Voices of MainStreet: Scott Serene

The Baron(ess) of Black Friday

Dec. 3, 2010

Shopping on Black Friday? Of course I went shopping on Black Friday. But what actually saved me this year was my willingness to step up as a dad and tell the wife to leave our 18-month-old son at home. She usually takes him, but it was late and I was confident.

She hit the early stores like Toys R Us; she was there for a while and finally texted me and told me the line was wrapped all around the building and down the street and it was still before 10 p.m. She said that her mom was going to wait in line for us and get what we wanted – I mean, we only wanted to get two items from the Toys R Us Black Friday sale. And after all of that, my wife's mom got in and they were out of one thing but she did get us the other item we have been wanting for the kids.

She also hit the local Wal-Mart since they were opening at midnight for some of the deals we wanted, but again it was only 10:30 p.m. and we were only wanting a few things from there. She said there were people waiting there but she came on home.

That meant I was hitting Target for the 4 a.m. deals. Well that didn't exactly work out. I got up and made the drive to Borders to get “The Elf on the Shelf”, for which I had a 50% off coupon. The lines were crazy long at Borders – people getting the digital readers and other goodies.

I was in line for an hour after it only took me 2 minutes to get the one thing I was there for. Then I went and stood in another long line: The line for coffee. I had a coupon for a free coffee at Borders and a million others had the same coupon. I stood in that line for another hour. So after two hours and two things I was finally on my way to Target. I thank the wife for doing most of our shopping before the crazy day, because everything that she put on my list to get at Target was stuff that no one else wanted. Glass cookware, knives, pillows, all of this stuff was there and I had no sweat dripping from me from trying to wedge myself in between non-showered people to get this stuff. After a two minute wait in line I was gone.

So I have to give props to the wife for looking for deals beforehand and doing some online shopping and using coupons because we actually scored better with the way she did it this year than having me make my body do weird things while fighting for stuff the kids wanted.

We are spending less this year, thanks to the efforts of the wife. Taking advantage of pre-Black Friday deals at Toys R Us and using coupons and E-Bates, she was able to score some killer deals. We even kept an eye out for the deals after the deals so we could go back and re-buy and then return things. You have to understand that my wife is the coupon queen. A big binder full of clippings and ads and she is looking for a deal no matter what we have to do. So I feel confident in saying that we did spend less this year than we have in the past. Part of that is because I don't make as much and we just can’t afford it and part of it is from the shopping around and taking advantage of the bargains.

As far as what we are spending money on. Well we have four children all age 7 and under. We are buying toys and toys and toys. The wife and I actually made the commitment this year to buy more learning stuff. They have toys galore and what do they need more toys for? We did most of the spending on Legos. Toy Story Legos to be exact. It is going to change every year, what we spend the money on. That is how it is with kids. As they change and get older so do the wants. It is up to us as parents to make the good decisions on spending and how we use our money at Christmas time.

—Scott is a dad of four who blogs about everything from being a daddy to his love for his wife and normal issues in his everyday life. You can check out ThisDaddysBlog.blogspot.com for more.