Ok - I am dominating the off-topic right now...so I will just continue. Sorry I've been quiet the last few days. Thanksgiving was busy and then Black Friday and today were too. Here's what I've been up to... (this is SUPER long so feel free to skip if you don't want to read all about my weekend)...
Thursday, great day, lots of family time! Totally disappointed in Drew Brees and Alvin Kamara as they left my fantasy team hanging in a must-win game. I still have a major man-crush on Brees though so I'll be quick to let that go. The team won and as my 2nd fave team, that makes me happy.
My wife went out for Black Friday on Thursday evening at 8pm. Black Friday and the Christmas season is the one time each year that I sort of let down my guard on our "super savings" mentality and splurge a little. She basically shops for everybody in a few hours that night using gift cards that we'd already sourced leading up to the day. We try to get at least something for each member of her family and mine so that ends up being 12 adults and 3 kids altogether. Kohl's is our go-to! She got back after 11:00pm. I should've been in bed at this point since my brother-in-law was picking me up at 5am the next day, but of course I'm still stewing over my fantasy team.
So she starts talking about how she doesn't like our tree. Granted, our tree is probably 8-ish years old and it was probably only $25 as some end of season cast-off. It truly is a crappy tree, but once she puts all the ornaments on it, I always felt it looked nice anyways. Apparently Hallmark movies exclusively use Balsam Hill trees, and they are the best. So being the wonderful husband in "splurge" mode I start pricing these trees. HOLY CRAP, people can spend $1,000+ on a Christmas tree...this is insane. But we find one for $159 on some sale...except it's "Traditional". Apparently at Balsam Hill you can shop by "REALISM" and they have categories of Traditional, Realistic, and MOST Realistic. We price out a few other options and we just weren't finding exactly what we wanted. I signed up for their "welcome email" and it's now past midnight so we call it a night...or so we thought. Get ready for bed, catching up on the DIS...and the welcome email comes out and it's $50 off a $200 order... This apparently excites me because I suggest we get out of bed, back downstairs to shop for trees on the computer. 12:57am we're pulling the trigger on a tree all-in cost of $202 from the "Most Realistic" category. Between their Black Friday deal and the coupon we found something that worked. This is still more than I've spent on the 3-4 prior trees we had combined, but my wife is happy... So 1:30am or whatever...finally off to bed.
4:45am is ridiculously early. There is absolutely no reason that any human should wake up at 4:45. At any rate, here I am, awake... Mind you that I do not wake up before 9am 4 out of 5 workdays a week. The only thing that gets me up before 8am is a vacation...I love getting up early on vacation because there's so much to do and experience! So we started at Old Navy and then hit Walmart and things were just super chill. It didn't feel like Black Friday...very boring and blah. We grabbed some Starbuck's around 6:30 and then headed to Home Dept. Dude...Home Depot is WHERE IT IS AT on Black Friday. Tons of employees, they're serving donuts on the way in...people everywhere buying Christmas Trees (I mean not trees as good as Balsam Hill..haha!) and there was just this great ENERGY in the air there. It was exactly what we needed - we were already dragging just a couple hours into our day but WOW, that was just what we needed! I got my older daughter a drone for $30 there. I figure it probably is kinda crap but if she likes it and uses it we'll buy a nicer one and if it's a one and done kinda thing nothing lost.
When we buy for our kids we try to get them 1 big item from us and then some other odds and ends (some of which in their mind might be from Santa). Sometimes we end up with 2 "big-ish" items from us if there isn't 1 big item that fits the bill. We try to keep Christmas low-key budget-wise as I just want to impart good priorities in my kids. I'm certain my older daughter realizes that we value experiences over things. Examples of the big item in recent years are (Disney Inifinity,
Lego Cinderella Castle, Guitar, Golf Clubs, etc.) We had no idea what this years big item would be...
So the morning continues and I end up at Best Buy which is where my "big item" comes to the forefront!
Amazon Fire tablets... We are not a big technology family. My wife and I each have an iPhone which I guarantee you I do not use to its fullest capability. I'm typing this message on a desktop computer I took from work after we sold the company that is 10 years old. We have some sort of wi-fi only iPad I got back in 2016 which the girls all share (I don't use it). At any rate, this $29.99 deal on Amazon Fire 7 Tablets sounds awesome for my 2 girls. Of course, I am SUPER over-analytical. So this turns into a debate over the following options:
- Fire 7 16GB for $29.99?
