Historically, I wait till black friday and search the ads of whats is out there.
This year, I am being proactive. I have already bought the girls new bikes and a few other items. I also need to shop for a mid December birthday for my soon to be 5 year old.
I was a lowes and home depot earlier this week. They opened up their black friday sales items earlier this year. These bargain items are all ready picked over. I typically go tool shopping for myself this time of the year. I bought a new portable table saw, shop vac, and $200 of other small hand tools. One thing I noticed is that the online prices for some of these items are higher than they are instore. Also expect the prices of the typical things to be 25% higher than last year.
Walmart is already got their black friday sales out. I’m going during my lunch hour to see what they got.
I am looking, my wife wants a range finder for the golf course so she doesn’t have to rely on mine.
Other than Garmin, what brands do you suggest (I have a Garmin and love it, just looking at options).
And would you suggest a wearable (I have a wearable) or a clip on?
I ordered some USB cables and battery for my car’s key fob from Amazon both are over 2 weeks wait. Usually I’d get both in a day or two.
As far as Christmas goes my nieces and nephews get gift cards and my wife’s done with the rest of the shopping. My wife and I stopped exchanging gifts years ago.
I am not a huge fan of gift cards. I often don’t use them all or it takes years before I do. I probably have half a dozen gift cards in my wallet.
Cash or gift cards are a great way to do it this year. Let the person wait till the shipping crates arrive late and use them during an epic after Christmas sale. As a kid, my parents gave me cash to allow me to get exactly what I wanted. My girls are still too young for that.
That is what I used to do.
I got the Garmin through work for a fitness challenge several years back and I really like it.
She is now addicted to it and cant fathom the concept of pacing off your distance from the markers.
I don’t have to do a lot of Christmas shopping. I am going to get my grandson a bicycle for Christmas. I was talking to the guys at the bike shop and told them I wanted to get him a good bike, but I couldn’t justify $400 for a bike he will outgrow in a year. They said that they had a lot of used kids bikes, so we’re going up to the shop one day to see what size he needs. I’ll just give my daughter a Visa gift card because I have no idea what she wants.
This reminds me of when my kids were younger and “Santa” got them bikes.
Santa’s helper was about 4 beers deep putting them together Christmas Eve and couldn’t get one of the pedals on. He didn’t realize until the next morning that one of the pedals was left handed threaded.
So the next morning when I realized what was wrong and put the pedal on, my son said, “wow dad, you should get a job as Santa’s helper, you are able to fix what they left”.
I cursed when I had to put my daughters big wheel together. When I was a kid, my parents bought bikes for all 4 of the kids. They had them out in the “Florida room” and everything else was under the tree…they wanted us to find them when we went to the kitchen for breakfast. One problem though…one of my presents was a powerful flash light…I turned it on and shined it towards the Florida room. The rest of the presents were opened after breakfast.
I don’t want to sound unamerican but not sure I’ll buy one gift this year. I’ll fly my son home and I consider that his gift, I’m an amazing dad to my daughter and I pay her $1500 credit card bill every month. That’s her gift.
I don’t buy into Hallmark holidays, I’m nice to the people I love year around.