m old!

Over the last several years, I’ve instituted the no-hassle Black Friday plan. The idea is to avoid the Best Buys and the Wal-Marts and focus on the easy wins. The closest I come to any of those stores is Staples. That’s because state laws prevent them from opening on Thanksgiving and there’s one close to me. I can usually stay up until midnight and be one of the few people there.

Unfortunately, Staples doesn’t have too many deals that are exciting to me. Others may find a few nice laptop choices, a great Dell monitor or two, and an 8TB hard drive for $150. The hard drive is tempting, but I’m going to try to get by longer with what I have. If I can get by another year, it will probably be $99 next Black Friday.

There are two items that I’m saving for Friday’s article. You’ll have to check back then to find out why.

So here’s what I’m looking at this year:

Note: Some of these links may pay me a small commission if you decide to buy from them. It won’t change your price though.

Amazon’s 10″ Fire for $99

CNET lies and calls this the best tablet deal in history. The truth is that the HP TouchPad for $99 liquidation was the best tablet deal in history. This is still a great deal. I have a 8″ Fire that went largely unused until recently. I pulled it out because I realized Amazon had Scratch Jr. in their Appplication HeadquarterWarehousePlaceOfPurchasing.

How good is it? Here’s CNET’s review.

I will spend another $50 to get the bargain Windows laptop deal below instead. This is based on my situation of being able to take advantage of the military-only deal and already having a Fire Tablet. Most people aren’t in my unique situation and might want to consider this.

Powerful Laptop Deal (Intel 8th Generation)

I’m finding a ton of laptop deals this holiday season. I’m going to highlight a couple as examples. There’s no need to bust any doors for the deals I’m seeing.

My Dell XPS with 4GB of memory is probably going to revolt by not letting me post this article. A little more than two years ago, I bought had some buyers remorse for only getting 4GB of memory. The store didn’t stock the 8GB version and it would have been a lot more money, because they bundled it with a larger hard drive. I didn’t want to wait for days or pay an additional hefty fee for overnight shipping.

I spent $800 on what I considered the best available option during my time of need.

Today, for the same $800, this Lenovo IdeaPad is a stacked 14″ ultraportable laptop. You get the new 8th generation i7-8550U processor (Passmark 8016). As Laptop Mag’s review noted, “If you’re shopping for a laptop and there’s a model with 8th Gen Core available in your price range, you should definitely prioritize it.” I’m not a gamer, but there is a dedicated graphics card too and all the latest ports (including Thunderbolt). The rest of the laptop is solid with 8GB of memory, a full HD screen, and a very fast solid state hard drive (SSD).

Similarly, this 15″ HP ENVY x360 can be configured to be around the same price with a little more memory, at a little more size and weight. I’ve grown accustomed to the lightweight laptops, so the Lenovo above is more interesting to me. My wife, on the other hand, really likes numeric keypads, so this would be a better fit for her (but extreme overkill for what she does).

We all know technology moves quickly, but either one is a tempting upgrade. I’d be upgrading from a 5th generation Core i5-5200U (3497 Passmark), that lousy 4GB memory, and a tiny 128GB SSD. That’s doubling or more in all those key areas. (I’m sure the SSD is much faster.)

I’m going to try to resist and wait for the next cycle. However, if you are in the market for a new laptop, I’d jump on these now. I think prices will only go up after the holiday season before they float back down throughout 2018.

MoviePass

I haven’t written about MoviePass yet, but it’s gotten a lot of buzz elsewhere.

MoviePass is an all-you-can watch cinema plan. When it was getting its buzz a couple of months ago, it was $10/mo. for unlimited movies per month (well limited to one per day). So if you wanted to live at the movie theater you could get your cost down to under a dollar.

Their deal now is $90 for an annual pass. That’s ~$7 a month, plus a small processing fee. So if you can see yourself going once a month (or more knowing that it’s essentially free), then this is a good deal.

I’m considering it, but I’m not sure if I have the time to take in a bunch of movies.

Old Navy For Jeans

(This is the most boring item, trust me.)

Old Navy is starting their Black Friday on Colorless Wednesday.

Their jeans are 50% off. I need to replenish my jeans. Sure, the jeans at Old Navy seem to only last a couple of years, but for around $20 I can live with that.

Kohl’s Technology Deals

Kohl’s has some great technology deals. Yes, it is the typical door buster routine, but are people really busting down Kohl’s doors? I’m surprised the place is still in business. Besides the great prices on many top items, you also get $15 in Kohl’s Cash for every $50 you spend. It should be called Kohl’s Kash, because it isn’t real money and can only be spent during a limited time in the future. As CNET’s Cheapskate points out: “[The Fitbit Blaze will] be priced at $150, which isn’t extraordinary — it was $140 on Prime Day — but it comes with $45 in Kohl’s Cash.”

So, presuming that you can find a use for $45 at Kohl’s (which I always can), it is like a $105 Fitbit Blaze.

