I have to confess, we're still living in the dark ages and don't have a cell phone, though we've toyed with the idea on several occasions. Haven't take the plunge, yet. I don't like the idea of locking into a plan, kind of reminds me of being in debt, with yet another bill to pay, and probably explains why we didn't buy a house until last year. Our first.
Maybe the pay as you go/no contract plan is the way to go. I'll have to look into that. Thanks for the tip.
We submitted a incorrect SSN on our original tax return however fixed it back in Feb 08. Now the IRS Economic Stimulus web site states we do not qualify because the mistake, corrected or not. Any idea how to fix that or if we can ever get the Stimulus?
http://www.wigsforkids.org/ in my opinion is everything people think Locks of Love is. Wigs for Kids hand make wigs for children and adults who have lost their hair due to cancer or other medical reasons. And the people who receive their wigs are not charged any money. If you want to donate your hair do a bit of research first, there are several lesser known charities out there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/fashion/06locks.html I think many people would be enlightened by this New York Times article. I know I was shocked to find out that 80% of the hair sent to Locks of Love is thrown away or sold. According to the article Locks of Love made $1.9 million from hair sales from 2001 to 2006, and took in another $3.4 million in donations. That's astounding.
I'm suprised you received the dtv converter box coupons on time. A lot of people from my website have said that it's taking 4-8 weeks longer than the expected delivery date.
I'd encourage budget conscious folks (or even people who just think the cell phone companies are engaging in price gouging to consider pay-as-you-go phones. I have one through T-Mobile but AT&T and Virgin also have plans. I switched to a pay-as-you-go no-contract plan last year. I was a little worried at first, but I *love* it--in 10 months I have spent under $100 compared to $40 per month with the plan I had. It has changed the way I use the cell phone--now I only use it for quick convenience related calls, not to chat for hours on end--but I haven't found that a negative factor at all, despite thinking that I'd really miss that.
Sure, there are other factors of supply and demand from an increase in standard of living in many nations, but that is about 1% of the problem.
The other 99% is caused by increasing the money supply - which is the Fed is doing at a very fast rate. If supply and demand was the primary cause, than why didn't we see inflation in the last 5 years with China and India growing 8-12% per year? And why are we seeing inflation spiking all around the world?
I have all of our bills but two go directly onto the credit card. This isn't an issue, since we pay the CC off in full every month. The two remaining bills come in at about the same time of month, and I pay them using free online bill pay from my credit union as they come in.
So almost all of our bills get paid at a single time during the month, and I never miss a payment. If I ever get charged incorrectly, I can challenge the bill on the credit card. (This has not happened to date (2 years).) The only reason that I haven't moved those two remaining bills onto auto-payment is because one has a fee for using credit card payment and the other doesn't offer it at all.
Considering they clearly do have a reverse lookup service: http://www.intelius.com/people-search-phone.html
and claim that income information and other details on my phone number are available... I have to assume this is _not_ an urban legend, even though Snopes says they shut it down.
You're right -- I was just going to chime in and say that. I use my Giant Eagle savings card whenever I buy my groceries for the week, so I can obtain the sale prices, and I also rack up the fuel savings, which I give to my boyfriend, since I don't drive nearly as much as he does.
I think I saved him almost $1 per gallon the last time he filled up.
No, I agree: A rising standard of living in poor countries (driven by globalization), in the face of resource limits, leads inevitably to lower standards of living in rich countries. It takes the form of both rising prices and slowing economic activity. Further, there's nothing the Fed can do to help.
What the Fed can do, though, is make it worse. It can (as it's been doing lately) pump up the money supply to try to head off the slowing economy. It can also (as it probably will in a few months) ease off on money supply growth to try to bring prices back in line.
Another factor layered on top of all this is that we're seeing some real dislocations in the financial markets. Some of the effect of that is deflationary, which is another reason the Fed's policy of late has been inflationary.
Even though part of the price increase that we're seeing are not inflation, but rather a decline in standard of living, I suspect that a good bit of it is inflation. The Fed has decided (for the reasons mentioned) that this much inflation is a lower risk than less inflation. The point of my article was to point out some of the less-obvious costs to the economy of this policy choice.
