Black Friday shopping: Good or bad idea?

I read an interesting article in the Star Tribune about shopping on black Friday....you can read it here.

I am always wanting to go to the stores and buy the great deals advertised, but are the long lines and the headache worth it? Most stores that have such great deals have limited quantities and no rain checks. Remember the stampede at WalMart?

What John suggests, which many of my fellow Target shoppers already do, is to use a stores' price matching policy. We do know that Target does do price matching, with some limitations. Target doesn't match door busters, limited-time or quantity offers or coupon items, although most other items are matchable.

The most interesting part of the article is that someone mentioned they do all of their shopping on black Friday at WalMart because they price match all competitors' ad prices. John, the writer of the article, even called WalMart to verify that they would match the prices- and they will. This even includes door busters from 6-8 a.m. Even those ads with the fine print stating "limited quantities." The only issue you might encounter is that the item has to be EXACTLY the same.

You can check out Black Friday deals in advance on sites like www.bfads.net.