The Kohl’s Cash is for all items in the store not just a few door busters. So as long as you find some things you like, it’s almost like getting an additional 30% off. (Not really, but kinda, right?)

RiteAid – Yes RiteAid

RiteAid has buy one get one free for “As Seen on TV” items. We’re looking at Snuggie Tails for the kids as well as the Magic Tracks. They also have a buy one, get two cereal deal. That may be interesting if they don’t jack up the prices to $5 a box (which they probably will).

These are the kinds of deals I like. I don’t expect a lot of people to be waiting forming a line to pick up these deals.

In other news, I’m thinking of including the “As Seen on TV” logo on Lazy Man and Money. I’ve looked at my website on my TV connected to a computer through an HDMI cable. If everyone else does misleading marketing I can too, right?

Military Bargain Laptop Deal

The Navy base near me is posting a special $148 Asus 14″ Intel Apollo 32GB Notebook. That’s so vague that it could be worth anywhere between $100 or $350 depending on the missing information. It also says it is a savings of $72. I did a little sleuthing and I think it is an Asus R417NA-RS01-BL which just rolls off the tongue. Some of that missing information would be Intel Celeron N3350, 32GB storage, 4GB memory. NewEgg sells it for $242 and the reviews are good (and helpful)!

I have two main uses for this Asus:

1. The main use will be for my kids to play with ABC Mouse, PBS Kids, and Scratch Jr. This is much better than giving them Daddy’s computer.

2. In a pinch, it could be Daddy’s computer. Two and a half years ago, I was able to work on $100 computer that was less powerful than this. It was an emergency situation and it wasn’t great, but it did the job.

It’s worth noting that the 4GB of memory in this computer is the same as what I have in my Dell XPS right now. Yes, I’m very bitter.

Happy Thanksgiving

I want to wish everyone out there a Happy Thanksgiving. I won’t bore you by being another blogger giving thanks for family, friends, and health, even though it’s all true.

Instead, I’d like to give a special thanks. I’d like to thank the lawyers who have helped me serve you. Over the last 11 years, there have been more than 11 million of you. When a company, in my opinion, isn’t operating in a way that serves you the consumer, I have called them out on it. I’ve never seen a company care unless Google’s algorithm decides my criticism is important for you to read. When that happens the lawsuits come because these companies are just protecting their reputation.

So I’d like to give thanks to Blish and Cavangh for representing me on writing my RainSoft Review on my family’s opinion of our personal experience. The case is still on-going, so I won’t comment on it.

Similarly, I’d like to give thanks to Mateo Fowler who stood up for me and my opinion of Le-Vel Thrive. We won as the courts ruled (by my understanding) that it was too frivolous to even be considered. The court even sanctioned Le-Vel for their actions.

Finally Joshua Koltun did an amazing job helping with the LifeVantage case. I wish that I wasn’t limited by the personal expense that further litigation would have entailed.

We’re finally winning the war against MLM as more and more law firms are realizing that the courts have ruled that these are pyramid schemes time and time again. There are some MLMs that have been sued several times this year.

Catching up After a Spending Weekend

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It was a busy weekend in the Lazy Man household. After catching up with the extended family on Thanksgiving, I turned my attention to the Black Friday deals.

I don’t see the value in waiting in long lines and “busting doors”, so I focused on the deals that were easy. Last year, that amounted to picking up a $99 laptop at Staples at midnight of Thanksgiving. I arrived 10 minutes before midnight and was out by 12:05AM.

This year, I didn’t see any such deals. Instead, my wife and I turned our attention to the local Navy base. They don’t have the same extreme deals that Best Buy or Wal-Mart have, but there are usually a few deals. We left spending nearly $300. If there was an award for unplanned spending of the week, we’d be serious contenders.

The one item that I really focused on at the Navy base was this Cuisinart Griddler. With over 5000 great reviews, I felt very confident that was going to be a quality product. A price of $50 was well worth the gamble. My wife was skeptical until she saw two of her favorite words – “dishwasher safe.” After that, she was all in. We said goodbye to a ten-year old George Foreman Grill that had the Teflon worn off and became a Griddler family. There’s a learning curve, but so far it looks like a winner.

While we were on the base, we picked up birthday and Christmas presents for the family. A lot of small things added up, which lead to some big spending. I saw that they were selling gift cards for $75 that included a $10 bonus on a purchase of $75 or more. We bought a couple of them first and used the bonuses in the next transactions to save a quick $20. The cashiers were impressed as I guess no one else thought of it.

After that, I popped into Old Navy to buy a pair of jeans because everything was 50% off. Old Navy jeans are typically cheap to begin with, but it’s really hard to be $15.