Kirk nails it with this quote: This is a world economy with 2 billion people moving from poverty to middle class. Demand is insatiable. Supply is dwindling. Econ 101.
It's good to think that the Federal Reserve has something to do with this, historically they have. But the Reserve's does not have control this time, the Reserve cannot modify this inflationary effect. Even if the Reserve stopped printing money, the "inflation" would just keep running. Too many people want the same resources as the "average American".
The reason is simply stated by Kirk: Demand is up. And it's worth noting that for many years the US has had the cheapest access to goods anywhere. Even two years ago Canadians were paying significantly more for goods and services, even after exchanging currencies. These are people less than 100 miles away paying 10-30% more for simple things like food, books, clothes & cosmetics. Even now with the dollar at par, $10 still gets you way more food in a US restaurant than an equivalent Canadian one (even within a chain).
Phil, you call this "resource depletion", but I think it's fair to call it "globalization". And it's not just a US thing, Canada will be going through the same crunch on a smaller scale. But as the wealthiest countries these two are going to be pulled down by the effects of globalization.
The reason Kirk brings it up is that the money issues that, what most people are seeing right now is not primarily an inflation issue, it's a competition issue. The CPI is simply not accounting for the prices changes that we're seeing. Nor will it in the future. Give it another 2-3 years and you'll likely see unit prices 1.5 to 2 times even current day prices. This number will have little to do with the available money supply.
Europeans are already paying 1.5x to 2x (currency-adjusted) for many goods and services. Parity is a long way away.
"Guest" isn't behaving very guest-like, but you remain the perfect host. It's obvious who the better man is. But I pity "guest". We may have to deal with him for a minute, while he can never escape himself.
I love your posts for their intelligence and depth. And I love Myscha's for the amount of content she can pack into one subject. (She can think of 83 things to do with a paper clip, while I could think of maybe 5, and one of those would be to hold paper!)
Well, technically they are "flushable" in that they won't clog up your toilet. If copious quantities are used in a relatively small period of time, however, they do have the potential to clog up your lateral (your house's connection to the sewer line in the street), as I stated in my previous post. So "technically" the manufacturer's aren't lying, but they don't care what happens past the point of you using their product. What most people don't understand is that sewer treatment plants are publicly owned, so everyone's taxes go to support them. If they have problems, it's everyone's hard-earned money that is going into fixing the problem. The purpose of my original post was to educate people of a potential problem caused by their actions, that in the long-run will cost their taxes to fix. And it's something that doesn't even need to occur in the first place if everyone will just use a trash can for the wipes.
WE MOST DEFINITLEY NEED TO EXPLORE ALTERNATE FUEL SOURCES, BUT ETHANOL IS NOT THE ANSWER! JUST LOOK AT THE PRICES OF DAIRY,MEAT,AND ALL THE FOOD PRODUCTS. THIS MOVE BY THE FEDS WAS A KNEE-JERK REACTION TO APPEASE A SMALL GRUOP OF THE UN/UNDERINFORMED POPULACE. WHAT HAPPRNS IF OUR NATION'S CORN PRODUCERS CAN'T THEIR CROPS PLANTED ON TIME OR WE HAVE A NATURAL DISASTER? ARE WE THEN LOOKING AT $5.00/GALLON FOR GAS AND MILK? WE HAVE THE CRUDE RIGHT HERE AND KNOW HOW TO GO GET IT WITH ALMOST NO IMPACT ON THE ENVIRONMENT, AND THE AUTO MAKERS ARE COSTANTLY WORKING ON IMPROVING FUEL ECONOMY. IN THE MEAN TIME, LET'S ALL GET INTO THIS HYPERMILING THING!
You say, "The central bank causes inflation and the central bank can fix it." This is a correct statement but... this is a big but... They won't.
Reason #1 - They'd collapse an already shrinking economy and market. Think the housing crisis is bad, just think what increasing interest rates will do to it. Additionally, higher interest rates could cause the stock market to tank. We're essentially between a rock and a hard place. Can't decrease the rate because that fuels inflation; can't increase it because it will play havoc with the markets. Between the proverbial rock and hard place created by, thank you, the FED.
