Sandy Huffaker / Getty Images file

Last year's scene at a San Diego Best Buy store. Expect similar lines this year.

The most hyped and hectic shopping day of the year is just hours away. If you intend to fight the crowds to grab some bargains, you need to have a plan. 

A number of major retailers are opening earlier than ever – moving the start of Black Friday to Thanksgiving. Some have staggered the door-buster sales. 

The newspapers are filled with special Black Friday circulars. You can see most of what’s available  at sites such as bfads.net, blackfriday.com and blackfriday.gotadeal.com. 

The editors at dealnews.com analyzed these ads and concluded that some products are being offered at all-time low prices – but not all.  For example, you’ll find the best prices on toys not on Black Friday, but instead two weeks before Christmas. Dealnews put together a list of 10 things not to buy on Black Friday. 

Hate crowds?  You might be able to shop from home. While some door-buster deals can only be snagged at the store, most Black Friday specials can be found online.  Dealnews found that 70 percent of the deals available at Wal-Mart and Target stores on Thanksgiving last year were also available online for the same price or less.  

Let’s go shopping! 
Here’s a rundown of what’s happening at some of the nation’s biggest retailers (in alphabetical order): 

• Best Buy: The electronics retailer starts its Thanksgiving Weekend sale at midnight on Friday. To make things easier, they hand out tickets two hours before the store opens. BestBuy.com is open on Thanksgiving. 
• JCPenney: This is the store’s only sale of the year. Prices on hundreds of items (online and in the store) will be reduced for one day only, starting at 6 a.m. on Black Friday. Store employees will hand out holiday buttons that offer the chance to win one of 20 million gifts, including gift cards, merchandise and vacations. This promotion starts on Black Friday and runs through Christmas Eve. 
• Kmart: The store’s three day sale is the earliest of the bunch and there are three rounds of doorbusters – both in-store and online. Round one is on Thanksgiving Day from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the stores and 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. online. Round two goes from 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. at the stores and 7 p.m. until 5 a.m. online. Round three, on Black Friday, runs between 5 a.m. and 11 a.m. at the stores and 4 a.m. and 1 p.m. online. Did you get all that? 
• Kohl’s: Things get going Wednesday as 500 Early Bird specials went on sale at Kohls.com. The stores open at midnight on Friday. Shoppers get $15 Kohl’s Cash for every $50 they spend in store or online, with no limit during this “Operation: Black Friday” sales event. Kohl’s “Dream Receipts” promotion starts on Friday and runs through Christmas Eve. Every day, one shopper at each store and online will be picked at random and Kohl’s will pick up the tab. No purchase necessary. 
• PetSmart: Pet parents will find Black Friday deals online beginning Thanksgiving Day. Some pre-Black Friday items, discounted by as much as 75 percent, are already available online. Retail stores open at 7 a.m. on Friday. 
• Sears: The bargain-hunting (both online and in the stores) starts at 8 p.m. on Thursday and continues through 10 p.m. on Black Friday. Sears says it is offering more than a thousand doorbuster deals during its 26-hour sales event broken into two groups. Some go on sale at right away. The rest are available starting at 4 a.m. Black Friday. Check the Sears Thanksgiving and Black Friday circular for a savings pass or online purchase code that gives you an extra 10 percent off when you spend $40 or more on clothing, intimates, sleepwear, accessories, fragrances and cosmetics. “Shop Your Way” members get extra perks for this sale. Check out the deals and door-busters at sears.com/Black Friday. 
• Staples: The world’s largest office products company promises savings online and at the store. Early Bird Deals are available on Black Friday from 5 a.m. until noon. Find savings of $200 or more on select HP personal computers with Windows 8.  Online orders are shipped for free. A new service this year: you can reserve products online and pick them up at the store, normally within two hours of ordering. 
• Target: Black Friday starts at 9 p.m. on Thursday. That’s the earliest Target has ever opened on Thanksgiving Day. Also new this year, additional doorbusters will go on sale at 4 a.m. on Black Friday.  Shoppers who spend $50 or more on apparel, accessories or home products between 4 a.m. and noon on Friday will get a $10 Target gift card to use on a future purchase. Target says its website will have exclusive discounts starting Thanksgiving Day. 
• Toys R Us: The fun starts at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving. Look for the Thanksgiving weekend circular in newspapers on Thursday. Those sale items will also be posted at Toysrus.com. You can see some of the deals right now on the company’s Facebook page. The first 200 customers in line when each store opens will receive a free “Great Big Goody Bag” filled with stocking-stuffers and valued at $30. For those who don’t want to give up their Thanksgiving to shop, Toys R Us and Babies R Us will offer a new selection of doorbuster deals at 5 a.m. Friday morning. 
• Wal-Mart: The doors open at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving night, two hours earlier than last year. This is just the first of three Black Friday sales at Wal-Mart. The electronics event begins at 10 p.m. and the third wave of door-busters starts at 5 a.m. on Friday and lasts through the weekend. Something else new this year at Wal-Mart: the “1-Hour In-Stock Guarantee” on Thanksgiving night. Customers who are inside the store or in-line between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. are “guaranteed” to get super-low prices on the Apple iPad2, an Emerson 32” TV and LG Blue-ray player. If any of these items sell out before 11 p.m., and the customer pays for it before midnight, the product will be shipped to that Wal-Mart store for pick up before Christmas.

