“Who buys an umbrella anyway? You can get them for free at the coffee shop in those metal cans.” – Seinfeld
I never understood why people got attacked by sharks. Can’t they hear the music?
Black Friday is easy to make fun of, but I won’t (so much) this year. As other people go nuts over shopping, I get to sleep in on a Friday morning and not go shopping. It’s a win-win: other people get to do what they want to do, and I don’t have to join them.
I can see the appeal – the idea of, perhaps, getting a deep discount on something they wanted to buy anyway is attractive. And economizing by not wasting money is a very good thing, especially if you’re able to afford something that you normally couldn’t buy. By not participating, though, I save 100% in every store.
I have no idea how well the sales figures will be on Black Friday, 2020. I expect that the economy is significantly weaker than people imagine. Multiple shutdowns for Coronavirus seem to have taken a major toll on the economy, so I’m not sure how many people are going to want to spend extra for new cooking gadgets. I know that there’s a mask mandate in most places, but please be aware: around here they expect you to wear pants, too.
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and flies like a duck, it’s probably a government surveillance drone.
Many retailers, including our local shopping choice, Wal-Mart®, were closed on Thanksgiving.
As we all know – if there’s a buck in it, stores will stay open. That is, after all, why they’re in business. Someone did the math and figured out that it wouldn’t make sense to be open on Thanksgiving this year. That should tell you a lot about where the economy is.
The real economy.
The idea that the Dow-Jones® Industrial Average (DJIA) just hit a record 30,000 should also tell you something – the economy has split. FaceBook® is doing so well that they’re still hiring Congressmen. As several astute readers here have noted – the DJIA seems to be entirely disconnected from the reality of the actual economy most people have to work in, even though once upon a time there really was a connection.
But there is a connection between Black Friday and Christmas. Several people I know complete all of their Christmas shopping either on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Businesses count on this behavior to make a profit for the year, although big businesses (Amazon®, Wal-Mart©, etc.) have already had a great year.
If you used your COVID stimulus check to buy baby chickens, did you get your money for nothing and your chicks for free?
The Mrs. and I no longer get very excited about Christmas presents – we’re fortunate that we have most of our needs met and the best gifts are the small ones that require some thought, like when The Mrs. bought me that book on anti-gravity. I just couldn’t put it down!
The Boy seems generally content, and when I ask him what he wants, the answer is generally, “I’ll think about it.” Pugsley still has a list.
Well, not a list. A dozen lists. He emailed me the first one. Of course, knowing him, I entirely ignored the list. Never even opened it.
Why?
Because there was a new and entirely different list the next day. And a new one the day after that. Finally, he seemed settled.
I named my iPad® Titanic, so when it was updating it said, “Titanic is syncing.”
“I want an iPad®.”
“Why don’t you take my old one? I never use it. Enjoy.” It had originally been given to me by a Chinese friend – I do love homemade presents.
“Wait, what?” After complaining that it was the 2015 model, he finally accepted that making do with an old iPad® and something else for Christmas was actually a pretty good deal. Honestly, I think he’ll remember that more than getting a new iPad™.
Like I said, our family is in a good place, but we know that not everyone is. I expect that there will be a lot less spent on gifts this Christmas. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The best parts of healthy relationships aren’t material. Long after a gift has worn out or been lost, the benefits of a real relationship remain.
If Schrödinger’s cat went on a crime spree, would he be wanted dead and alive?
I expect that the recession is far from over. I also think that we’ve moved from a period of relative plenty into something . . . new.
New doesn’t mean bad. New means different.
And if that meant that Black Friday stopped being a materialist holiday?
We might all be better off.
We seem to have imported your Black Friday as well here. I can’t remember when I first heard of it, but it is less than five years now. We don’t have Thanksgiving anyway, so it seems a little lost. I notice that full Christmas decorations have been up everywhere since the beginning of the month. I imagine it is an attempt to take our minds off everything else. I cant remember seeing decorations before December before. Our village puts them up earlier, but they were not switched on until December. This year everything is lit already.
What is really weird is the juxtaposition of the Grim Reaper or a scary looking Skeleton standing next to Saint Nick in some of the stores near the end of October. Plus they are both animated and vying for primacy of shoppers’ attention.
We had Christmas decorations up in the stores here on November 1. No, I’m not joking.
I think Black Friday is a last gasp of retailers.
I am really saddened that Christmas music is played over the Halloween closeout bargains and now Thanksgiving is blown past on the calendar as a (now racist) afterthought. Several years ago when they started opening the stores on Thanksgiving Day (first in the evening, then earlier and earlier in the day year by year) and stopped giving the retail employees the whole day off – we lost a very valuable day of nationwide reflection. Now one of the only places to get a decent moment of contemplation on Thanksgiving is here on WilderWealthyWise. I really appreciate that, even if John follows it up with his stern TimeTreasureTalent sermon that even Cotton Mather would have been proud of. Makes me feel guilty I haven’t invented hyper-quantum graphene nanofabric Schrodinger bikinis yet, that are both there and not. Maybe someday. Sigh.
