Taking the Pain Out of Holiday Shopping -- Savings Experiment

The holiday shopping season has a well-known calendar of events: Black Friday leads to Cyber Monday, which soon leads to a frenzied rush for an ever-decreasing stock of Christmas goodies. Customers plan around this schedule, waiting in line to get the best shot at doorbusters, marking their calendars for the best sale days and scouring advertising circulars for the best deals.

But the tried-and-true method has some serious problems. To begin with, it's hard to get into the Christmas spirit when you're battling crowds, scurrying to sales, and counting pennies. To make things worse, the best deals, or doorbusters, that stores use to get you in the door, are always the first items to run out, which leaves you panicking to find an equivalent gift that is inevitably more expensive.