(You can print a simple list of Black Friday 2012 store hours at Cheapism.com)

More Black Friday Resources

• ConsumerMan: How to snag door-buster deals
• 10 Tips to Bag a Bargain on Black Friday
• Black Friday diehards will do just about anything for a bargain  
• Target, Wal-Mart, Kmart: Who has the best deal? 
• Tips on how not to bust your budget over the holidays 
• Gift cards are popular, but beware of fees on some

Herb Weisbaum is The ConsumerMan. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter or visit The ConsumerMan website.

Target employees are seeing red after the retailer announced its stores will open at 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving night, cutting into holiday time for workers. An online petition asking Target to not open on Thanksgiving has over 179,000 signatures, and the number continues to rise.

Thanksgiving, a time for family, togetherness, turkey ... and standing for hours to service the needs of the relentless hordes of shoppers seeking the last Furby and deeply discounted HDTV sets. Indeed, Black Friday, which traditionally started in the pre-dawn hours of Friday, has seen its hours pushed back in recent years so that stores start offering savings on Thanksgiving night itself.

This year, Walmart, Toys R Us, Kmart, and Sears are all opening their doors at 8 pm Thursday. Together with Target, that's two to four hours before they kicked things off last year.

Reached for comment, Target spokesperson Molly Snyder told NBC News: "Target’s opening time was carefully evaluated with our guests, team and the business in mind. Across the country, team member preferences were considered in creating our store staffing schedules. Thanksgiving weekend is one of the busiest of the year, and we appreciate our Target team’s flexibility on this weekend and throughout the holiday season."

Synder told NBC News that Target employees always receive time-and-a-half pay for working national holidays. Workers clocking hours during Thanksgiving and Black Friday also receive additional pay bonuses, she said. Only one-third of Target's workforce is  scheduled to work on Thanksgiving. 

Some employees are "excited" for the chance to work extra hours, she said. "We’ve heard from many stores that they had more team members volunteer to work than they had available shifts," Snyder said.

But there are a few people out there, almost 200,000, who think that something with "Friday" in the name should actually start on Friday.

The Change.org user who created the petition, "C. Renee," is a self-described six-year employee of Target living in California. In the petition description the user wrote that having to work on Black Friday prevented him or her from visiting their family on the East Coast.

C. Renee wrote, "I currently work two jobs, substitute teaching and work Target at nights and weekends, so having Thanksgiving off really does give me that one day to relax and visit family I otherwise have no time to see." The user did not respond to an NBC News request for additional comment.

Gus Ruelas / Reuters

Shoppers pay for their purchases at an Old Navy store last holiday season. This year, overall spending is expected to be cautious, except when it comes to spending on ouselves.

