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Weekwrap: Black Friday Edition

While still recovering from intense food comas, many Americans rose early this morning to scour the Black Friday sales among the crowds to find the best deal. Here’s some related news:

Black Friday’s Worst Enemy: Buy Nothing Day is an ad campaign promoting responsible financial habits. Consumers are asked to skip shopping on Black Friday and to focus on consuming less – a message that may be more convincing than ever this year. Check out the posted TV spots, photos from the previous year and other unique calls to action (Zombie Walk?) here.

Simple Consumer Outreach: Consumer Reports wants consumers to remember that the government may be bailing out big industries, but they won’t be drafting a new bailout bill for individual consumers. StopBuyingCrap posted Consumer Reports’ simple USA Today ad that reminded consumers their credit card contracts have no “bailout clause.”

Coupons Everywhere, But They’re Not All Redeemable: The Smart Spending blog at MSN Money pointed out two interesting facts about coupons. First, quality and quantity of coupons can be dictated by where you shop. If you do manage to get some good coupons – watch out for what they dubbed the “coupon cops.” These cops are store cashiers who grumble and take issue with consumers using coupons. Who knew trying to get a deal was so difficult? Although in this financial climate, it’s probably worth the hassle.

Do Some “Good”: Close to 70,000 nonprofits have partnered with Yahoo to support a search engine called GoodSearch.com and shopping site GoodShop.com. GoodSearch provides a penny to the user’s favorite charity for every search conducted. GoodShop offers products from major retailers and donates 37% of each sale to a non-profit. Charities may be hurting for donations this holiday season but now there’s an easy way to help. The sites kick off December 1.

Wanting is Good For You: Over at Get Rich Slowly, J.D. Roth translates the wisdom of Yoda into financial advice: Want is the path to the Dark Side. Want leads to spending. Spending leads to debt. Debt leads to suffering. But Roth’s personal story suggests that it’s healthy to have some desires. Roth says people still need to be responsible financially, but having goals helps keep that motivation alive. Find a balance between recognizing wants but not constantly satisfying them and you’ll lead a healthy financial life, he says.

A Picture Worth More than 1,000 Words: If you’ve been on the internet in the last two weeks, you’ve probably seen the email exchange (real or fake, who knows) between a collection agent and a guy named David trying to pay his bill with a spider drawing. Well, WiseBread has the aftermath story. Someone put David’s spider drawing on eBay, where it sold for $10,000. Don’t fret - the best part? The buyer has no plan to pay up.

-Susie Bafico

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