I think it is rather sad that so many people are struggling to make ends meet. It wasn’t very long ago that the college business courses were teaching that businesses were going to have to become more accommodating towards their employees, making concessions to people who wanted to work on their terms. For example, accommodating young families by providing parental leave, and providing day care. But now it seems that people are scrambling hard for jobs and that the companies have the upper hand, not the labor force at all!
Sadly, the way unemployment figures are calculated seriously misrepresents how many people are really out of work. There are a lot more unemployed people out in society than the official numbers. Many of these unemployed people are starting to become desperate for rapid cash and are turning to quick loan services that charge extremely high fees and interest rates. And credit card companies are making it harder for consumers as well; slapping on new fees and increasing their credit rates.
I would like to strongly encourage anyone who is considering taking out a loan against their cars or paychecks to read all of the fine print and be very aware of the terms and conditions of the loan. If you are not careful you may end up in debt forever!
My wife is always fretting about paying our bills. She keeps reminding me that we need to cut costs because the cost of living is going up but our income is NOT going up. She is still upset about the price of gas having gone up so much in the recent past, and she is NOT happy about that at all!
So, she is constantly moving about the house, turning off lights and televisions and radios when there aren’t any people in the room. I can’t even leave the living room for ten minutes to use the “facilities” without coming back to a darkened silent family room! It drives me nuts! When I complain to her about it, she says “well I didn’t know how long you were going to be gone, and lots of times you just go to bed or off to work or off running errands and don’t even tell me and don’t turn anything off, and I’m trying to save money and make ends meet.”
My wife has been looking for a job for over a year now. Her parents live nearby and they run a store. They keep telling her that they are shorthanded and that they need help. She keeps offering to help them. They keep telling her that they don’t want her because she can’t lift 50 pounds repeatedly. I think that is bull. If they need help that badly I think that they can make some kind of arrangement to let her work and help out without having to lift that much weight – team lifting would be a good answer! It is very frustrating to sit and watch this happening, but I have to keep out of it, which is hard to do!
I was quite upset yesterday when I went to the store to buy a few items that I needed. I only needed to spend $15, but my wife and I like to use our Discover card to pay for things because we like the rewards that we get every month. I was very upset when the store told me that the credit card was declined because by card was over the limit! The last time I knew, the credit limit was over $11,000 and I had only $2,000 on the card! I pay the bills every month in FULL and ON TIME! I was never notified that the credit limit was dropped, and I have no idea why it was dropped! I called the Customer Service line and they won’t tell me why it was dropped. I am NOT pleased at all, so I guess I’ll be paying with cash from now on, and although I won’t be cancelling the card, they won’t be getting much of my business from now on!
This morning I was unhappy to discover that my car had a flat tire. I guess it was a good time to have a flat tire, since I was home at the time. Not that it is EVER a good time to have a flat tire; they are a pain in the butt! But if I HAVE to have a flat tire, I’d much rather be at home discovering it than out on the road; especially on an Interstate Highway in rush hour! But face it, a flat tire is an aggravation, no matter what!
Thank goodness my spare is good, but it IS a donut tire so I need to go to the tire store as soon as possible to either get this flat tire repaired (I hope it is repairable!) or replaced. I didn’t have road hazard insurance on the tire that is flat, if I have to buy a new one I will be SURE to get road hazard insurance this time! Tires are not cheap!
I’ve heard that the Zimmer company has manufactured some defective Durom hip replacement cups that are causing some of the recipients of the cup troubles. Because of these issues on zimmer durom cup, the Zimmer legal department is contacting recipients of the cup and asking the patients to sign a release of liability agreement. There are many durom lawsuits going on right now over the defective cup, and the durom lawyers are advising anyone who receives such a request from Zimmer to NOT sign the release.
They say that signing the release would prevent you from having any recourse should the cup fail in the future. You might also be opening yourself up to being sued by Medicare or your health insurance. So, folks out there in the audience who might be reading this should take note of this – if you have one of these cups, do NOT sign the release!
I can remember when I was a kid my mother showed us how to make candles, using wax, chopped ice cubes, and milk cartons. It was so fascinating, stirring the melting wax, pouring it over the ice that we had poured into the milk cartons. What was really cool was peeling the milk cartons off after the wax had cooled and seeing the really neat designs that the ice had left in the candles! That is just one of the fond memories I have of my childhood; doing fun things like that with my mother. She is such a crafty lady!
