November 24th, the day after Thanksgiving, will be this year’s Black Friday – the day when retailers traditionally open their doors early and offer incredible bargains in the hope that we’ll jam into the stores and start off the holiday spending season with a bang.

Every year, the commercials and the hype for Black Friday and the holidays start earlier and earlier. I saw Santa on a tv commercial before Halloween this year. Ugh!

According to research by the National Retail Federation, the hoopla is paying off. Last year, some 145 million of us spent $27.8 billion in stores and online during the weekend after Thanksgiving. That’s up over 20% from 2004, when we “only” spent $22.8 billion.

If you’re eager to plan your shopping spree, there are plenty of sites that will get your mouth watering with the upcoming sales possibilities. For example, here are three sites that claim to be “official” Black Friday sites:

1. The Official Black Friday Deals Site
2. The Official Site for the Hottest Day of the Year
3. The Official Site for 2006 Black Friday Ads

Watch Out!
Before you head out the door, be sure to follow this sage advice from CreditBlogger’s Editor, Emily Davidson, who says, "Don&39;t go overboard. Just because it is on sale, doesn&39;t make it a good gift or something you need to buy."

For more tips on surviving the Black Friday chaos, attend Emily’s Black Friday Boot Camp.

Not Born to Shop?
If the mere thought of the mobs at the mall make you shudder, you are not alone. Join me and many others by spending Black Friday in a very different way: Celebrate Buy Nothing Day!

Folks around the world who are fed up with excess consumption and materialism don’t buy anything for 24 hours. Some try to convince others to do likewise by holding eco-fairs in schools, demonstrating at malls, putting up flyers, and/or distributing press releases – anything and everything they can dream up to get us thinking about our over-spending.

My activist days are long behind me, so my Buy Nothing Day will be low-key. I will go out of my way to talk to some of my loved ones about gift-giving alternatives, like my all-time favorite, the gift of time. And I’ll winnow down my “re-gift” pile – all that stuff people bought me that I’ll never use - by giving some away via my local online recycling group. (Click here to “re-gift” in a group near you.)

How to Take Advantage of the Black Friday Sales and Celebrate Buy Nothing Day, Too
Buy Nothing Day is celebrated in the US and Canada on Black Friday. But for the rest of the world, Saturday, November 25th , is the day to stay out of the stores. So even if you can&39;t resist getting malled on Black Friday, you can jump on the Buy Nothing Day bandwagon on Saturday -- we’re one world after all, right?