It's not hard to find a big sale this holiday season, but a good shopping strategy can help you get the deepest discounts possible.

For tips, The Bee spoke with Lisa Freeman. She's editor in chief of Shop Smart magazine, a publication of the nonprofit Consumers Union.

What are your top suggestions for getting the best deals?

The first thing: Even if you're shopping in stores, you want to go online and do a price check. Try price-comparison Web sites like pricegrabber.com – that's our favorite because it counts shipping and taxes, so you can compare apples to apples.

But also check other sites – shopzilla.com, Google shopping, Yahoo shopping. You're going to get different results.

Those comparisons are going to be ammunition for negotiating in stores, and that's going to be the name of the game this season. Retailers are really wanting to move merchandise, and I think you're going to find they're much more willing to match or beat prices online.

The other thing you want to do is go to the coupon sites. Say you're searching for something, and you find a store that has a good price. Then go and Google the name of the retailer and the word "coupon code" or "promotion code" or "discount code." You may get some coupon codes that you can use. They don't always work, but when they do, they can save you additional money. Retailmenot.com is one of the sites that we like for that.

Also, ask stores about price guarantees. Don't you hate it when you buy something and then a few weeks later you see the circular, and it actually went down in price? Some stores will actually give you rebates if the price goes down within a certain period.

Anything to avoid?

Don't buy the extended warranties that stores try to sell you. Those are almost never a good deal. We've looked at hundreds of different items and discovered that most of the time, the items don't break within the warranty period, and even if they do, often the repairs cost less than the price of the warranty. From time to time we do come across exceptions – we like Apple's extended warranty for its computers, for instance – but for the most part, we don't recommend them.

Do retailers offer their best deals on the day after Thanksgiving, or can you save even more by waiting?

Black Friday, obviously, is a great day to go shopping, because stores have the door-busters where they're selling items at a loss. But they usually have those items in limited quantities, and the odds of you actually getting one of those door-busters may be limited.

If you're not one of those people who wants to wait in line, I think there are going to be deals from here on out – big discounts. So I think if you don't shop on Black Friday, you'll still find plenty of deals up until Christmas.

In the holiday season, you always see discounts, but I think this year retailers are really gearing up in anticipation of it being a difficult season for them. People are strapped. But when you do get out there to buy your gifts, you're going to find some nice surprises.

Should we expect even better deals in January?

There are certain items that will go even lower, definitely. After Christmas is actually a good time to buy big-screen TVs. New models are coming out and stores are clearing the merchandise out for the new stuff in January and February. And they'll have special deals for the Super Bowl.

Call The Bee's Jim Downing, (916) 321-1065.