John, you should really run the Amazon experiment. Being the first to definitively answer such an age-old epistemological question is nothing to joke about. 🙂
I’d probably be more like Nylon Mather.
Ohh, Schrodinger bikinis. I’m not sure if I’ve seen those?
Today’s ZH article on Black Friday is too good not to be shared here….
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/rabo-traditional-retailers-outlook-indeed-black
*** BEGIN EXCERPT ***
Nigel: I think he’s right, there is something about this, that’s so black, it’s like; “How much more black could this be?”…and the answer is: “None, none… more black.”
Who can argue with the immortal wisdom on Spinal Tap, and what else needs to be said about today? This is Black Friday in the US, and there have been None More Black. (For those younger readers who haven’t seen Spinal Tap, ‘Smell the Glove’ was a pure black LP with nothing written on it at all, title, band-name, tracks, etc., just pure shiny black on both sides; for those who haven’t seen an LP, it was a 12” vinyl disk inside an artistic cover that was how most rock music was stored before CDs and on-line music, and was highly tactile and collectible; and those who haven’t seen rock music, it was hairy guys with guitars, bass, and drums making a lot of great noise; and to link all three in a life-imitating-art kind of way, see Metallica’s 1991 album ‘Metallica’.)
It’s none more black not just because of the grim Covid backdrop; not just due to the crazy, crazy bargains on offer; not just down to the desire by those who have not been spending much in 2020 to splurge in a US cultural meme best captured by the South Park ‘Black Friday’ trilogy (episodes 7, 8, and 9 of season 17); but rather because Black Friday is going to be more online than ever, and so for traditional retailers the outlook is indeed black (one can imagine a future version of this daily: “For those younger readers who haven’t seen shops…”);
*** END EXCERPT ***
I fondly remember rock, LPs and even John’s recently discussed A-and-B side 45s – all played on my old 1971 Christmas gift brown GE Wildcat, lovingly purchased by my parents in one of those old Service Merchandise stores with gigantic plate glass windows that wouldn’t last ten seconds in today’s woke world. Those were indeed the good old days. 🙂
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-GE-General-Electric-Wildcat-Record-Player-Portable-Turntable-Stereo/284070148375?hash=item4223e67917:g:oFoAAOSwa9NfpMyn
Lost about 800 LPs in a fire around 25 yrs ago. Since then, I’ve found a few records at yard sales and a few at the same place I found my stereo system. (For you younger folks, a stereo system was several components and speakers that could blast your ears off when played at high volume. Military guys stationed overseas used to spend copeus amounts of money on their stereo systems.)
Mine was a Kenwood receiver with a Technics 5 disc CD player, Yamaha dual cassette deck and a Technics direct drive semi-auto turn table, blasted through two pairs of Bose speakers and a pair of KLH speakers. The components and Bose I got from the dump before someone could throw them out and the KLH speakers were given to me by a client. I also found about 100 cassette tapes someone was throwing out.
Good article. We did buy The Mrs.’ parents a stereo a few years ago. It has Bluetooth. They don’t know what that is.
I’ve been trying for years to encourage The Missus to cut back on Christmas gifts. She doesn’t go crazy, but there’s always more than I think is necessary. This year I might actually succeed, since business is slow to non-existent.
Fortunately, I still have my wood shop, and compared to a new iPhone, wood is a bargain. So building a couple shelves and other whatnots sounds like a good way to spend all that extra time I seem to have lately.
The New Economy is looking a lot like the Late 19th-Early 20th Century Economy from my point of view, except with the Internet and indoor plumbing.
Never sell indoor plumbing short.
I think our holidays will be mellow. But, it’s 2020 . . . so who can say???
Most of us are re-assessing our buying habits and life in general, and, often coming to the conclusion that we have too damn much stuff.
The requirement to stay home has resulted in weeding out a lot of not-used junk, and allowing us time to think about what we really need – and what we don’t.
So, I would expect that Consumer Society – literally started during the Eisenhower years, and continued ever since – is on its last legs. We can’t even give away our junk anymore – most charity stores are filled with to the brim.
What will replace it? Who knows? I expect that a LOT of the financial institutions will need to re-think their corporate strategies, and some of them will fold.
The international corporations will take the biggest hit. I wouldn’t bet on Amazon to survive – they may have had a good year in volume, but they still don’t make a great enough ROI.
