SAN DIEGO (KGTV)— It was a buying bonanza out in San Diego for Black Friday.
Shoppers have been waiting all week for Friday's best deals on big-ticket items.
According to The National Retail Federation, Black Friday still maintains the lead as the number one day for shopper turn-out. The NRF says 131.7 M shoppers will hit retailers in person and online on Friday, compared to Cyber Monday, which will only have around 72.3 million shoppers turn out.
The NRF also forecasted that 183 million shoppers are hitting the stores this holiday season, and that's around a million more shoppers than there were this time last year.
At Best Buy in Mission Valley, ABC 10News saw some shoppers walking away from deals, like Dalton Williams, hoping to buy a Switch console or an iPad.
"I think it's kind of a bust this year," Williams said.
Landon Jones, a friend of Williams, said he also did not end up buying an iPad.
"We ended up walking away because it was cheaper on Amazon," Jones said.
While Williams and Jones did not find the deal they were looking for, these two women did, Wendy Delgado and Laura Kamani did with the 65" Class Select Series 4K Smart RokuTV.
"It was $300 for a 65-inch [TV]," Delgado said.
"I needed a new TV, and I saw this was a pretty good deal," Kamani said.
According to Best Buy's website, Delgado and Kamani saved $130, which has the original price listed as $429.99. The deal ended on Saturday.
Those savings are also setting new records this holiday season, according to the NRF.
The NFT said sales are up this holiday season compared to last year.
The NRF said shoppers spent around $955.6 billion between November and December last year.
This year, the NRF forecasts shoppers to spend between $979.5 billion and $989 billion in total.
Alan Gin, an economics professor at UC San Diego, said the economy is doing well partly because of the drop in the inflation rate.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the annual inflation rate for the United States was 2.6% for the 12 months ending October 2024:
"People were concentrating solely on the inflation number, but they didn't realize that- that we had pretty good wage growth as well," Gin said.
Gin also said shoppers have more dollars in their budget now because the Federal Reserve cut interest rates recently, bringing down the percentage point in September to around 4.5%, compared to the year's average of around 5.5%.
"I think the ability to renegotiate loans on credit cards, maybe even on your mortgage, would just then free up more money for people to spend," Gin said.