Reason #2 - Inflating the currency, creating more paper money out of nothing is the only way out of our deficits. We are hopelessly in debt to other nations with no real way to pay it back. If we can cheapen the currency, we get to pay the bill with dollars that are worth less. A neat trick, heh?
Volcker was able to jump the rates in the 70's to save us from Carter's mistakes. It caused pain for awhile, yes, but we didn't have a housing crisis and we weren't a debtor nation. Also, we had a positive savings rate.
Inflation - you haven't seen anything yet. If you check the futures markets you can see it coming like a runaway freight train. Inflation is an insidious tax on everyone and another way to re-distribute wealth.
Funny, (for anyone who reads the constitution) the congress is supposed to be in charge of the currency. We gave that responsibility away to a non-governmental body, the FED, 100 years ago. Before the creation of the FED, inflation was benign, hardly getting worried about. Since its creation, inflation has been built-in to the system. The FED was created, so it's said, to protect us from the vicious economic cycles. But it didn't do that either.
Please folks - do NOT flush any type of wipes down the toilet even if it says on the label that they are flushable. I work for the local sewer district and the public has no idea how destructive those things get in the sewer system. They clog up lift stations and weak havoc on the pumps at the sewer plant. This is a relatively new phenomena that is happening across the US. We have even seen people's laterals from their own house out to the sewer line in the street get clogged because of using wipes and flushing them.
I agree that ultimately, consumers are responsible for their own financial well-being. But things like two-cycle billing impact people who are using cards responsibly -- and can make becoming responsible a discouraging uphill battle. I say let the credit card companies earn their interest fair and square.
I have to confess, we're still living in the dark ages and don't have a cell phone, though we've toyed with the idea on several occasions. Haven't take the plunge, yet. I don't like the idea of locking into a plan, kind of reminds me of being in debt, with yet another bill to pay, and probably explains why we didn't buy a house until last year. Our first.
Maybe the pay as you go/no contract plan is the way to go. I'll have to look into that. Thanks for the tip.
We submitted a incorrect SSN on our original tax return however fixed it back in Feb 08. Now the IRS Economic Stimulus web site states we do not qualify because the mistake, corrected or not. Any idea how to fix that or if we can ever get the Stimulus?
http://www.wigsforkids.org/ in my opinion is everything people think Locks of Love is. Wigs for Kids hand make wigs for children and adults who have lost their hair due to cancer or other medical reasons. And the people who receive their wigs are not charged any money. If you want to donate your hair do a bit of research first, there are several lesser known charities out there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/fashion/06locks.html I think many people would be enlightened by this New York Times article. I know I was shocked to find out that 80% of the hair sent to Locks of Love is thrown away or sold. According to the article Locks of Love made $1.9 million from hair sales from 2001 to 2006, and took in another $3.4 million in donations. That's astounding.
Excellent blog BTW.
I'm suprised you received the dtv converter box coupons on time. A lot of people from my website have said that it's taking 4-8 weeks longer than the expected delivery date.
I am a frugal, saving, planning, recycling, "why did somebody throw that perfectly good _____ away," ant.
I'd encourage budget conscious folks (or even people who just think the cell phone companies are engaging in price gouging to consider pay-as-you-go phones. I have one through T-Mobile but AT&T and Virgin also have plans. I switched to a pay-as-you-go no-contract plan last year. I was a little worried at first, but I *love* it--in 10 months I have spent under $100 compared to $40 per month with the plan I had. It has changed the way I use the cell phone--now I only use it for quick convenience related calls, not to chat for hours on end--but I haven't found that a negative factor at all, despite thinking that I'd really miss that.
Sure, there are other factors of supply and demand from an increase in standard of living in many nations, but that is about 1% of the problem.
The other 99% is caused by increasing the money supply - which is the Fed is doing at a very fast rate. If supply and demand was the primary cause, than why didn't we see inflation in the last 5 years with China and India growing 8-12% per year? And why are we seeing inflation spiking all around the world?
Here is an article about this:
Inflation Is Everywhere
http://www.pennyjobs.com/pp/public/Articles.aspx?aid=83
if i made about 75k combined in a married couple with two kids under 18 how much will i get back?
I used this site:
http://cellphones.about.com/od/prepaid_phones/qt/plan_chooser.htm
When I was looking for a phone about a year ago.
