If you're looking for great Black Friday deals you should read WalletPop's Black Friday Shopping Guide, which will tell you the best places to shop for specific items, but if you still need to compare the Black Friday sales we have five tools to help you find what you're looking for.

First off Cheapism.com points us to an interactive online Black Friday offer browser that lets you sort, compare and filter on many categories so that you can compare the Black Friday sales that matter to you. It is easy to sort by store, price, category, brand, and even if there is a rebate involved.

Cheapism also pointed out a Black Friday Twitter aggregation tool put together by the Washington Post that is pulling in Black Friday deals from companies that Tweet. This is a great place to watch for last minute deal announcements and coupon codes.

With so many retailers offering pre-Black Friday sales, Thanksgiving Day sales and of course Black Friday deals, you might have forgotten about the upcoming Cyber Monday sales!

Even though many stores are trying to keep their Cyber Monday sales under wraps until after Black Friday we found several places to go looking for the best bargains on Cyber Monday.

First off is the CouponShack which has a large collection of Cyber Monday coupon codes for Kohl's and many other small retailers who are offering Cyber Monday specials.

RetailMeNot is another great place to look for Cyber Monday discounts. The RetailMeNot Cyber Monday page currently has some coupons from last Cyber Monday mixed in but there are still some geed deals to be found. You can also install the browser toolbar for FireFox or Internet Explorer and be alerted coupons for any store you visit.

In her second annual Mega Holiday Gift Away celeb cook-turned-entrepreneur Rachel Ray is increasing odds of winning by offering more presents, more time to enter and more chances to walk away with the Grand Prize. Featuring free gifts totaling $145,463, Ray's successful Everyday with Rachel Ray Magazine is cranking up the heat this holiday season with daily "gift aways" from November 16 through January 27, 2010.

The Grand Prize allows two foodie fans to attend a taping of the Rachel Ray Show in New York City . However, if you don't wind up on set, the consolation prizes are pretty sweet too.

Black Friday's prize offers the chance to win $500 dollar American Express gift cards. On other dates in December, enter to win an HP mini notebook or desktop computer, golf clubs from Callaway, an Orbitz ski vacation, a culinary weekend for two at Hotel Viking in Newport, RI, a Jacuzzi hot tub or a week on a Norwegian Cruise Liner - to name a few.

Seasoned Black Friday shoppers know that the best way to save during this all-important shopping day is to plot out a course of action ahead of time. That means knowing what you want and where to get it -- at the lowest possible price, of course.

Such planning entails scouring the Black Friday ads and comparing prices and selection. To help ease the load, WalletPop has done some of the legwork for you. We've combed through the ads that have been released so far and dug up the best deals on everything from high-definition TVs and Blu-ray players to tools and sweaters.

For sale: Three-bedroom homes with heart-stopping ocean views. Big properties. Resort nearby.
Price: $139,000
Location: Not the Hamptons (or Malibu or Palm Beach)

What, you thought it was 1950? No matter. If you're willing to fly to Managua, Nicaragua, and make the two-hour trek to lovely San Juan del Sur, you will find your dream vacation house (or land on which to build it). High prices on home turf lured legions of American, Canadian and European buyers to this low-priced Pacific Coast town and other Central American destinations during the real estate run-up earlier this decade. When the bubble burst, investors stayed home, agents and developers say. Now, prices are in oh-my-god territory, and buyers are trickling back. In San Juan del Sur, you can build your own vay cay getaway for $85 a square foot. Compare that with $625 per square foot in Malibu last month. The median price of a home there was $2.1 million in October, according to San Diego-based MDA Dataquick.

On Saturday morning an amazing deal popped up on the Dealnews.com Web site -- a free engagement ring. But, like all great deals this one came with a catch, it was only good for Stefanie Setlock of Atlanta, GA.

The deal, set up by groom to be Brian Chernick, required a coupon code of, "I DO" and came complete with "free on-one-knee delivery." All this added up to, what Dealnews called, "the lowest total price we've seen for any marriage proposal, excluding refurbs."

Included in the deal is a lifetime of, "having and holding, for better or worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, and till death do you part," but there is no warranty provided!

It's definitely cruise ship season. Royal Caribbean just made a major splash by launching the largest cruise ship in the world, Oasis of the Seas. That made headlines, but there have been other news stories in the industry. Last week, the huge Carnival line also had an unveiling of its own in New York City. Oscar-winning actress Marcia Gay Harden was the godmother for its new ship, the Dream.

