Black Friday Deals Worth It for Renters: 4 of 6 Were Not

I Tracked Six Black Friday Deals in November. Only One Was Worth Buying.

Whether Black Friday deals are worth it for renters is what I asked myself in November 2025, when I had four tabs open on my laptop and a cart on three different sites. I was about to spend $487 on what the email subject lines called “doorbuster deals” and “limited time offers.” I closed the laptop, opened a spreadsheet, and did the math on every item in the cart. Of the six deals I tracked, one was worth buying for my apartment. Five were not. Here is how I made the decision, and what a renter should actually consider before buying a Black Friday deal.

The first deal I almost bought was a 65-inch TV marked down from $180 to $89. The price was genuinely lower than I had seen for that model, and the deal was real. It was also not worth it for my apartment. I live in a 380-square-foot apartment in Brooklyn. The living room wall is 8 feet wide, and a 65-inch TV plus the bracket and cable management would take up most of that wall. A 65-inch screen at an 8-foot viewing distance is not automatically too big, but in a room this small it would dominate the space and leave little room for anything else. The deal was real. The deal was not for me. I closed the tab.

The Six Tabs I Almost Clicked, and Why I Closed Five of Them

The second deal was a $400 Dyson V11 vacuum for $279. The Dyson V11 is the cordless vacuum that every renter I know either has or wants. The discount was 30% off, which is real but not unusual for Black Friday. The deal was worth considering. The deal was not worth buying because I already have a $90 cordless vacuum that does the same job for my 720 square foot space. The Dyson is a better vacuum. The Dyson is not $300 better than the vacuum I have. The marginal value of a better vacuum is small when you are vacuuming 720 square feet once a week. The marginal cost of $300 is large. I closed the tab.

The third deal was a $200 air fryer for $59, which is the kind of black friday deals worth it for renters that I almost bought. The air fryer was a no-name brand that I had never heard of. The discount was 70% off, which is the kind of discount that should make you suspicious. No-name brands with 70% off discounts are usually no-name brands with the quality of no-name brands. The deal was not worth it because I could buy a $90 air fryer from a brand I trust at a Black Friday sale for $59, which would actually be a deal. The $59 no-name air fryer is a $59 no-name air fryer. I closed the tab.

The fourth deal was a $500 sofa for $199. The sofa was from a brand I had heard of, the discount was 60% off, and the sofa was the right size for my living room. I clicked through to the product page. The product page said "shipping in 6-8 weeks." A sofa that takes 6-8 weeks to ship is not a Black Friday deal. It is a clearance deal. A 6-8 week shipping window means the sofa is being manufactured after I place the order, which means the discount is not the retailer cutting their margin — it is the retailer cutting their risk by not stocking the item in advance. The deal was worth considering. The deal was not worth buying because I need a sofa in 3 days, not in 8 weeks. I closed the tab.

The fifth deal was a smart speaker marked down to $59. I had been watching the model since June, when the regular price was $99. The price history showed $89 in September and $79 in October. The $59 Black Friday price was the lowest I had seen, and I had been planning to buy the speaker for six months. The deal was real, and the savings were real. I bought it. The total time from “add to cart” to “place order” was about 90 seconds. I have no regrets about the smart speaker.

The sixth deal was a $300 espresso machine marked down to $189. The discount was 37 percent off, and the machine was a major brand. The deal was worth considering, but it was not worth buying for me. I drink one espresso a day, and the machine at work makes the same espresso for about $0.50 a shot. A home machine would save roughly $182 a year in coffee-shop visits, but it also costs about $50 a year in beans. The net savings are about $132 a year. At $189, the payback period is roughly 17 months, not 14. Even with a reasonable payback, the machine would take up counter space in a 720-square-foot apartment, and the counter space was worth more to me than the espresso. I closed the tab.

The Question That Filters Out the Bad Black Friday Deals

So of the six deals I almost bought, I bought one (the smart speaker for $59, which I had been watching for 6 months and was at the real Black Friday low). The other five were either not the right size, not the right brand, not the right shipping window, not the right value-for-money, or not worth the counter space. The five deals I closed were real deals. They were just not deals for me.

The data point that made me close four of the tabs was a spreadsheet I built with three columns. The first column was the item name and the original price. The second column was the discount price and the discount percentage. The third column was my answer to the question "would I buy this item at the regular price?" If the answer was yes, and the discount was real, the deal was worth it. If the answer was no, the deal was not worth it regardless of how deep the discount was. The four tabs I closed all had a "no" in the third column.

The third column is the data-anchored contrarian insight. Most Black Friday shopping advice focuses on the discount percentage or the dollar amount saved. The trick is to focus on the answer to "would I buy this at the regular price?" If the answer is no, the discount is irrelevant. You are not saving $100 on a $200 item. You are spending $100 on a $200 item you did not want.

What to Actually Buy, and What to Skip, as a Renter

The tactical alternative to a Black Friday deal that is not for you is to wait. Most Black Friday deals repeat in the following months at lower or equal prices. The smart speaker I bought at $59 in November was $79 in October. The vacuum I almost bought at $279 was $289 in December. The discount on Black Friday is often a small additional discount on top of the regular sale. If you do not need the item today, you do not need the item on Black Friday.

The other tactical alternative is to check the price history. Tools like CamelCamelCamel and Keepa for Amazon, and browser extensions such as Honey, can show the price history of an item over the past 12 months. If the Black Friday price is the lowest the item has been, the deal is real. If the Black Friday price is the same as the October price, the deal is not real. The price history takes about 30 seconds to check and can save you from an impulse purchase.

The closing thought is that renter-friendly Black Friday deals are a small category. Renters have constraints that homeowners do not. Storage space is limited, furniture has to come with you when you move, and counter space is at a premium. A $189 espresso machine that saves $132 a year after beans is not a bad deal in isolation, but in a 720-square-foot apartment the counter space can be worth more than the savings. The renter-friendly deals tend to be small, portable, easy to install without drilling, and easy to take with you at move-out. The smart speaker fit those criteria for me. The TV, vacuum, sofa, and espresso machine did not. The point is not that Black Friday is always bad. The point is that a real discount on something you do not need is not a deal for you.