Recently my mother decided to try her hand at the cottage-industry candle making business. She wants to make soy candles and sell them at craft fairs. She loves to make candles, and she figures that it would be a great way to make a little bit of pocket money while doing something she loves to do! She told me that she found a great website called jarstore.com where she can buy wholesale Libby jars for her new candle-making business. Libby jars are her favorite jars. She has asked her best friend Carol to come over and help her at the craft fairs; they can sit together at the tables and visit with each other in between customers. I told her that if that’s what she wants to do, then she should go for it!
Paula has a girlfriend named Sue who recently moved to New Jersey. She moved there because her employer transferred her. She didn’t really want to leave the area, but with the employment situation the way it is, she felt that if she didn’t take the transfer that she wouldn’t have any job at all. Sue calls Paula every day since she left here, and is trying to convince us to move to New Jersey too. She says that New Jersey Jobs are plentiful and high paying.
So, Paula and I have been talking about the possibility of going up there and checking it out. Sue says that we can stay with her while we are looking around, so we just might do that.
In my opinion, people should be diligent about making sure that they have enough insurance, both for their homes and the vehicles. These are big ticket items that would devastate someone financially if something bad happened to them and the owners could not afford to fix them up. However, in this economy, people need to pay careful attention to what insurance they are buying; they want to make sure to get the best value for their money!
With that in mind, I think it is wonderful that you can get Online Instant Insurance Quotes to help you find out what is available “out there” without having to make a lot of phone calls. I love how you can get Auto Insurance Quotes and Home Insurance Quotes with just a few clicks of the mouse and keyboard! You can get all of the information you need in the comfort of your own home! Isn’t technology wonderful?
Seth tod me that he has found a fun way to get involved in charity fundraising for his favorite charity. He has a couple of different non profit charity organizations that he is very fond of. One being the Locks of Love charity because one of his nieces has cancer and has lost her hair.
The Locks of Love charity takes donated hair and turns them into wigs to give to children who have lost their hair due to cancer treatments. Anyway, Seth has found a program that encourages donation to charity by getting involved in making and fulfilling dares and collecting money from pledges from other people related to the dares. The participants can pick the charity of their choice for the fundraising efforts. The details of this program can be found at the daredealer.com website.
I think that it is great that so many car manufacturers are developing, manufacturing, and selling a variety of hybrid vehicles. Finally they are starting to respond to what the consumers actually want and need! I’d like to buy a new vehicle in the next couple of years, once the economy settles down a little bit and we are a little bit more confident with our financial status. For now, we are looking at cars like the honda civic hybrid
and the toyota camry hybrid as the frontrunners for our car search.
My brother has been telling me that he wants to buy the new audi a3. I was reading about that car on the website thecarconnection.com and think that it is a nice looking car. I was surprised to read in that review that they seem to think that Americans in general don’t like hatch-backs and wagons. I love them!
I sure seem to know a lot of people who are having trouble with their credit ratings! Credit repair is rapidly becoming a serious issue for many of us. That’s not surprising because I know a lot of people who have lost their jobs and are struggling to pay their mortgages, which are the biggest credit rating factor in the equation.
In many cases, in order to be able to take advantage of the lower mortgage interest rates, some of us are going to need to do some research on how to repair credit ratings. So there is an interest and a need for people to learn how they can fix credit ratings from bad to good.
Most people have lifestyles that “push the envelope” as far as living within their means, and when something bad happens, like an accident, or job loss, good credit turns into bad credit in a very short period of time. This can effect people in many ways, including their ability to find a new job if they need one.
Have you ever thought about buying a locking mailbox? Before you do, take a look at this video!
The embeded video in this post is showing average guys breaking into a variety of locking mailboxes. I have to assume that the people who bought these mailboxes were thinking that thes locking mailboxes were keeping their mail safe from theft and vandalism. These mailboxes ranged in price from $30 – $200, but they don’t seem to keep the mail safe from guys like these in the video!
What you really should get, if you want a mailbox that is really tough and will really protect your mail, is the Mail Boss mailbox. It is the toughest mailbox available on the market, and the prices on residential mailboxes range from $115 – $199. They come in several different styles, and colors. This mailbox can be bought on the Internet from the mailboss.net website (they offer free shipping) or you can use their store locator to find a store near you that sells them. I tried out the store locator for my area and found that the local True Value store sells them, so there is probably a store near you that sells them too!