What the hell. My kids have established themselves in useful trades (the 2 girls are teachers, and may experience some changes in their lives, but one is a special ed teacher – they are always in short supply, and the other is a science teacher – again, there will be a need – not sure just how that will work out, but not worried). My son is an electronic repairmen (the industry-level equipment), and is also getting quite accomplished at rehabbing, having gotten practice with his own aging home. So, I have some confidence he will be able to make a living for himself (particularly as he is also frugal).
The grasshoppers of our society are likely to face a bleak future. Likewise, those that failed to prepare for an economic downturn. Those that lived on credit and spent big – Hoh, boy! They’re going to fall far and fast.
I’ve spent a long time trying to reduce my possession overload. I won’t bore everyone but earlier in the year when we all thought Covid19 was the black death (instead of just the flu) the only possessions I valued was what I could carry
Yeah – how long can a society last if no one has saved for a rainy day, when the monsoon hits?
Tough times coming. But that’s Monday’s post.
Normally twitter is the most useless thing that I have visited. However there are some interesting people that use it to distribute their info. I found one good care via Revolver today. It points to https://mobile.twitter.com/GoPdetractor/status/1331782349554659329
This guy is yelling about what John is talking about today on wasting talent and time.
I gave up on Twitter a while back – my blood pressure thanks me.
But this?
Ahhh, classic Alex.
Prior to retirement, I wondered how we would live with less because of decades of spending habits beyond health insurance and related plus taxes. Fortunately out to eat was eliminated as mentioned earlier.
But the miscellaneous category still seems to spring to life from nowhere even in retirement (darn that car, doesn’t it know I’m retired!) and yeah there’s some stuff we’re hoping to buy on Black Friday.
This split between the real economy and the stock market is wearing on our country. We can’t have massive food lines and the taunt of new stock market highs indefinitely. As the song says in “And Justice for All”, “There’s somethin’ funny goin’ on”.
A new world is coming, IMHO the transition from a time of improved generational plenty for future American generations began in 1971 then was subsequently amplified by 2008 and 2020. I remain hopeful that human ingenuity and exotic technology will save the day but it might be more realistic to “collapse now and avoid the rush” as commentator JMG suggested in 2012.
We will see bigger changes than in any point in our lives in the next decade.
Hang on!
And yet, I hold hope:
* Walter “Jenna” Talackova, was a Miss Canada contestant, but was dis-qualified for his ‘trans-gender’ status.
He hired a lawyer named Gloria Allred to fight for his ‘right’ to appear in the traditionally all-female competition, but was re-dis-qualified because he was “too peculiar”, but remained in TheSpotlight as a ‘televisionprogramming personality’.
Recently, Walter aka “Jenna” noticed his ratings slipping, so he issued a press-release announcing he is a “vegan, and PETA activist”.
See?
Hope!
Ha! If only he did cross-fit and was a bicyclist, he’d be the most annoying person in the world!
And yet, I hold hope:
* Walter “Jenna” Talackova, was a Miss Canada contestant, but was dis-qualified for his ‘trans-gender’ status.
He hired a lawyer named Gloria Alred to fight for his ‘right’ to appear in the traditionally all-female competition, but was re-dis-qualified because he was “too peculiar”, but remained in TheSpotlight as a ‘televisionprogramming personality’.
Recently, “Jenna” noticed his ratings slipping, so he issued a press-release announcing he is a “vegan, and PETA activist’.
See?
Hope!
There’s nothing special about Black Friday this year. Who thinks paying 1/2 price for merch is a bargain when the same juicy loot has been free for most of the year?
70% of GDP is retail, and Americans have been drawing on their savings (that they spectacularly built in the first couple of months of corona-chan) to keep their spending where they are used to.
How long before those savings accounts are tapped out?
January and February will be crunch time IMO. We’ve got 4 weeks of coasting and spending to Christmas, then three weeks before the Bill’s come due.
Yup. We didn’t even make it to the store, but I sent The Boy and Pugsley to get some Cool Whip for pumpkin pie.
Its 2020 and you are spot on even if stated in a diminutive manner. I despise the materialism and lack of discussion of the meaning of the season. Maybe he is coming back, it is 2020 you know.
It has been more meaningful at our house, so far. Fingers crossed it says that way.
Nobody made a dime off of us here on Black Friday and I can guarantee the same thing for Cyber Monday too.
We are going to run lean this year. The Wifely Unit pretty much already has what she needs to get for everyone without leaving the house. She starts in August I think.
All I want is a gift card to Harbor Freight and all she wants so far is a couple of jugs of Baileys and maybe some candy.
My kind of Christmas.
There isn’t going to be one red cent put on any credit cards either now that they are paid off.
We did go out for dinner on Friday – only three couples in the place. Very quiet.
I’m on a “don’t need anything” for Christmas plan. I do plan to sort out my garage. That’s worth more than gold.