WalletPop was invited to take a two-night ride on the ship, which is impressive but no record-breaker, as a guest of Carnival. Since the ship was packed with die-hard cruisers and travel writers eager to get their first peek at Carnival's newest vessel, it was the perfect opportunity to ask experienced cruise travelers for their favorite money-saving tips for taking a cruise.

Once you've paid your fare, your room is taken care of. So are your meals, provided you stick to the few on-board restaurants that are included in your ticket price. But after that, the costs start mounting. WalletPop's Jason Cochran, who has taken quite a few cruises himself as a travel writer, asked passengers on the sparkling new Dream for their best money-saving tips.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals are being announced or leaked at such a rapid rate its getting difficult to keep track. Of all the retailers, Toys R Us may well be the most aggressive with the deals and now it is expanding online discounts for the big day, with free shipping, bonuses with purchase, and some special payment plans.

There's even an online layaway program called Bill Me Later. Through Saturday, November 28, new Bill Me Later customers will receive $10 off purchases of $30 or more, with no payments for up to 90 days. In addition, all customers who opt to use Google Checkout will receive $10 off purchases of $60 or more.

So here I am, writing this from off the coast of Florida as part of the first two-day preview cruise of the magnificent Oasis of the Seas. Royal Caribbean has launched the largest cruise ship in the world, a towering dagwood of action-packed decks and over-the top superlatives: longest cruise ship, widest cruise ship, tallest cruise ship, heaviest cruise ship.

And as of today, the coolest cruise ship. Rihanna was on here yesterday, and I'm told Richard Branson has come and gone, too. By now, most of America has seen the particulars of this gargantuan, billion-dollar chunk of devil-be-damned engineering. Here on board, one of the stateroom TV channels plays, on a loop, the segments of yesterday's Good Morning America in which Sam Champion and his crew romped around the Aqua Theatre, the Solarium, the cocktail bar that rises and falls between three decks (pictured above), the huge Central Park and Boardwalk atriums (atria?) that carve an airy middle into the ship.



The ship is, simply put, astounding. I have never seen anything like it in my years of cruising. It took me about six hours to explore fully from Deck 3 (the Studio B ice rink) to Deck 17 (the stunning, and ridiculously expensive, duplex loft suites with two-story sea views). There's nearly no way to take in the enormity of the endeavor. If you could pack a small shopping mall together with a 2,400-room resort and send it off to sea, you might start coming close (one cynic described it as "a hotel on a barge," which omits the considerable frills and dazzle), but you'd still have trouble wrapping your head around it all.

It is so big as to be humbling, and sometimes, that makes it a little frightening. As we left Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, a police boat rushed a smaller craft that was approaching us and warned its captain to back off, as it was entering "restricted waters." Something this big and this audacious would be an obvious target, and local police are clearly taking no chances.

Royal Caribbean, ever adept at cleverly harnessing social media (remember that unfortunate recent case in which it was nabbed giving freebies to people likely to populate user-review boards with praise?), has invited large numbers of journalists, travel agents, and VIPs to take part on two, back-to-back, two-night cruises. Attending for WalletPop, I'm on the first one. For this run only, alcohol is free.



There were some early reports this week that the line would be, in effect, bribing the press for good stories by plying them with booze and by giving them stuff that will actually cost passengers on "real" sailings. Although alcohol is free, I can't say I've seen this accusation to be the case, and the crowd is a lot less drunk than it was for a paid sailing on the Carnival Dream a week ago. Not everything is handed out: I've had to pay for things such as a $2.50 coffee on the Royal Promenade or $2.50 for a hyper-sweet cupcake from its on-board cupcake shop. Whenever anything is offered to us, I ask what the price will be for paying customers.

Again and again, the answer I get tells me that many of the things we're getting are included in the fare anyway. That includes midnight pizza at Sorrento's, afternoon burgers at Johnny Rocket's, and twilight doughnuts on the Boardwalk (where there's a working carousel), and even rides on one of the twin FlowRider sheet wave machines, provided you can score a time slot. So although Royal Caribbean is pioneering obnoxious fees such as surcharges for late-night room service and hefty upcharges for the privilege of eating better food than its main dining regularly serves, I can't say it's using the launch of the Oasis to foist a lot of new ones on us.

