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© 401K

The holiday spirit is in the air! These few weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are when retailers rack up 20% of their annual sales. ShopperTrak reported that Black Friday shopping deals this year had 226 million consumers spending an average of $398.62 each on their holiday shopping. This is a 6.6% increase from the previous year. MasterCard Advisors' SpendingPulse said for this four-day weekend, consumer spending was up 8.7 percent compared with last year, totaling approximately $50.06 billion. The National Retail Federation put this shopping total at a record $52.4 billion. This is quite a relief for many businesses as consumers seem to be quite willing to spend on their Christmas shopping this year. BIGResearch conducted a NRF survey which revealed that 28.7 million people did their shopping online and at stores on Thanksgiving Day, up from 22.2 million last year, and 86.3 million hit brick-and-mortar stores for Black Friday shopping deals, with the number of midnight shopping seeing a 9.5% increase. BIGResearch also reported that department and discount stores were the biggest beneficiaries of consumers' shopping sprees, followed by clothing, drug, grocery, electronics and craft stores. An interesting trend that has been noticed is that instead of on-the-spot buys, 37.4% of consumers nowadays research products and compare prices on their tablets and smartphones while shopping itself.

© Wonderlane

The thrift store chain Goodwill in Bellevue, Washington held its first ever Designer Label Sale last year, which saw hundreds of eager shoppers on the hunt for fashion bargains storm the store during the two day event.

The popularity of the sale was described by the store manager as a "craze", and so of course they did a repeat this year which exceeded last year's success. The store has doubled the floor space allocated to the sale to about 2,000 square feet, and has increased volunteers and staff for those two days. Taking a lesson from last year, when customers demanded much more product then was available, there were over 10,000 gently used designer items featured in the sale this year, which is double the number of pieces from last year.

© epSos.de

Consumers in Pennsylvania can find bargains on gas at several stores, including Giant Foods and Weis Markets which both offer gas discount programs.

Weis has recently added extra discounts when certain P&G products are purchased, which range from 20 to 50 cents per gallon. Rite Aid is also offering a rewards program on selected P&G products where you can earn up to $10 in discounts for purchasing $30 of P&G items. There are also extra discounts available for shoppers at Karns Foods, which offers many deals where you buy one product and receive a second one free. At CVS Pharmacy, shoppers earn Extra Bucks when they buy certain products. For example, you can earn $1 in Extra Bucks on the purchase of a $3 Oral-B toothbrush. When you combine this discount with the $2 manufacturer coupon, you can get the toothbrush for free.