If you’re shopping Black Friday deals to get the year’s lowest price, your timing is a little off. In nearly 30 years of government price data, most holiday buys were typically a little cheaper in December than in November, and clothing kept falling into January. For electronics, the date you buy matters less than how long you wait.

The sale is a season, not a day

The consumer price index doesn’t capture a single doorbuster. Government price collectors check prices across the whole month, so the index tracks what things typically cost through the season, not on one Friday.

On that measure, November is the month the sale starts, not the month it peaks. We compared each month with October, when unadjusted prices tend to peak. For things that get cheaper every month anyway, like TVs, we counted only the drop beyond that usual slide. For toys, appliances, TVs and computers, December’s typical price came out a little lower than November’s. For clothing, January’s did. Only phones were cheapest in November, and by a hair.

Outlined cells are each item’s cheapest month.

Source: BLS; MKViz calculation

Clothes are cheapest in January, if your size is left

Clothing’s holiday pattern is the most reliable of the group. Prices fell from October to December in every year we tested and usually kept falling into January, ending about 5.3% lower at the median. Black Friday catches the start of that slide, not the bottom.

I buy winter coats in late January, and the one I still wear cost a little over half its tag. The risk is the size. Two winters ago I waited on a down jacket in December, hoping it would drop again, and my size was gone by January. Waiting into January cost me the jacket, not money. Now I buy anything hard to fit in mid-December and leave only the basics for the clearance racks.

Appliances and toys are where the holiday window is real

For appliances and toys, the cheap stretch opens and closes with the holidays. Once their usual trend is taken out, both were cheaper in December than in October in about four years out of five, and both moved back up in January. If a refrigerator or a gift is already on your list, late November through December is a sensible time to buy, and waiting for January doesn’t help.

For electronics, the clock beats the calendar

TVs and phones get cheaper in most months. The TV price index has fallen about 1.1% a month on average since 1995, and its extra holiday drop is about the same size. Waiting one more month has saved roughly as much as the holiday has.

For a TV or a laptop, the clock matters more than the calendar. In the fall of 2024 I tracked a TV from mid-October and bought it in Black Friday week, and it did come in lower. The week before, it was already most of the way down. With my laptop, the old model’s price dropped when a new one launched, not on a sale date.

What a sale tag is measured against

A sale price is only as real as the price it’s measured against. In 2022 I bought a keyboard under an “up to 70% off” banner. Its price history showed it had usually sold near that price, so the real saving was about a tenth. The list price was a number nobody had paid.

Since then I skip the tag and look up the model’s price over the past three months and the past year. If this week’s price isn’t at or below its usual low, I don’t count it as a deal.

Sources

Method: We used the unadjusted consumer price index for apparel, toys, major appliances, televisions, smartphones and computers since 1995 or 1997, removed each item's own trend with a centered 12-month moving average, and measured the change from October to each of the next four months, year by year. The CPI averages prices collected across the whole month, so these are season prices, not single-day doorbusters. Data: BLS. All the numbers, method and code