Cheddar News spoke with consumer finance Expert Andrea Woroch to find out the best tips to secure a bargain for Black Friday shopping. 

Cheddar News spoke with consumer finance Expert Andrea Woroch to find out the best tips to secure a bargain for Black Friday shopping. Woroch also shared the best ways to utilize resources such as coupons and cash back deals to get the most out of holiday shopping savings.&nbsp;

How To Find The Best Black Friday Deals 

well as the holiday season gets underway, shoppers are gearing up for those famous black friday sales but amid historic inflation and supply chain snarls, it is possible there will be declining consumers desire to get out and shop while retailers that are coping with an uncertain economy and a possible recession on the horizon also may not be as eager to dole out as many hot he bargains as years before. So how can a consumer ensure that they're finding a deal that is worth the price joining me now to break it all down as consumer finance expert Andrea war rock Andrea, thanks so much for coming on. And how can consumers sniff out a good deal from one that isn't really gonna save them that much this time of year. Thank you so much for having me. I know black friday it seems like it's more confusing than ever because we saw sales roll out in mid october and there have just been nonstop sales through all of november essentially. But there are some deals to be had coming up after thanksgiving and through cyber monday and I'm gonna walk you through that. So number one, you really need to know what to focus on buying and maybe what to wait on. So the things that you will find good deals on include TVs, personal gadgets, smart home devices and small kitchen gadgets. A couple of good examples, I saw you could get $50 off the Xbox series. S at Target plus a free $50 gift. So I love those free gift card deals and then 46% off the Apple Watch S. E. Model at walmart now when it comes to things to skip, I found that clothing, footwear and beauty are actually better buys on cyber monday. You also want to hold off on toys for at least the last two weeks leading up to christmas, you'll find bigger discounts then and then if you have travel on your radar mark your calendar for travel deal Tuesday that's on november 29th, the day after cyber monday hopper, which analyzes prices and offers travel deals has found that that Tuesday offers more deals on hotels, airfares and car rentals and cyber than black friday and cyber monday combined. And you can find deals like $100 off flights, 50% off hotels, 20% off select car rentals. That's a good day to shop for those travel gifts. Okay, really good insight there. Andrea and let's say consumers do have a few items that they've been eyeing, they know what they want. What's the best way to go about researching a product. Okay, so number one, now that you know what you want to buy, You need to start looking at the price history of a product. You can go to a site like camel camel camel dot com. This will show you the price history for up to 120 days and that could help you make a better buying decision and determine if that black friday deal is in fact as good as that retailers trying to tell you because I have seen retailers in flight inflate that original price to make that Doorbuster deal look like a better value. You also want to set sail alert, There's a tool called karma. You can add items to your wish list and then it will alert you when it goes on sale. I also tell people to rethink that rebate. I see a lot of black friday deals saying, hey you can get this for 50% off but you have to pay upfront mail in the rebate. However, if you can't complete those steps, maybe that requires you to cut out the barcode on the product, then you're not gonna be, especially if it's a gift, you're not gonna get your money back. So in that respect you're better off maybe getting um instant savings from another retailer. May be paying just a little more though and then use a cash back app like fetch rewards, which will then give you money back on your purchase. So you're still getting that rebate in a way and I love fetch rewards. You just take a picture of your receipt and they will give you points which are good towards free gift cards to a variety of stores that you can then use to buy those last minute gifts. Okay, rewards are great Andrea what about coupons, I feel like I've been getting more and more coupons in the mail these days. How do you hack the coupon system? Yes. So retailers know that a lot of shoppers are looking for those coupons in order to complete their purchase this year more than ever. So there are a lot of deals. Number one sign up for your favorite store, email or text alerts. This way you get those exclusive coupons sent to your right to you, to your email or phone. I also like going to a deal aggregator like coupon cabin dot com. They aggregate coupons by store name just makes it really easy to go in and pull a coupon code when you need it plus you can get cash back. And so I love that for anybody who's planning to do their shopping online. This black friday, a great example of a coupon cabin. They had 35% off at old Navy plus 3% cash back at Macy's, they were offering 10 per .25% cash back on your purchase plus 20% off. So you don't want to miss out on that cash back cash back. Always a good thing. That's for sure. Do you think some of these inflationary pressures Andrea will start to percolate and really kind of show their skin here I guess during the holiday shopping season, both for consumers and for companies, you know a lot of people have been saying that they're gonna be cutting back and shopping less. But what we're seeing is retailers response to that is offering even more sales, just more frequency of sales because they know people can't resist a deal that they're gonna only shop if something is on sale. And so I think it'll be interesting to see how many more deals come out throughout christmas. I think this might be the year where we see bigger sales, the closer christmas gets so rebates, I know we kind of hit on a little bit earlier, but I'm kind of surprised to hear that rebates are really an option around the holidays, not necessarily something that I've heard of before, but when navigating the rebate process Andrea what do consumers need to know the number one thing is to read the fine print. I think that some of the Doorbuster deals are a little misleading because it advertises the low price you would get after you mail in the rebate. But if you miss that fine print at the bottom of the deal, a lot of people don't realize that they have to you know, follow all these steps to send in the bar code or receipt and all this stuff to get their money back which could take weeks and a lot of people lose their receipts and just forget to take those steps And ultimately spend more. So you really just need to read the fine print and that just goes across the board, reading the fine print for return policies, price match policies and if there are potential restocking fees and that's really important on anything like an electronic or appliance. And one more thing that I want to kind of give a cautionary tip beware of those store card discounts that I'm seeing right now. Gap was offering an extra 35 5% off your sale if you open up a store card and I know that's really tempting. But those store cards have high interest rates, low credit limits limits and really limited options for earning rewards. You're much better off getting a general use cash back card because you can earn a lot more money back across all your holiday purchases than whatever you get for that one time discount. And in that respect I would say look get a flat rate cash back card like the bread cash back american Express card. It's gonna give you an unlimited 2% back on everything you buy with no spending limit, no store restrictions and that's just gonna help you rack up a lot of extra cash to put back in your pocket after the holidays. Okay great advice Andrea you're a bevy of information. Thank you for joining ahead of of course. Black friday that's Andrea war a consumer finance expert