There was an article in the New York Times recently about how to save money on eye care. I guess there are going to be a lot of articles in the papers (and television news) about how people can save money now that the economy is so bad! The article was educating the general public about how people really don’t need to have their eyes checked as often as they have been taught to think, and the article was talking about shopping around for deals on eyeglasses. One of the mistakes many people make is to buy their eyeglasses straight from the little store attached to their eye doctor’s office. Those glasses are always really expensive! And many insurance plans cover the cost of the exam, but not of the glasses! I know that’s how MY insurance works!
Another thing the article mentions is buying the eyeglasses over the Internet – and tells the reader that Zenni Optical is a good place to buy eyeglasses as cheaply as $8 a pair. I went on their website to look at their selectron of $8 glasses and found that there were several good looking sets. I posted a picture of my favorite one – I’ve always been partial to aviator frames! The $8 includes the prescription lens, too! You can’t beat that deal with a stick!
I’ve noticed over the past year that I’ve been getting notices from many of my credit card companies that they are changing the the interest rate on my cards. When that happens, I pull the file folder of the card and review each one. I’ve found that in every single case, when I first opened the credit card account it was a low interest credit card; but now, as the economy worsens, these cards seem to be increasing the interest rates!
I really don’t understand why they are doing this to me, since I pay off each credit card bill in full as soon as it comes; I can’t believe that they are doing it because of that! I have to assume that this is something that they are doing on a wide scale basis, and that perhaps they expect that the recipients of the notices are not even bothering to read the notices and just file them away (or throw them away!)
Well, I am not one of those people! No, I’m not. So I am going to start to shop around for different low interest credit card offers and when I get notices that my application has been approved and the new card(s) arrive in the mail I will be calling the old cards and renegotiating my interest rate or cancelling the card(s).
In order to find the best credit card offers, I’ll be using the dealsforcreditcards.com website. This is one of the leading credit card websites that compares low interest credit card offers. The website also has informative articles relating to credit cards, and gives you the opportunity to apply for the credit card of your choice from their website. In addition to comparing low interest credit cards, they compare the other types as well, such as rewards credit cards, balance transfer cards, etc. A very useful webiste!
As you may have noticed in the recent thread of posts, I’m trying to find ways to stretch our budget. It would be a good idea to try to find ways to increase our income, too! My brother-in-law tells me that he has been making extra money web hosting. I asked him how he managed to do that, and he told me to read the article on the web hosting webpage published by the webhostinggeeks.com.
So I’ve been reading their website, and found that they have a lot of interesting articles about web hosting, and that they rate and review a lot of web hosting providers. I was surprised and impressed that they have even created a web page that rates and reviews “green” web hosting providers! I was comparing their rates with the other web hosting providers and saw that their prices were very competitive! I’ll have to give some thought as to whether or not this type of business would be a good fit for our family.
On my campaign to make our house more energy-efficient (for the environment AND our shrinking electric budget) I have decided that it is also a good idea to get pipe insulation for our hot water pipes. I’m going to go to Home Depot or Lowe’s and buy some pipe insulation and install it in the basement.
I’ve seen some little insulated boxes that fit over top of the outside water spigots to help protect them from freezing. I think that is a good idea, too. It would be awful to have one freeze and burst – especially during the day while we are not home to deal with an emergency like that.
I do try to conserve water and have always turned out the lights when I leave a room and other prudent habits. But I’m always on the lookout for more ideas on how to save money and also help the environment.
In addition to trying to make our house as energy efficient as possible, we are looking for ways to cut our expenses everywhere we can. So we’re also looking to trim our insurance budget. I found some good government-sponsored websites I think can help us with that. I went to Google and did some searching and I found quite a lot of information out there!
I’ve been taking a look at how to save some money lately. In these shaky times, I think it is important to save every penny we can!
We recently received the electric bill, and that was motivation for me to start looking at ways to reduce our electricity usage, even now without the added extra expense of running a central air conditioner.
First thing I’m going to do is install a thermal insulated blanket for the water heater. I bought one at the hardware store for about $20.00 Our family takes a lot of showers, and we run the dishwasher every day (yes, it is full when we run it, and we have it set on air drying!) and we do a LOT of laundry, so I think insulating the water heater better will help reduce our electricity usage. I’ve read that doing this will save 4-9% in water heating costs! And that will be good for the environment, too!
There was an article in the New York Times recently about how to save money on eye care. I guess there are going to be a lot of articles in the papers (and television news) about how people can save money now that the economy is so bad! The article was educating the general public about how people really don’t need to have their eyes checked as often as they have been taught to think, and the article was talking about shopping around for deals on