As if the hype around Black Friday wasn’t enough, some retailers are trying to get the jump on their competition by going against the time-honored tradition of the day-after-Thanksgiving human stampedes. As you’ll see on numerous Black Friday websites, this year’s Kmart flyer has been leaked and contains many noteworthy deals:

• Magellan Maestro 3100 Navigation System - $129.99
• Several Men’s shirts and fleeces - $9.99 and under
• Polaroid 8MP Digital Camera - $79.99

The only caveat is that you’ll have to drag yourself into Kmart at 7am on Thanksgiving Day (or “Brown Thursday” as the retailers call it) to snag these items.

Of course, you’re also free to hit up Best Buy and Circuit City the day after for a more traditional Black Friday event. Check out some of the awesome deals they’re offering this year:

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Indeed, BB and CC’s BF offerings are total BS this year. Punny Money is officially awarding the Black Friday 2007 victory to Kmart.

Coming off our discussion of fear in advertising, there’s another evil publicity scheme that typically crops up around this time of year in an effort to pry your money out of your purse: bald-faced lying. Sadly, it looks like your favorite personal finance writers have become victims of the fibbing that seems rampant this holiday season. Don’t believe me? Check out the evidence for yourself.

1. A Penny Closer starts off this festival of LIES! by saying you don’t have to give her an anniversary gift if you’re her husband. But that’s not true! You have to get her eight gifts wrapped in silk or you’ll be sleeping on the couch until Easter.
2. More LIES! courtesy of The Simple Dollar who admits to having lied to himself about money. I imagine he used to say “I have $8,000 in my wallet” when he was really too poor to afford a wallet.
3. Next is Being Frugal who debates both sides of regifting, or as I like to call it, giving the gift of LIES!
4. Thanks to Cash Money Life, you no longer have to believe the LIES! you’re hearing about the Do Not Call Registry. Lie #1: Being on the Do Not Call Registry is the reason your dates never call you back.
5. Generation X Finance points to news that those variable-rate mortgage loans may have been LIES! and lenders may lock in some ARM borrowers at rates lower than their smarter fixed-rate friends.
6. Somebody gave I’ve Paid For This Twice Already a square jar full of round sprinkles. I didn’t know that LIES! came in sprinkle form now.
7. Were you murdered in your house, and now nobody will buy it? The Digerati Life helps you sell that house with a spooky past. Note that not all states require you to disclose that your home has a scary legacy, so you might be able to LIE! your way to a sale.
8. And finally, Gather Little By Little wasn’t fooled by the LIE! that you live. shop. die.

Until next week, don’t give in to the horrendous lies and deceit that seek to crush your soul until all that remains is a lifeless husk of sorrow, and have a delightful weekend!

On a road trip earlier this week, I was fortunate enough to see a lot of advertising billboards and vehicles sporting exciting promotional spots for various products and services. For a good 30 minutes, I drove behind a white van which bore one of the most unforgettable advertising slogans I’ve ever read:

Do you have radon? Your neighbor does!

At first I thought, why isn’t my neighbor sharing some of his delicious radon with me? Then I remembered that radon is a poisonous gas responsible for tens of thousands of lung cancer deaths each year. So either my neighbor is bottling his radon in order to sell it on the black market, or… he doesn’t have radon!

But why would the white van lie to me? Why would it tell me my neighbor has radon if he actually doesn’t? That’s when it hit me: the van’s slogan makes a whole lot more sense when it’s parked at somebody’s house when they’re on a service call. I imagine it inspires conversations like this one:

Wife: (Looking out window.) Hey honey, did you know that the Hendersons have radon?
Husband: Really? That’s a shame.
Wife: And the service van suggests we might too.
Husband: Holy crap! Go outside and give those guys $5,000 right now so they come check our home for deadly poison gas!

Cha-ching. Another sale for the radon guys. And how did they do it? It’s simple: something I like to call advertising terrorism. By suggesting what could happen if you don’t partake in their products or services, a business can scare you into spending lots of money to protect your family, your home, and your collection of ceramic roosters.

This wasn’t the first time I was a victim of an attempted advertising terrorism attack. See if you recognize some of these ad campaigns designed to “scare” up some business.

