With Black Friday right around the corner, shopping enthusiasts from all around the world are preparing for big spending on this shopping holiday. Black Friday gives you the perfect opportunity to buy Christmas presents, but also supply yourself with all the products you wanted throughout the year - now at a discount! To make the most out of your shopping experience on Black Friday, make sure to follow these simple yet effective tips!

Save money by using gift cards

Gift cards present one of the best and easiest ways of saving money during Black Friday. At retailers' websites or on various online shopping websites like eBay or Amazon, you will find dozens of discounted gift cards. This way, you can save money even before you make it to the store and start spending, which additionally combines with any of the discounts you will find there. Moreover, you can sometimes find gift cards that can be redeemed at several different retailers, allowing you to save money on different product categories at the same time.

If you are shopping at malls, look around whether your mall has its own gift cards that can be redeemed in any of the shops inside. These often feature additional discounts and promotions and can be even saved for later use.

Make a priority list

When on a shopping spree, you can easily get distracted and forget what you actually came to the shop for. This goes double during Black Friday, as every store will be filled with discounts and flashy promotions that can easily catch your attention. To not get lost in your shopping, make sure to prepare a list of all of the products that you need to buy. When making your list, make sure to categorize the products by store and by order of importance. This will allow you to later create a shopping plan, letting you know which stores to visit first.

Put the "must buy" products at the top of the list, making you actively look for these products in every store you visit. When sorting the products by store, take into account which stores are the closest to you. After all, spending more money on fuel just to save a couple of dollars on your purchase does not make much sense. Additionally, it might be worth noting down the opening times of each store you are planning to visit. This way, you can visit some stores just as they open, allowing you to access the best discounts which very often run out quickly after the store opens.

Follow weekly ads

One of the best sources of discounts and promotional codes are weekly ads and catalogs. You can find these at all your favorite stores, usually next to the entrance or the exit. Many retailers start advertising their Black Friday promotions as far back as a month before the holiday. To best optimize your Black Friday shopping, make sure to gather as many of these weekly ads as possible and circle or cut out the promotions that interest you the most.

If you do not want to waste paper and browse through metric tons of weekly ads, you can access them online through Frequent-Ads.com. With Frequent-Ads.com, you can browse the catalogs of all of your favorite retailers, not limited to those released during Black Friday. You can easily spot all of the best promotions that way, without having to leave your home. At Frequent-Ads.com, you can even find a list of the best promotions written down for every issue of a weekly ad to save you time and effort!

Always compare prices!

Even though a flashy sticker might tell you that you are getting a great deal out of a product, in reality, it isn't always so. Very frequently, retailers increase the prices of their in-store products during the weeks leading to Black Friday, only to put those products on a discount and sell them at regular market prices. Whenever you see a product you are interested in on a discount, compare its price with the offer of other stores.

Price comparison can be easily done online. There is a wide variety of websites that give you the option to quickly compare product prices between retailers. When comparing the prices, always look at all of the things included with your product - you can often find products at exceptionally inviting prices, only to find out they have been stripped out of crucial parts such as batteries or cables.