As a hardcore-non-mainstream-reduce-reuse-recycle-rather-than-consume-raw materials advocate I should be posting on here about all of the Buy Nothing Day activities planned for the day after Tofurky day. However, this year I have to say that I'm taking a different approach. Rather than not consuming on that one day of the year, I suggest you reduce your consumption on all other days of the year and on that one day, known as Black Friday (to consumer advocates), known as Buy Nothing Day (in the anarchist/enviro/voluntary simplicity movement) and Fur Free Friday (in the animal rights/animal welfare world) consume the majority of your products.
Why would I actually suggest people ever consume, much less on that particular day? Because if you are savvy about how you spend your hard earned money you can get some mighty fantastic deals this time of year and therefore stretch the power of your spending dollar much further than at other times of the year.
For example, this past week I broke down and purchased a cell phone. I finally had to accept that they have their advantages and that it isn't cell phones themselves breaking down the moral fabric of our society, it is the users of those cell phones. I scoured the web for weeks to find what I considered to be a deal worthy of my purchase and finally settled on a $14.99 phone (that previously retailed for $49.99) with free shipping and a $5.00 buy-up worth $20.00 of airtime. The phone was delivered Thursday night and I'm super happy with the look, the feel, etc. It is a great basic phone with excellent volume and sound and Virgin Mobile is ratest the highest in customer satisfaction for pre-paid plans (and don't even get me started about the ridiculousness of signing a contract for any technology based items).
The other purchase I made with my frankly not-so-hard-earned money (all of these purchases were made from eBay profits of peddling Goodwill purchased toys and collectibles) is a laptop. My poor home PC needs to be retired and I will probably eventually get a Mac Mini to use at home but I really wanted a laptop being that Ptown is very soon going to have free WI-FI city wide and within days will have free WI-FI downtown and close in on the East side. What this means is rather than battle with the ridiculous firewalls of my work internet I can surf willy nilly on my laptop during my lunch and while waiting for the bus. The deal I found on laptops that I couldn't resist was with Dell. They have a bare bones basic notebook with CD burner that I purchased for $499 with free shipping, a free (and probably crappy but free nonetheless) printer and six months of free internet (that alone will drop the price another $60 for me because I'll be able to cancel my current dial up). My home computer is a Dell and while they don't rock in the consumer assistance mode like they once did, they do sell quality products. I was gonna provide the link to the laptop I purchased but after just looking at their site realize that the deal is no longer available. Sorry, you snooze, you lose.
My next purchase is gonna be a camera. I pretty much already know what I'm getting and how much it'll cost me and let me tell you that I found the same camera at twenty different places with the prices ranging over $125 difference for the very same product! Research using Google and save yourself some dough. It took me a month to raise enough money to buy a laptop and cell phone with eBay. I figure if I get these Lego blocks listed, some model horses, some Raggedy Ann dolls, more Fisher Price Little People, etc. I should be posting high resolution pictures here in no time.
Happy shopping.
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