• Every thirty seconds, someone dies of a heart attack. You may have seen a television ad for your local cardiac-specializing hospital using a catch-phrase like this one. It’s sometimes followed by “You could be next,” though if they were really trying hard, they’d say “You will be next” or “It’s too late for the guy next to you, but there’s still time to save yourself with a check-up today.”
• Now with 50% less fat than the leading brand. Translation: don’t buy the leading brand because it will make you fat. If you have the leading brand in your house, throw it away or become 50% fatter.
• With dual crumple zones and front, side, rear, and overhead airbags—something you won’t find in the competitor’s vehicle. You better trade in your deathmobile for that car or the only thing that will be crumpling in an accident will be you.
• Refinance now and keep your home! I’ve been seeing a lot of signs like this one lately strewn along city roads. Many people in my area are carrying dangerous mortgages that will adjust soon, so making it seem like they’ll be homeless without your magic loan is a great way to get customers in the door.
• Join today! Our prices go up January 1st. Why are you still reading this article? Didn’t you hear the man? The rates are going up on January 1st! Get your butt over there and join now!

Fear in advertising must be fairly successful because it seems to be on the rise in virtually every product and service category. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; in exchange for most of your hard-earned dollars, you’re left with a sense of safety. No longer will you need to be concerned with radon, heart attacks, or being condensed into a bite-sized morsel by a semi. It’s a win-win situation!

The Top Ten Advertising Terrorism Campaigns They’re Not Smart Enough to Come Up With

It seems that some businesses are having a bit of trouble cashing in on the lucrative advertising terrorism thing. Well I’m here to say that anyone can start their own advertising terrorism campaign. Don’t believe me? Then here are some slogans that should inspire you to strike fear into the hearts of your customers.

1. Every three seconds, someone in the world dies of hunger. Don’t let the next person… be you. Come on down to IHOP today for our triple-stack pancakes!
2. Mattel: Buy all our new toys because the old ones are full of lead.
3. Do you like having an ozone layer to keep the sun’s rays from boiling you alive? Test drive a hybrid Prius at a Toyota dealer near you.
4. Join the NRA today and protect your gun rights. Because it’s only a matter of time before we piss off the wrong country.
5. The McDonald’s Dollar Menu: Buy from it now or we’ll start making burgers out of bunnies.
6. There’s a reason your mouth is home to millions of bacteria: they’re just biding their time until they attack your brain. Use Scope and kill the germs that cause bad breath and maybe brain rotting.
7. The Catholic Church: Enroll today and save your soul from eternal damnation.
8. Coming up on the News at 10: A dangerous predator may be lurking in your neighborhood. We’ll tell you where he was sighted and if you could be next. Correction: you will be next if you don’t watch us. And no switching channels on commercials because we’re only going to say it once.
9. Don’t miss the next exciting episode of Heroes. We might just show the hot cheerleader girl’s boobs. You never know!
10. Chia Pets: The only thing between you and dying a lonely, meaningless life.

Ah Monday. The return to a wonderful job after a long weekend. The joy of sharing the highway with thousands of other happy individuals. The return of the mail carrier after a heart-breaking two-day absence.

Normally Monday means a slightly heavier load of mail since it hasn’t been delivered since Saturday, but yesterday I was greeted with an obscene number of envelopes bearing those familiar logos of the likes of Capital One, Bank of America, Citibank, and various other financial institutions who want my money, my blood, and what little space remains in my recycling bin.

But yesterday was different from the usual deluge of 0% balance transfer offers and $50 for opening a checking account advertisements. There were no ads or offers in yesterday’s mail. What was there? Confirmations. Confirmations of my online internet activity. Credit line increases. Balance transfer executions. E-mail address changes. I counted 12 separate confirmation letters in all. All on paper, all in separate mailings.

I’d received similar paper mailings before, but never more than one on any given day. I have been fooling around with my various credit card and savings accounts lately, requesting larger credit lines and taking advantage of account opening bonuses and interest-free credit card loans. I guess all of that fancy online accounting converged into a single day of mailing.