It helped me narrow things down quickly.
I have all of our bills but two go directly onto the credit card. This isn't an issue, since we pay the CC off in full every month. The two remaining bills come in at about the same time of month, and I pay them using free online bill pay from my credit union as they come in.
So almost all of our bills get paid at a single time during the month, and I never miss a payment. If I ever get charged incorrectly, I can challenge the bill on the credit card. (This has not happened to date (2 years).) The only reason that I haven't moved those two remaining bills onto auto-payment is because one has a fee for using credit card payment and the other doesn't offer it at all.
Considering they clearly do have a reverse lookup service:
http://www.intelius.com/people-search-phone.html
and claim that income information and other details on my phone number are available... I have to assume this is _not_ an urban legend, even though Snopes says they shut it down.
You're right -- I was just going to chime in and say that. I use my Giant Eagle savings card whenever I buy my groceries for the week, so I can obtain the sale prices, and I also rack up the fuel savings, which I give to my boyfriend, since I don't drive nearly as much as he does.
I think I saved him almost $1 per gallon the last time he filled up.
@Gates:
No, I agree: A rising standard of living in poor countries (driven by globalization), in the face of resource limits, leads inevitably to lower standards of living in rich countries. It takes the form of both rising prices and slowing economic activity. Further, there's nothing the Fed can do to help.
What the Fed can do, though, is make it worse. It can (as it's been doing lately) pump up the money supply to try to head off the slowing economy. It can also (as it probably will in a few months) ease off on money supply growth to try to bring prices back in line.
Another factor layered on top of all this is that we're seeing some real dislocations in the financial markets. Some of the effect of that is deflationary, which is another reason the Fed's policy of late has been inflationary.
Even though part of the price increase that we're seeing are not inflation, but rather a decline in standard of living, I suspect that a good bit of it is inflation. The Fed has decided (for the reasons mentioned) that this much inflation is a lower risk than less inflation. The point of my article was to point out some of the less-obvious costs to the economy of this policy choice.
a Diaper Genie of some kind.
Kirk nails it with this quote: This is a world economy with 2 billion people moving from poverty to middle class. Demand is insatiable. Supply is dwindling. Econ 101.
It's good to think that the Federal Reserve has something to do with this, historically they have. But the Reserve's does not have control this time, the Reserve cannot modify this inflationary effect. Even if the Reserve stopped printing money, the "inflation" would just keep running. Too many people want the same resources as the "average American".
The reason is simply stated by Kirk: Demand is up. And it's worth noting that for many years the US has had the cheapest access to goods anywhere. Even two years ago Canadians were paying significantly more for goods and services, even after exchanging currencies. These are people less than 100 miles away paying 10-30% more for simple things like food, books, clothes & cosmetics. Even now with the dollar at par, $10 still gets you way more food in a US restaurant than an equivalent Canadian one (even within a chain).
Phil, you call this "resource depletion", but I think it's fair to call it "globalization". And it's not just a US thing, Canada will be going through the same crunch on a smaller scale. But as the wealthiest countries these two are going to be pulled down by the effects of globalization.
The reason Kirk brings it up is that the money issues that, what most people are seeing right now is not primarily an inflation issue, it's a competition issue. The CPI is simply not accounting for the prices changes that we're seeing. Nor will it in the future. Give it another 2-3 years and you'll likely see unit prices 1.5 to 2 times even current day prices. This number will have little to do with the available money supply.
Europeans are already paying 1.5x to 2x (currency-adjusted) for many goods and services. Parity is a long way away.
"Guest" isn't behaving very guest-like, but you remain the perfect host. It's obvious who the better man is. But I pity "guest". We may have to deal with him for a minute, while he can never escape himself.
I love your posts for their intelligence and depth. And I love Myscha's for the amount of content she can pack into one subject. (She can think of 83 things to do with a paper clip, while I could think of maybe 5, and one of those would be to hold paper!)
Keep up the good work!