Holiday shoppers plan to deck the halls and splurge a bit more on themselves this year, but overall spending will remain cautious this holiday season as shoppers hunt out the bargains they know they’ll find this time of year, according to the results of a new survey.

The average holiday shopper will spend $749.51 on gifts, décor, greeting cards and more, up slightly from the $740.57 they actually spent last year, according to the survey conducted by BIGinsight for the National Retail Federation.

“We’ve seen this pattern of cautious optimism all year and despite the challenges that still exist in our economy, it looks as if consumers are eager to celebrate with friends and family,” said Matthew Shay, president and CEO of the National Retail Federation.

Recently, the NRF forecasted that holiday spending would rise 4.1 percent, slower than last year's growth, but higher than the average gains over the past 10 years.

‘One for You, Two for Me’
This year, holiday shoppers are looking to treat themselves, according to the survey. Six in ten shoppers, the most in the survey’s history, plan to spend an average of $139.92 on “self-gifting” this holiday season. The trend is even more pronounced among young adults between 18 years old and 24 years old, about 71.5 percent of those in this age group are planning to buy gifts for themselves.

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“It looks like young adults have the ‘one for you, two for me’ mentality about the holiday season this year, which is surprising, given that this is also the age group that typically doesn’t have the income or ability to splurge,” said Pam Goodfellow, director of BIGinsights Consumer Insights division.

But it does make sense when you consider that retailers have conditioned shoppers to expect great deals on products during the holiday season. Consumers have been working hard over the past four years to hone skills to help them stretch their dollars and are likely taking advantage of the promotions, which have already started far ahead of Black Friday, the Friday after Thanksgiving that has traditionally been considered to be the start of the holiday shopping season.

Waiting to begin holiday shopping until after Thanksgiving is a tradition that clearly has been broken. About 41.4 percent of 8,899 consumers polled in early October told NRF that they will begin their holiday shopping before Halloween.

Despite the scorn, consumers embrace 'Christmas creep'

Although the NRF didn’t cite specific reasons why shoppers are starting their shopping early, retailers have been offering many incentives to get shoppers in the buying mood. Not only have stores such as Wal-Mart, Sears and Toys 'R Us offered layaway programs, but there also were lots of promotions being offered as early as Labor Day weekend.

Stretching out the holiday shopping period also is a good strategy for more budget conscious shoppers who want cut any corners they can, comparison shop and spread out their purchases to soften the blow of holiday spending, and avoid the hangover of Christmas debt.

Retailers are pulling out the stops to get shoppers into the store early. Target began running its holiday ads this week, and it joined others such as Best Buy and Toys ‘R Us in offering price matching guarantees.

Trouble in Toyland: sales slowing heading into holidays

Economy less of a factor
Although these kinds of tactics may not move the needle significantly, it may make some more cautious customers feel more confident about making those purchases early.

This year, fewer shoppers in the NRF survey cited the economy as a factor in their spending plans, but the number remains high. Some 52.3 percent said the state of the U.S. economy would affect their spending, down from 62.2 percent last year.

That may reflect that consumers are simply accustomed to living on a budget and watching their spending, and may be better prepared for holiday spending.

According to the survey, the biggest portion of the holiday budget will go towards gifts for family members, with the average person planning to spend $421.82 on their kids, parents, and other family members. About $75.13 will be allocated to friends, $23.48 on co-workers, and $28.13 on others, including their pets and members of their community.

And don’t forget the decorations. Consumers are looking to be festive this year, and are pulling out the stops on décor. The average person will spend $51.99, up from $49.15 last year, and the most in the survey’s history. That means total spending on décor could reach $6.9 billion.

More shopping than ever will occur online, as has been the trend in recent years. More than half of all shoppers will do a portion of their shopping online, up from 46.7 percent last year.

And the most-wanted gift of all? Gift cards. Some 59.8 percent of those surveyed want to receive a gift card, more than other popular gifts such as clothing, books, DVDs, videogames and electronics. Nearly one quarter want jewelry, the highest response for this category since 2008.

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