But this huge batch of confirmation letters irked me in a way that no single confirmation letter has ever irked me before. I counted three separate causes for my irkyness:

• Paper letters for online activity. Thanks to the power of the internet, I can do pretty much anything imaginable with my credit and bank accounts from the comfort of my couch. All it takes is a few mouse clicks, a couple of keystrokes, a swig of gin, and all my finances are in order. So then why must I get all these paper confirmation letters when I do something online??? I know you sometimes need 5-7 days to qualify me for that massive credit line increase, but have you ever heard of e-mail?
• Every letter had my full account number. “Your credit line increase for account number XXXX YYYY ZZZZ WWWW has been approved.” You won’t even show my full credit card account number on your website when I’m logged in from my laptop—something nobody’s going to get their hands on in the next 10 minutes without breaking down the front door and brandishing a shotgun. But you’ll gladly plaster it all over your paper confirmation letters. Mailboxes are so easy to rob that I just robbed my neighbor’s right now while typing this sentence. Maybe if credit card issuers wouldn’t send out umpteen mailings with full customer account numbers for anyone to see and steal, there wouldn’t be so much rampant theft and fraud and pain. Just a thought. (Morons.)
• Two separate letters for one request. Twice. This was the straw that broke my electronic camel’s back. For one credit line increase request, I got two letters: one saying “You’ve been approved for an increase to $10,000,” another saying I’ve been rejected for an increase to $20,000. I had requested the increase to $20,000; but much like a first-grader who can’t combine two thoughts into a compound sentence, Bank of Name Omitted to Protect the Stupid Bank couldn’t combine the good news and the bad news into a single letter. Similarly, another bank decided that it took two letters to confirm my e-mail address change—only the content of both letters was identical. Yay, double the chances for a mailbox thief to steal my account number!

Banks and credit card issuers be warned: If you send me another paper confirmation and I happen to paper cut myself on it, I’m going to sue you soooo much for assault with a deadly weapon. And if you don’t believe me, just check your mailbox for a confirmation letter written in myyyy blooooood.

You know, from the paper cut.

Saving money and taking frugality to the extreme are some of the major themes of Punny Money. You’ve seen some pretty crazy tips over the years here: going without underwear, spoiling the secret of a baby’s gender, and eating a small country’s worth of food at buffets. But not everything in life should be seen as a financial obstacle to be tackled as cheaply as possible. Here’s a look at some of those important moments in life when it’s not always best to go the cut-rate route.

1. Driving school. I was sent to the cheapest driving school in the area, and I got what was paid for. The instructor acted like he got his own driver’s license in a cereal box, and the school never taught us some important things like three-point turning and obeying stop signs. Fortunately Maryland requires a ton of behind-the-wheel training that made up for the school’s lacking curriculum, but I’m sure plenty of teenagers never learned to drive properly because their parents wouldn’t shell out an extra hundred bucks for a decent driving education.
2. Wedding… parts of it, at least. There are countless ways to save money on your wedding—elope, tone down on the decorations, don’t invite third cousins you’ve never met. But before you go with the cheapest photographer, videographer, DJ, and other wedding service providers you can find, consider that there’s probably a reason why they cost half as much as all the other guys. So unless you’re happy with 500 out-of-focus photos and a DJ who drinks your open bar dry, talk to family and friends and try to find somebody they recommend for your wedding-day vendors.
3. Moving. You know those moving vans you see on the highway that advertise something like “flat-rate moving” or “move your whole house for $399?” Yeah, if you’re lucky, they’ll just break half your stuff. Many of those movers are really scammers or staffed by inexperienced, part-time workers. If you want your stuff to join you at your new home in one piece, spend some time on researching local packers and haulers, and invest some money in a quality move team.
4. Starting a new job. Beginning a new position or switching careers could mean that you’ll have to make some pricey changes to your lifestyle. A new job may require laying out some funds for a new wardrobe, a fancy briefcase, or other items you need for your move up the corporate ladder. While there are deals to be found on business dress, you may want to invest in quality merchandise that will last you a long time rather than thrift store rejects that’ll fall apart with frequent use.
5. Retirement. Bringing your career to a close and settling in for a long, happy retirement is not cheap. If you’re 65 and planning to live for another 30 or 40 years without working, you better have a million dollars stashed away in safe locations. And hopefully you didn’t trust your life savings to some cheapo accountant who takes your money for a wild ride. Otherwise, you could find yourself filling out job applications with one hand and placing bingo markers with the other.

So before embarking on these big adventures, do your homework, talk to people you know for referrals, and try to find a happy balance between quality and price.