Black Friday doorbusting madness!

I'm not sure this actually qualifies as "money-saving" strategies, since I know we spent more than we meant to, but here goes:

My wife and I got up this morning at 3:00 a.m. to go doorbusting. Armed with clippings of our most-wanted items from Staples, Mervyns, and Target, we bundled up and set out to get some good, cheap stuff.

First on the list was Mervyns, where we got a KitchenAid mixer and a jewelry box for my mother-in-law. Hardly anyone (30 people at the most) showed up at Mervyns, probably because it's on the "bad" side of town, and it had also started raining at about 4:00 a.m. They opened the doors exactly at 5:00, and we had to restrain ourselves from running down the aisles.

Next came Staples, where we were after a $30 200GB hard drive, a $10 512MB flash drive, a free-after-rebate paper shredder, a $16 DVD-RW drive, and a free-after-rebate surge protector. They mercifuly opened the doors about a half-hour early, and we were in and out of there in less than ten minutes. Unfortunately, my dad went to the same store at the time they were supposed to have opened the doors, and everything was already gone. Sorry, Dad. Better luck next time.

Finally, we went to Target for a new bagless vacuum cleaner. We paid $37 for it, and I can't wait to try it out.

The moral of the story, kids, is that even a die-hard budgeting freak like me can let loose once in a while and have fun shopping and spending. It didn't hurt, though, that this was the cheapest I'd ever find any of this stuff.

I'm still enjoying my Thanksgiving vacation, and I hope you are, too.