- Fire 7 32GB for $49.99
- Fire 8 16GB for $49.99
- Fire 7 Kids 16GB for $59.99
- Fire 8 Kids 32GB for $79.99
- And of course each of these options exist at Kohl's, Best Buy, Target, & Amazon...
- Buy in Store or Order Online?
- If Online, TopCashBack vs. Rakuten?
If you give an analytical person like me this many options...analysis paralysis will set in QUICKLY. Holy crap...I must've gone back and forth a million times on what to do. We got home around 12:30 and on the drive home I had decided Kohl's for the least expensive version was the way to go. Boom, it was decided...and of course Kohl's is sold out... You've got to be kidding me!! I spent 5 hours debating this and it's sold out!! It probably does not surprise you but this happens a lot to me. I wait too long and lose out on things! I re-think things and Amazon is the way to go...so I go to my local grocery store to by Amazon GCs (18% back in fuel!) but then I get there and can't figure out the optimal amount to buy after tripping in to the DoC post about the Amex MR Amazon deals. I literally stand by the gift cards with iPhone calculator in hand doing math for 30 minutes and drive home having bought nothing...because I want to analyze on the computer
At any rate, I ultimately decide to buy 2 of the Fire 8 Kids 32GB version. If you bought 2 they knocked $20 off the price. So $159.98 - LESS $20 from Amazon - LESS $30 by using 1 Amex MR - LESS $10.99 in TopCashBack - LESS $18 in Gas on the $100 GC I went back to buy = $87.58. If you factor in the CIP MSR this went towards you could call this a $68 net purchase for 2 tablets!
So basically from about 7:30am on my day was spent thinking about tablets... while shopping, eating, playing video games, basically whatever I was doing, lol!
Today I grabbed some Disney GCs on that 18% (3x fuel perks) promo (combined with my CIP MSR that puts me @37% combined). I'm now only bout $1,500 short of paying off my January trip. BUT I've maxed out the fuel I can redeem in the next few months so I need something else to come along. PLEASE RAISE - hear my prayers! I'd love to see a way to get 10%+ through Raise and then combo that with my CIP MSR which I need to finish off. I could also do another tank of gas after 12/18 but by then the gas deal will be back to a 6% value.
Tonight's excursion (after a lovely dinner at Red Lobster) was buying Jeans. My mom wants ideas for Christmas so I told her she could buy me some jeans. I'm hard to shop for me...I really want nothing, lol! At any rate...a pair of jeans for me is a 10+ year decision, so you don't just buy jeans. 12 pairs tried on, a few of them tried on twice, 75 minutes...but we found 3 pairs of jeans!
And then when we got home my wife and I spent a couple hours putting together a cart for Barnes & Noble. I redeemed a bunch of Amex MRs for B&N gift cards and we rounded off their Christmas items. Ended up getting 14 items altogether (a mixture of books, games and puzzles). It probably wasn't the best deal we could've gotten but I still have a lot of MRs so finishing their shopping "for free" was a good deal for us. We might put a few items away for the birthdays later next year but between the Tablets, Drone and this we basically have them handled. Probably some shirts, socks and underwear to come too, gives them more to open that morning!
Yes...I am a crazy person... But that was my weekend so far. How was yours??
EDIT: I totally left out 2 super important things!
- We ordered that tree at 12:57am on Friday morning... it showed up at 1:43pm Saturday! 36 hours and 46 minutes to get this tree...that was AMAZING! (And admittedly it does look pretty nice...)
- After getting 3 hours of sleep on Thursday night...I slept for 12 hours last night, haha! I was SOOOO tired at various times Friday. And now here I am typing to you all at 2:30 am with church in the morning so I best get at least 6 hours tonight!
One last edit... I also broke a record for buying things in person on Black Friday. I typically go out with Brother-In-Law and buy nothing...maybe 1 thing in some years. I'm honestly just there for the camaraderie of it all...It's strange but I enjoy just going out with him and hanging for the day. BUT this year I actually physically bought 2 things (shirt and drone) which is a record for me!