The Millionaire Next Door

Black Friday Blues and Bologna Revisited


No one ever got rich by camping out for two or three days to be first in line for Black Friday sales events.  Or as I said in an earlier blog:

Two days camping out in line, that’s 48 hours or nearly 5 times the number of hours a millionaire next door allocates per month to planning and managing his investments.  The correlation is simple.  The less you shop the less you spend.  Never regret missing out on a so-called “sale.”

I recently went back and reviewed the essays written by 313 self employed millionaire business owners.  The topic was:  suggestions about how young people might become economically successful.  Nowhere in these essays was it mentioned that  “taking advantage of Black Friday or any other kind of “super day” sales” would help one become wealthy.   

Also, studies done by other researchers have found that often Black Friday prices are not in fact the lowest for any given year.  So on Thursday, relax and give thanks for your blessings.  That 66″ flat screen TV will be “on sale” again and again! 

4 thoughts on “Black Friday Blues and Bologna Revisited”

  1. Dr. Stanley, as you know how they say in the South, “Say amen, brother!”. My wife spent her life chasing the ultimate sale and never being satisfied in her chase. Just a small amount of the money spent on “sales” will create a virtual millionaire.

  2. I agree completely, Dr. Stanley. Black Friday drives me crazy. I usually jump on youtube that day and watch the Target and Walmart stampedes. So, my question to them is this; where is all the money you are saving? Are you investing it, do you have a special savings account where you accumulate this savings? We all know the answer to that….NO. They just buy more crap with the so-called savings and overspend and charge up the cards. Same thing, different year.

  3. Black Friday sales make even LESS sense in the era of the Internet.

    You can sit in your living room and do all of your shopping, with great deals, on places like Amazon — I think some people actually enjoy the ridiculousness and “competition” of Black Friday stampedes.

  4. I agree 100%. So often we hear from marketers, “Save X%!” or “Save $X!”, when actually the consumer is not saving anything…he or she is spending-though it’s less.
    Buying something, even if it is on sale, is still spending, so it’s the exact opposite of saving money.

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