It’s that time of year again. Love it or hate it, Black Friday (the shopping day after Thanksgiving) is coming around the pike, and retailers are going overboard with special sales to try and lure you in. If you have been holding off getting a piece of electronics or other gift, waiting for deals after Thanksgiving, you are in luck, because major retailers such as Wal Mart, Best Buy and Target have announced some great deals.

In a controversial move, many leading retailers are opening earlier than the traditional 4 a.m. to 5 a.m. time on Friday morning. Many will be opening at midnight, and Wal Mart is going a step further and opening at 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day. This means that for all the die hards who wait in line to be among the first shoppers making a mad rush into the store to scramble for the very best low priced deals, they will have to now essentially stay up all night. Employees too are having to sacrifice family time, to show up for work in the middle of the night. So, instead of watching a football game with uncles they will have to take a nap to prepare for the all nighter.

Best Buy

Best Buy is offering a free Blu Ray player when you purchase a Sprint smart phone. Or how about this, a 55″ LCD tv for under a thousand bucks. Its top doorbuster sale is a 42-inch 1080p Sharp LCD TV for just $199.99. (Another doorbuster is a Toshiba Blu-ray player for a mere $39.99.) That beats the 40-inch Element LCD that Target is offering for $265.

Wal Mart/h2>

Walmart Kicks-off Three Black Friday Events starting at 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving. Today on Thursday, November 10, 2011 the Walmart Black Friday flier was released on Facebook and Walmart.com. It is supposed to help families with their Christmas shopping and to save them money. There are three special-shopping events. The first one is for toys, home, and apparel starting at 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day(November 24th). The second event starts at midnight on Black Friday(November 25th). This second event is for electronics. The third event starts at 8 a.m. on November 25th through the weekend. It is for presents for the entire family and electronics. These events are good while supplies last. You can get the hot new Xbox release Batman, Arkham City for under $30, a 50% discount.

Target

Target seems to have Best Buy and Walmart beat n base models of video game consoles. It’s offering a 4GB Xbox 360 for a mere $139.99 and a 160GB PlayStation 3 for $199. only one other Black Friday TV deal: the 32-inch Samsung LN32D403 for $277.99, which is about $50 less than what Amazon is selling it for now.

Amazon

Amazon knows when you are looking for its Black Friday deals, because when you Google it and hit an Amazon page, it actually lists early Black Friday deals tailor made for you, based on your previous browsing history. Of course, Amazon offers some nice deals in Electronics, such as 30% savings on a Leap Pad Leapster. Or $3.99 for the latest Harry Potter DVD. You can also sign up for the daily deal of the day delivered to you via email.

Toys R Us does accept prepaid debit cards for purchases on the retailer’s website and in store locations. They also welcome gift cards. Indeed, you can get a Toys R Us gift card in a variety of design, or even personalize your own card.

Toys R Us had a problem back in 2009, reports the Consumerist, of accidentally double charging some customers for their purchases. However, the store credited everyone who experienced a double charge for the erroneous charge.

Toys R Us accepts Visa and MasterCard debit, prepaid, and credit cards. They do NOT accept personal checks, COD or layaway plans.

650,000 consumers left big banks to join credit unions in the past month, ahead of Bank Transfer Day, according to Credit Union National Association (CUNA).

Bank Transfer Day happened Nov. 4, 2011. It was the brainchild of a fed up consumer, Kristen Christian, who set up a Facebook page to encourage people to send big banks like Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America a message by transferring their accounts to credit unions or smaller banks that presumably would provide more personalized service and not have excessive fees. Even though Bank of America backed down from its plans to charge most of its individual account holders a $5 a month fee for the privilege of accessing their own money via a debit card, and other banks followed suit, consumers are still mistrustful. Will big banks continue to seek ways to recoup their lost profits from the new consumer protection laws that among many changes lowered the swipe fees banks could charge merchants for every debit card transaction.

If one person can set up a Facebook page and get more than 80,000 people to pledge to close their bank accounts with big banks, where does it end? After all, governments have fallen in the Middle East during the Arab Spring, thanks in part to the power of social media to unit people in protest. Now Occupy Wall Street has captures the imagination of Americans fed up with income inequality, and the sense that the levers of power around the world are controlled entirely by the financial elite. When voting doesn’t seem to change anything, more people are captivated by the idea that change can happen when people unite in collective actions such as public demonstrations, boycotts of certain products, or selective transactions.

Can just 80,000 people moving their money into credit unions make a difference? According to Forbes magazine: “If the 80,000 signed up for Bank Transfer Day indeed move their money, they stand to save a combined $4.8 million a year as credit union members save on banking fees, states Bill Cheney, CEO of CUNA. If over 400,000 consumers made the switch, they’d stand to save about $29.8 million just by joining a credit union. When you look at what consumers could gain and not just what banks would lose, it becomes a positive movement with long-standing legs.”

Think about the environmental movement and the countless concessions big businesses have made to “go green.” Grocery stores now all offer reusable grocery bags as an option at check out, for example. Trucking companies are switching to bio-diesel fuels.

People are outraged at other fees such as overdraft fees and transfer fees. And small business owners are frustrated that banks have tightened up their lending policies to the point that it is very difficult for them to get loan to expand their business. While banks have not signalled any concern about individuals closing their accounts, since each account does not represent a large deposit, they have discussed concerns about business closing business accounts. If enough small businesses closed their accounts, it would likely result in banks pivoting to create new programs to try and lure them back, or keep them from leaving in the first place. In the end, the power of the purse is the best lever individuals have, because when they band together in collective action such as Bank Transfer Day, it gets the attention of the media, and in turn, attention of big business, politicians, and big finance.

We’re proud of the design of the MiCash card. It’s a beautiful prepaid card design, because we know that design matters. There are certainly some ugly cards out there. What makes our card stand out from the rest? It’s black. Black evokes elegance, refinement, and sophistication. Think of black and white photography. The simple “little black dress.” The coolness of midnight jazz.

The background image on the face of the card is the Washington DC metro, itself a classic design. Since we are headquartered in historic Georgetown, we felt the image was appropriate. However, it is subtle. More of a texture behind the blackness of the card. A few years ago, credit card companies came out with solid black cards, dark blue cards, and platinum cards, all to try and stand out from the average card. Some prepaid cars stand out by being gaudy, with lots of bright colors, and lots of words. Our card isn’t like that.

You’ll be proud to pull out the MiCash Prepaid Mastercard card when dining out, or making purchases in a store. It lets everyone know that you have the power to control your finances.