Black Friday always falls on the day after Thanksgiving — the fourth Friday of November. It marks the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season, and for many retailers, the single biggest sales day of the year.
The retailers who do Black Friday well plan it for months — markdowns, doorbusters, loss leaders calculated to the dollar. The shoppers who do it well plan for it too. The single most useful habit: track the price of anything you actually want to buy for a few weeks beforehand. A "70% off" sticker on an item that was quietly marked up in October isn't a deal — it's marketing. Knowing the real baseline price is the only way to tell the difference.
Doorbuster electronics and limited-quantity items are usually the only things worth lining up for in person — and even those increasingly sell out online first. For nearly everything else, the in-store crowds aren't worth it when the same (or better) price shows up two clicks away. Save the trip for the things that genuinely require it.