Holiday Shopping 2024: What We'd Buy, What We'd Skip
Every year around late November we get the same question from readers: "is this actually a good time to buy X, or should I wait?" There's no one answer, but there are categories that follow predictable rhythms. Here's our 2024 read — based on the price data we tracked across a sample of merchants over the past six weeks.
Worth buying now
Last-generation consumer electronics
The strongest deals we saw on the Black Friday run were on 2022–2023 model-year laptops, headphones, and tablets that retailers are clearing to make room. If you're comparing against the newest model, the functional gap is usually small and the discount is often 30–40%. Verify you're looking at last-gen, not refurbished.
Kitchen appliances
Stand mixers, espresso machines, and air fryers see their deepest discounts of the year this week. The discount rarely survives into January.
Winter apparel from mid-market brands
Seasonal categories are deeply discounted mid-season rather than end-of-season in 2024 (different pattern from previous years — retailers are managing inventory more aggressively). Coats and boots we were tracking dropped 25–35% this week.
We'd skip
TVs
The best TV prices of the year are actually in early-to-mid January, when retailers clear inventory ahead of the new model refresh in March. Black Friday TV "deals" are usually models specifically produced for the sale at lower build quality (the "derivative SKU" trick).
Furniture
Holiday furniture sales are largely theatrical. President's Day (February) and Memorial Day weekend are historically the two lowest-price windows for furniture. If you don't need it immediately, wait.
Jewelry
Jewelry "50% off" during the holidays is among the most anchored "discounts" on the internet. The reference prices are routinely inflated before the sale begins. If you're buying, buy on cost-per-gram or comparable pricing, not on the percentage-off figure.
Category-agnostic advice for this week
- Set the price you'd pay before you see the discount, then shop to that number.
- Shipping deadlines are the most common reason people regret an impulse buy — check the latest date for guaranteed delivery before committing.
- Gift cards from well-known retailers are boring but genuinely useful. They're the one "gift" that doesn't get returned.
We'll update this with a post-holiday retrospective in January. If you spot a deal that looked amazing on the listing and turned out not to be — email us at [email protected], we collect them.