Well, technically they are "flushable" in that they won't clog up your toilet. If copious quantities are used in a relatively small period of time, however, they do have the potential to clog up your lateral (your house's connection to the sewer line in the street), as I stated in my previous post. So "technically" the manufacturer's aren't lying, but they don't care what happens past the point of you using their product. What most people don't understand is that sewer treatment plants are publicly owned, so everyone's taxes go to support them. If they have problems, it's everyone's hard-earned money that is going into fixing the problem. The purpose of my original post was to educate people of a potential problem caused by their actions, that in the long-run will cost their taxes to fix. And it's something that doesn't even need to occur in the first place if everyone will just use a trash can for the wipes.
WE MOST DEFINITLEY NEED TO EXPLORE ALTERNATE FUEL SOURCES, BUT ETHANOL IS NOT THE ANSWER! JUST LOOK AT THE PRICES OF DAIRY,MEAT,AND ALL THE FOOD PRODUCTS. THIS MOVE BY THE FEDS WAS A KNEE-JERK REACTION TO APPEASE A SMALL GRUOP OF THE UN/UNDERINFORMED POPULACE. WHAT HAPPRNS IF OUR NATION'S CORN PRODUCERS CAN'T THEIR CROPS PLANTED ON TIME OR WE HAVE A NATURAL DISASTER? ARE WE THEN LOOKING AT $5.00/GALLON FOR GAS AND MILK? WE HAVE THE CRUDE RIGHT HERE AND KNOW HOW TO GO GET IT WITH ALMOST NO IMPACT ON THE ENVIRONMENT, AND THE AUTO MAKERS ARE COSTANTLY WORKING ON IMPROVING FUEL ECONOMY. IN THE MEAN TIME, LET'S ALL GET INTO THIS HYPERMILING THING!
Yeah shaved ice melts pretty quickly so you don't really chew it. The ice crystals should be pretty tiny. In the end you end up drinking it.
How can they be called flushable if they're not flushable? Aren't the manufacturers guilty of misrepresentation?
You're a rock star. And I'm quite certain I'm not the only one that thinks so! Good job, as usual.
You don't need to worry that a comment from a passing guest is going to hurt my feelings, but I do appreciate the support.
Besides, in this case, our guest gave me a great idea for another post. Look for it tomorrow!
Philip:
You say, "The central bank causes inflation and the central bank can fix it." This is a correct statement but... this is a big but... They won't.
Reason #1 - They'd collapse an already shrinking economy and market. Think the housing crisis is bad, just think what increasing interest rates will do to it. Additionally, higher interest rates could cause the stock market to tank. We're essentially between a rock and a hard place. Can't decrease the rate because that fuels inflation; can't increase it because it will play havoc with the markets. Between the proverbial rock and hard place created by, thank you, the FED.
Reason #2 - Inflating the currency, creating more paper money out of nothing is the only way out of our deficits. We are hopelessly in debt to other nations with no real way to pay it back. If we can cheapen the currency, we get to pay the bill with dollars that are worth less. A neat trick, heh?
Volcker was able to jump the rates in the 70's to save us from Carter's mistakes. It caused pain for awhile, yes, but we didn't have a housing crisis and we weren't a debtor nation. Also, we had a positive savings rate.
Inflation - you haven't seen anything yet. If you check the futures markets you can see it coming like a runaway freight train. Inflation is an insidious tax on everyone and another way to re-distribute wealth.
Funny, (for anyone who reads the constitution) the congress is supposed to be in charge of the currency. We gave that responsibility away to a non-governmental body, the FED, 100 years ago. Before the creation of the FED, inflation was benign, hardly getting worried about. Since its creation, inflation has been built-in to the system. The FED was created, so it's said, to protect us from the vicious economic cycles. But it didn't do that either.
Go figure.
Please folks - do NOT flush any type of wipes down the toilet even if it says on the label that they are flushable. I work for the local sewer district and the public has no idea how destructive those things get in the sewer system. They clog up lift stations and weak havoc on the pumps at the sewer plant. This is a relatively new phenomena that is happening across the US. We have even seen people's laterals from their own house out to the sewer line in the street get clogged because of using wipes and flushing them.
I agree that ultimately, consumers are responsible for their own financial well-being. But things like two-cycle billing impact people who are using cards responsibly -- and can make becoming responsible a discouraging uphill battle. I say let the credit card companies earn their interest fair and square.