Research conducted by Hargreaves Lansdown (HL), the financial service company, found that investing instead of spending this Black Friday could leave people better off financially.
Black Friday, which falls on November 26 this year, is the yearly sale from retailers, with many in-demand products slashed in price.
However, whilst some of the deals may seem too good to be true, HL’s research implies that investing your money instead of spending this Friday could leave you thousands of pounds better off.
Sarah Coles, a senior personal finance analyst at HL said, “If you’d decided not to spend your money, and invested it instead, you could be far better off, and if you’d picked some of the runaway investment winners of the last 12 months, you could be thousands of pounds richer.”
The research has shown that using the GBP500 that a PS5 would have cost last year and investing it into Reach plc, the newspaper, magazine, and digital publisher, would have seen your money grow by 120% to over GBP1000.
Using the GBP2,300 it cost to purchase a Peloton, alongside the GBP39 monthly subscription fee, into the Legal and General UK 350 Index would see a 17.99% increase in value over the last year.
The Legal and General UK 350 Index tracks the 350 biggest companies in the UK index and would have seen any potential investors turn their GBP2,300 into over GBP3,000.
Coles, however, has warned that investments are risky, and there is no guarantee of seeing your money grow.
With Black Friday looming ever closer, many independent retailers will not be joining in this year.
The British Independent Retailers Association (Bira) found that 85% of its members will not be participating in the sale this year.
Speaking to The Independent, chief executive of Bira Andrew Goodacre said. “The main reasons for them not wanting to take part in this is because they either don’t agree with this idea, there are higher prices, and there is also insufficient volume to make the large discounting work.”