That lead to Small Business Saturday. My wife really gets into it. I cringe, because it usually means hitting the local boutiques that are outrageously priced to start with. Getting a Small Business Saturday discount seems to just bring it into the “very overpriced” range. Fortunately, this year the deals seemed to be better. We might have even got a few items fairly priced. I was mostly focused on the kids, so I wasn’t paying full attention.

I was originally going to give you my favorite Cyber Monday deals, but I’m all shopped out for today. Instead, I’ll point you to my favorite deal site, Slickdeals, which seems to have something for everyone. I use the site to find most of my deals and today there are more deals than usual.

That said, the best Cyber Monday deal I’ve seen is this this package from Studenomics. It’s every guide Martin has ever written for $17. He’s great at breaking down concepts to the things that really matter. There’s a big return for a small amount of money and a small amount of time to digest the material.

Lazy Man’s “Guide” to Black Friday

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It seems like there’s an important holiday coming up this week. If you watched any television you can’t miss the commercials for Black Friday. Car dealerships around me are having Black Friday sales for 10 days. That doesn’t even make sense.

I’ve noticed that many of the retailers are starting their Black Friday deals the Thursday before. And why not? It’s not like we have anything better to do that day. And we all know that if you want to participate in the deals you have to be present when the deals start.

So my “guide” to Black Friday is simple this… skip it. Is it really worth camping out for hours in the cold for a chance at saving $50 or $100? For me it isn’t. Is it worth getting trampled in the mad rush to grab a deal? Again no. Last year a family near me got in a car accident and two people died. The sleep-deprived driver fell asleep on the way home from Black Friday.

We are losing Thanksgiving. We may have already lost it.

It’s not just Black Friday killing Thanksgiving. As I write this, two days before Thanksgiving, I’m watching Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Why, my 1 year old seems to enjoy it? Days ago, some of the local radio stations changed their format to 24-7 Christmas music. My neighbor was putting up his Christmas decorations this afternoon.

Why on Earth would we do anything trivialize one of the best holidays of the year? Are we in that much of a rush for the holiday season that we need to skip over parades with amazing floats, turkey, stuffing, gravy, and copious amounts of football? I don’t know about you, but I want to spend that time with family. I want to take some time and actually give thanks for all the wonderful things I have. I don’t want to spend that time thinking about how I have to get in line to get the latest tablet.

If you’ve read all this and are still going to participate in Black Friday, I can’t stop you. So I might as well you give you the one deal that I would take advantage of if I was going to participate. Wal-Mart has a one-hour in-stock guarantee on 20 items. The best bargain I can see is the 60″ Vizio LED Smart HDTV that has very good reviews at Amazon. At $688, it’s a much better deal than the nearly $1000 that Amazon is charging today. Most importantly, you are guaranteed to get it. Some might be enticed by the iPad Mini with the $100 Wal-Mart gift card for $299, but I’m not. It looks like last year’s model, and the gift card brings it in the price range of this year’s Nexus 7, which is faster with much better screen resolution. (I probably should have said that, because I’d like to spend my Friday looking into how to sell shares of Apple I bought awhile back for big gains.) The 32″ television for $98 looks like a steal for a bedroom or dormroom, even though it is 720P. At that price, I’m okay with the television thinking it’s 2006.

You might find better deals elsewhere, but I prefer not to gamble when Wal-Mart is giving me a guarantee. I want to vote with my wallet to support this type of promotion, even if the retailer itself is one that is infringing on Thanksgiving.

Skip Black Friday, Double Up on the Gift Cards Freebies Instead

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Maybe it’s because my Twitter account is overloaded with personal finance bloggers, but it seems like everyone is focused on Black Friday. About a dozen years ago, I loved Black Friday, not so much anymore. Those days you didn’t have to wait in line overnight. If you showed up an hour early, you might miss out on the $499 desktop, but you’d get the items in the $100-$200 price range as well as a lesser item like a pack of 50 CD-Rs for free after rebate.

Over the last 5-7 years Black Friday has become crazy. There are people having Black Friday sales on Thanksgiving (it’s not even Friday). Kmart this year is having three separate sales. With different products going on sale at different times, the long lines, and opportunity cost of people’s time, I wonder if that many people benefit.

I say skip Black Friday. Hit up Cyber Monday from your couch before work if possible. Look at the deals that no one is talking about… the gift card freebies.

You’ve seen the gift card freebies right? At Taco Bell they’ll give a free menu item for a $20 gift card purchase. That’s around a 20% value if you get the right menu item. Retailers are competing amongst themselves to get your holiday budget. If you use a retailer on a regular basis get the gift card and collect the freebie. Make sure you use are going to use that gift card rather than let it sit in a drawer. If that’s the case, spending a little now will save you a lot more than you’d get in interest in the future. This isn’t going to help you save $10 on $100 Roku like a Black Friday deal, but you can make the money elsewhere with no hassle.

Bonus tip: If it is a restaurant that has the gift card freebie use a restaurant credit card to get the bonus when buying the card. Double bonuses is double the fun, right?