How to Set Price Alerts for Black Friday so You Don’t Go Over Budget

Annual shopping holiday Black Friday is already close to us. We'll keep you posted on all the best deals throughout the holiday shopping season. But before you buy anything, here's how to set your own prices for Black Friday and every other day.

If you're an impulse shopper, you know that shopping events like Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday can be bad. Although we know retailers use all types manipulation methods to get us to buy things we don't need still works, so this year try setting your own prices and only choosing things you already have. want buy.

How to “Set Your Own Prices” on Amazon

You can't force Amazon to cut prices at will, but you can Maybe set up an alert system that will let you know if the price of something you want to buy drops in price enough that it makes sense for you to buy it. Below is a step-by-step guide to setting your personal maximum price for any item sold on Amazon:

• Identify the items you would like to purchase and throw them into your Amazon Wishlist. Make sure your wishlist is set to “public”.

• Visit Amazon's price tracking site. CamelCamelCamel and create a free account. There are other price tracking apps and websites that more or less do the same thing –Great offers, Honey, Holdetc – so check out this review best price tracking tools if you want to compare them. Spoiler alert, though: for Amazon specifically, CamelCamelCamel wins.

• Click “Import Wishlist”. (You'll have to copy and paste the URL from your Amazon wishlist.)

• Once you do this, CamelCamelCamel will allow you to add specific maximum prices (or percentage reductions) on everything on your wish list. Enter the maximum amount you're willing to pay for each item on your list, and then you can tell it to send you an email when the price of any item drops to the spending limit you set.

• Ignore all the hype and wait for an email alert letting you know that the items you've chosen have become cheap enough for you to buy.

• Spend Black Friday with a sense of self-satisfaction and agree with yourself that you really are are the smartest man in the world. Don't even look at Amazon's website. Seriously. Well, maybe for a second. This time you will have enough willpower not to buy another one chocolate fountain or self-stirring mug with “SELF MIXING MUG” written on the side, right? Right?

How to Set Up Price Alerts at Non-Amazon Retail Stores

CamelaCamelCamel is an Amazon-only product, but other price tracking services may be used by other retailers. HoneyFor example, this is the retail service PayPal. It lists 10,000 supported retailers. If you install the Honey browser extension, you can add the item you want to buy from a seller to your account. dropdown list and it will notify you when the price drops to the level you set. You can also compare the price of the same product on the website. Here's how to set your own price:

• Create an account with Honey.

• Install the Honey browser extension.

• Find the product you want to buy on the Honey website.

• Click the “Add to List” button that appears on the product page.

• Set the discount percentage you want to see.

• Click “Add to List” to confirm your preferences.

Honey will then track the item and send you an email or push notification once the price drops to the amount you specified.

More ideas for limiting your spending

If you want to go beyond the basic technology-driven “time to buy” alert system described above, here are some ideas.

• Block ads: If you're the type of person who responds to online advertisements, you can block a lot of them with a simple tool or app. Here's our review best ad blocking software.

• Track your expenses: Do you do this with pencil and paper or use the applicationseeing how much you spend can be a powerful motivation to be more frugal. Budgeting over time may even give you a little extra so you can splurge when Black Friday rolls around if you want.

• Save up for something: Saving for something in the future – vacation, electric surfboardanything—can make it easier to resist spending now.

• Press the internal pause button: If you can get into the habit of waiting a day or two between thinking, “I want those sunglasses,” and entering your credit card number, you may find your old sunglasses are just fine.

• Set up one-to-one system: Of everything you buy or acquire, get rid of the same item (or several!) to make room for it. Knowing that something needs to be cleared out if you click “buy now” can keep you from making impulse purchases, and following this rule will keep your home less cluttered. Bonus points if you resell an item before receiving a similar one. Do money earlier expenses money and save space while you're at it.

• Consider Professional Help: It's normal and common to sometimes have a little difficulty controlling expenses, but researchers say about 6% of Americans suffer from this. compulsive buying disorder which may be part of a larger psychological problem. So if your spending is putting you in debt, you're suffering from real consequences related to your shopping habits, or you just feel like shopping might be a problem for you, talk to a professional.