There are some issues, of course. The first is lines. Royal Caribbean was wise enough to only pack this ship about half-full, which means we're all likely to get into the shows we want to see and we won't write reviews complaining about crowds. When it's full of paying guests, though, you'll have to make many of your reservations online or in a queue, adding another layer of hassle to what's supposed to be your break from it all. I also suspect the main pool area, on Deck 15, will not be able accommodate everyone who wants to swim. On balance, though, this is a pretty dazzling achievement, and diversion is around every corner.

When I see a ship as marvelously bloated as this one, I have to separate my sense of travel snobbery from my admiration for what Royal Caribbean has done here. I can't deny that passengers who immerse themselves in this floating circus might as well not be at sea at all. It's less a ship than a floating resort, and most of the passengers seem to be hanging out below decks than enjoying the sun and the sea.

Today, while I was having lunch in the Windjammer Marketplace buffet on Deck 16, I looked down at the smooth blue water to see dolphins playing alongside the ship. While I was admiring that sight, the couple behind me was engaged in a lively debate about the quality of this buffet compared to those on other ships. They were oblivious to their surroundings. It's typical of the attitude on board the Oasis, which is so loathe to share any glory with the oceans than most of its vantage points over the seas are sheathed in glass.

That's all right. This ship is a product, and whether you're a theatre reviewer or a travel writer, you have to remember the audience for whom you're reviewing the product. This audience is agog. I myself can't help but be impressed. For the next year or so, until its sister ship the Allure of the Seas matches her feats, this will be the ship to book, and rates are likely to be at around $150 a night or more (I wrote about upcoming deals to be had that were even better). I can't say that if I paid that price, high for the industry right now, that I would ever find that I was feeling ripped off.



Now that I've seen this ship, though, I might consider any other vessel that dared to charge me so much would be a rip. In this way alone, the Oasis may have changed the industry: It will be difficult for less exuberant ships to charge the same price, and if they do, they'll have to find some other hook, be it a boast about smaller crowds, better food (Royal Caribbean's food is not widely considered its strong point), Mickey Mouse appearances, or larger cabins. The sheer magnitude of the Oasis, its biggest selling point, will also be the very thing that convinces some customers to choose a sailing with more modesty.

And more importantly, remember that traveling is not always the same thing as vacationing. Not everyone wants to engage with other cultures; for many people, the floating fishtank of a cruise ship is all the exploration they need. The Oasis is a fabulous vacation machine, but it's about the universe it has created for itself, not about its place in the outside world. In that, it's a home run.

Imagine a town so motivated to move houses out of the way of progress that it will pay you $10,000 to take one off their hands. Imagine buyers so unmotivated there are no takers.

This is no fantasy on either end. It's status quo in the Chicago suburban village of Barrington, Ill., though you can only collect the $10,000 if you agree to keep the house somewhere in the village itself. Still, even if you want to schlep it on over to a neighboring town, the houses are a relative bargain, with bids starting at $1.

The homes are old -- though not technically historic now that the village voted them out of the historic district -- and former and current users variously describe them as "claptrap" and "charming."

The Walmart Black Friday ad leaked out to many deal collecting sites earlier this week, but until yesterday they kept it offline under threat of legal action by the mega retailer. After the OK was finally given, the entire Walmart Black Friday ad has been posted and it contains a lot of deals. Best of all, you won't have to wait outside for any of the savings since Walmart will be open all night over Thanksgiving -- although you will have to wait until 5 a.m. to make your purchases.

Walmart's biggest Black Friday deals:

Sears and Kmart are going on the third week of early Black Friday promotions, with door-buster deals all weekend leading up to the actual Black Friday.

For the longest time leaked Black Friday ads have been a part of the bargain hunting game.

Sure you can wait until Thanksgiving to look at the ads, but who wants to fight off tryptophan to look for the best deal?

The practice of posting ads online has long been a thorn in retailers' sides, and some of them even continue to fight the leaks, but others are embracing the Internet and releasing their ads for all to see.

Just like Staples did last week, Meijer officially released its Black Friday ad for all to see.

The Midwest retailer has several deals that might actually be worth standing in line for, especially since the limited quantities are high compared to what we normally see.

While some are declaring that the recession is over, the good news has not trickled down to my pocketbook. My husband and I are looking closely at all our expenses to cut our overhead. Our wages have decreased in the last year, mostly due to the slow down in my business, but costs have continued to rise. Utilities, gas, taxes, and food are taking more and more of our shrinking paychecks. We decided to take some action after looking at every expense in our budget. Maybe some of these tips can help you too: