Five days from now, on Thursday, November 19, Amazon starts its Black Friday Week sale and Best Buy starts ten straight days of Black Friday doorbusters. Walmart’s second round begins November 23. Black Friday itself is November 27 and Cyber Monday is November 30. Every one of those events will put a crossed-out price next to a red one, and none of them will tell you what the item cost on a normal Saturday in mid-November.
That’s the job for this weekend. Write down what you plan to buy, record what it costs right now, and set alerts that tell you when it gets cheaper. It takes a couple of hours, and it changes how Black Friday week feels. Instead of scrolling deal pages and deciding on the spot, you’re waiting for specific numbers on specific things.
Here’s how I’d split the work over the two days.
Saturday morning: make the list short and exact
Start with people, not products. Write the name of everyone you’re buying for, then the one or two things you plan to get each of them, then the household purchases you’ve been putting off until the sales (a vacuum, a mattress, a new laptop). Keep it to things you’d buy this season even without a sale. Anything you added only because it might get cheap is an impulse buy waiting for an excuse.
Then make each line precise. “Headphones for Sam” is a wish. “Sony WH-1000XM5, black” is something you can track. For anything with a plug, write the full model number from the manufacturer’s site, because stores sometimes sell lookalike versions for Black Friday with a slightly different model number and slightly worse specs. For clothes and toys, write the size, color and the exact set or edition.
Finally, give each item a walk-away price: the most you’ll pay for it this season. This is separate from whatever discount you hope to get. If a deal shows up above that number, you skip it, even if the banner says 40% off.
Saturday afternoon: record today’s prices
Look up each item at the two or three stores where you’d actually buy it and write the prices down, with the date. A notes app works, and so does a spreadsheet. The point is a record you made yourself, before the sale pages start telling you what the “regular” price was.
Then check how the price has moved. Amazon now shows this on its own pages: in its Black Friday announcement, the company says you can tap “Price History” on any product page to see up to 365 days of pricing. For other stores, third-party trackers fill the gap. The lowest price from the last few months is often more useful than today’s price, because it shows you what the store has already been willing to charge.
Here’s what one line of the sheet might look like, with round example numbers:
| Item and model | Today, Store A | Today, Store B | Lowest in past 90 days | Alert at | Walk-away |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Robot vacuum, exact model number | $300 | $320 | $240 | $240 | $260 |
In that example, a Black Friday price of $250 is fine but not special, since the vacuum already sold for $240 earlier in the fall. A price of $199 is the one worth jumping on. Without the 90-day low, both would look like the same “deal.”
Sunday: set the alerts
An alert only helps if it reaches you and fires at the right number. Use as few tools as you can get away with, and give each one a target price instead of “any drop.”
- Amazon lists. Save every Amazon item to one list (a dedicated “Black Friday” list keeps it clean). Amazon says the deal widget on your lists page surfaces active deals on saved items, and that you can ask Alexa for Shopping to set deal alerts on a list. Amazon also offers Auto-Buy, which completes a purchase when a price target is met. I’d leave that off for gifts, since your plans can change faster than the price does.
- Google’s Track price. When you’re signed in to your Google account, product cards in Google Search show a Track price button. You can pick the size or color and set an optional target price, and Google alerts you when the price drops. It’s the easiest way to watch one item across several stores at once.
- A dedicated tracker for Amazon. Camelcamelcamel sends free email alerts when an Amazon item hits a price you choose, and its price charts are a quick second opinion on Amazon’s own history.
- Store apps, only where they matter. If you plan to buy from Target, Walmart or Best Buy, sign in to the app, save your items, and allow notifications from that one app until December. Turn them off afterward.
Set each alert at your target price, not at your walk-away price. The walk-away number is the ceiling. The alert should go off at a price you’d be happy to pay.
How low to set the target
Nobody can promise a specific Black Friday price, but there’s a reasonable starting point. Adobe’s 2026 holiday forecast puts the season’s deepest discounts at about 30% off listed prices during Cyber Week, after smaller cuts earlier in November. Its category peaks run from 18% for appliances and furniture to 30% for electronics.
So for most items, an alert set 20% to 30% below today’s price is realistic, and anything deeper is a bonus. If the 90-day low you found is already below that, use the 90-day low instead. Some items fall much further (Amazon’s early sale was already advertising up to 65% off its own devices), while premium brands that rarely discount may never reach your number. That’s fine. An alert that never fires has still kept you from overpaying.
Sunday night: write three rules on the list
A wish list fails in a predictable way: during Black Friday week, the alerts and deal emails pull you toward things that were never on it. Writing down a few rules in advance makes it easier to say no at 11 p.m. on a Thursday.
- If it’s not on the list, it waits a day. A genuinely good deal on something unplanned will usually still be around the next morning. Lightning-style deals are the exception, and they’re also the ones built to rush you.
- Check the seller before the price. On Amazon, Walmart.com and Best Buy’s site, the same listing can be sold by a marketplace seller with different return terms. Make sure the cheap offer is from the store itself or the brand.
- Know the return window before you buy early. Amazon’s extended holiday returns run to January 31, 2027 for most things ordered since November 1 (January 15 for Apple products). Best Buy runs its own holiday price guarantee on its prices. If you buy something this week and it drops later, those policies are your way back to the lower price: at Amazon that means returning and rebuying, at Best Buy it means asking for the difference.
The dates your alerts should be ready for
You don’t need a full calendar for this, just the days when prices on your list are most likely to move:
- Through Sunday, November 15: Walmart’s early Black Friday deals.
- Thursday, November 19: Amazon’s Black Friday Week begins and runs through November 30, with daily themed deal drops for 12 days. Best Buy’s ten days of Black Friday doorbusters start the same day.
- Monday, November 23: Walmart’s Black Friday Deals event, through November 29.
- Friday, November 27, and Monday, November 30: Amazon plans two rounds of new deals on each of these days: one right at midnight Pacific, another eight hours later. Walmart’s Cyber Monday event runs November 30 through December 2.
Put those in your calendar with a reminder to open your list, not the store’s homepage. If an alert has already fired by then, you’ll know because you bought the thing. If it hasn’t, you’ll see exactly how far each item still is from your number, and you can decide in a minute instead of an hour.
One last step before you close the laptop: add up the walk-away prices. If the total is more than you want to spend this season, cut items now, while it’s a calm decision. It’s much harder to do when the doorbusters go live on Thursday.
