Then how are you priming us on currency? Currency markets are incredibly complicated motivated by central banks, debt, jobs, credit markets, and other factors that are currently impacting the global economy. The dollar didn't go down because of supply but because our central banks are injecting liquidity at frightening levels. The dollar declined last year pretty much against every other currency out there. Even though our stock market went up last year, in relation to gold/silver it was down for the year. We are seeing a slight shift back into other forms of reserve currencies especially since it looks like we will have asset deflation in real estate and inflation in other items (i.e., energy).
You may be doing a lot of eating in if all your money is in US dollars. I'm not sure you can pay Molly Maid in Euros.
You and commenters have raised excellent questions (and provided great answers) and not just about whether education is worth it but about the FAFSA process.
I am learning about FAFSA for my children's education. Recently, I attended some sessions on getting into college with some brief discussions about financial aid. The focus was on college prep in general and this is being done in a helpful atmosphere where no one is selling anything -- at my church with people I have known for years and trust. Still I thought that the FAFSA discussion was misleading. Parents were encouraged to consider private schools in addition to public schools because aid is available; FAFSA can fill the gap between what you have and what you need. But there is a huge difference in getting a scholarship/grant funds + doing work-study vs. getting a student loan (though packages may include a mixture of all these things).
This is a somewhat familiar story to me, as an elderly family member did some of the same things. In her case, she purchased several whole closets full of junk items from a company called US Purchasing Exchange.
After she died, we discovered she had spent thousands of dollars on expensive items, mostly junk.
There are any number of companies out there willing to prey on the elderly.
Probably the best we can do is pay more attention to the older folks we care about.
That is such an unfortunate story, I am also sorry to hear that that happened to such a wonderful lady. There should be something done within the law to prevent such things....maybe someday we will see these crooks paying for the things they have done.
Thanks for writing this article. I had a friend discuss a similar situation involving her dad, who was constantly entering contests though he didn't send checks in large amounts to anyone as far as I know. As I recall, she would get involved directly with the companies, canceling orders, asking to stop sending items, etc. I think when the companies realized that there was someone watching out, they backed off. She said he would have never entered contests, ordered "free" items that weren't free, etc. in his more clearheaded days.
The solution is tricky though because your aunt is/was limited in what she could do legally. Since occasionally scammers are family, you have to be careful about what powers you grant to other people.
Changing the number was a great idea though it turned out not to be effective. You could also try a change of address form and routing mail to a Post Office Box.
There may be readers who specialize in working with the elderly who can give additional insight into this topic.
I completely agree with Paul, and I thank him for posting their website offer on Wise Bread. I heeded his advice and ordered 4 one-pound boxes of their "Holiday Special." When See's wrote me and said the whole thing was a mistake, I replied to them that they should honor their offer, regardless. Who is responsible for proofreading a website? The customer or the owner? Why, the latter, of course. I feel that See's owes me some candy...4 boxes of it and nothing less.
Amanda and Jenny--It's actually not widely known that the FAFSA qualifies you for grants, so thanks for pointing that out. It is, however, most widely associated with loans (but you probably already knew that).
Guest #1--I'm sorry I didn't spell out the acronym (though it is only a simple Google search away). In my defense, the article is geared toward those considering taking out student loans, which is a group of people who would know what it means and recognize it immediately.
Guest #2--I actually work a job that doesn't require my degree, and there are non-degreed people who work the same job who make more money. The degree is relevant to my work, but I didn't automatically get any sort of pay raise for having it. So I may have started out making a few cents more that I would have without a degree (and I really mean, a few cents). Sure, it adds up over the years, but it will take a long, long time (between 40 and 50 years) before that makes it worth the value of my loans.
On the other hand, props to you for considering going back to school. I know several people who have chosen that, and I think they're some of people I look up to the most!
I am having a hard time with this statement:
"...I don't necessarily get to make more money than I would have otherwise...". It really peeves me when 'degreed' people claim they aren't necessarily making any more money than if they didn't have a degree, and they say it all the darned time. It's not your fault that I didn't get my degree when I was young, but believe me, you DO necessarily get to make more money than you would without it. It's like that old saying: If you think getting an education is expensive, you should try living without one! It's a nightmare out there trying to earn money without a bachelor's. We're not all real-estate gurus and some of us loathe sales. What's left is clerical (menial) junk. I'd rather have student loans and it looks like I'm heading that way!
Sadly, your grandma's story seems all too familiar to my grandma's. Recently, my grandma was scammed by some low life who claimed to be government agents investigating my grandma's bank account and scammed the old lady out of about $31k. The scammers called her to forward money to their government account which would then be forward back after a hour or two of investigation. to ensure my grandma didn't ask any questions, they told her it was urgent investigation that she can't tell her children about, otherwise, the investigation would stall and her savings would be in trouble. Well, it was only after the money's been transfered that my grandma realized it was a fraud. The thing is, this scam clearly sounded fishy with red flags flying throughout that most people would know is a scam, but since the old lady wasn't as sharp as she used to be after the death of my grandpa and of old age, she fell a victim of a crime that happens way too much nowadays. Personally, I'm angry, not only at the disgusting people who prey on old people, but more importantly, I'm angry at the bank that let this transaction of money happened. The person that handled my grandma's account has known her for years, yet, the bank person failed to notify my grandma of the suspicious transfer of fund to an account that my grandma has never dealt with. Needless to say, after the scam, my grandma was tremendously shaken emotionally, which definitely affect her mental health as well as the physical health. I think there should be tougher laws and more safeguards in place for these seemingly faceless crimes. The bank needs to be more responsible for our financial wealth. and it just makes me sick that these bad people got away with these crimes and continue to scam old people out of their savings.
but I doubt See's will do anything about it. I've made two calls, I don't want to badger them too much. After all, they make candy, and who doesn't love candy?
Failure to define the acronyms. Some of us would love to know what FAFSA means. Not everyone has ever heard of this. I haven't and I would bet others haven't either.
Edit your article to please include what this is. EVERY acronym needs to be defined the first time it is used in any article.
My daughter's teacher made this in her pre-school class. She used mineral oil or baby oil instead of water. It stayed wet, even in a bin sitting outside in the California sun. When I made it at home I added a couple drops of ti tree oil to kill some germs.
if you want to color this, you have to do it before you add the oil, otherwise it won't absorb.
We kept our home phone service but just recently cancelled all the extras like caller id, call waiting, call forwarding, long distance...etc. Cut our bill from about 60.00 a month to 20.00 month. My husband almost cried when we cancelled caller ID, but has found that we really don't miss it!
Okay, I'm so out of it, do you all let your kids play with sand in the house? Yikes. Playdoh is bad enough. My 3-year-old grandnephew can make an incredible mess with whatever he has in his hands in less than 5 minutes. I love the textures and colors of that stuff, though, ha-ha. At least I can keep him occupied in one place that way for maybe a half hour or so. I bought the kid and his brother a sandbox last summer, that's been fun. Will have to copy these instructions for the niece (which she will probably laugh at and pitch, tee-hee).
Whether or not it was a mistake, it was See's mistake. If they accepted the order, then they are obligated to fulfill the order. After all, they are the experts and it is their web site.
In publishing, when the new year comes and we have calendars, they go in the dumpster. When the baker has bread going stale, he marks it down and puts it in the 'day old' bin.
I know a dairy that sends thousands of gallons of milk into the sewer - every day...
So if a chocolatier posts a deal in January for a Christmas/Holiday themed gift box, isn't it entirely possible that they just want to get rid of excess stock?
The shipping seemed a little 'too good to be true' to me, but it seemed entirely possible that they wanted to blow some old(and aging) inventory out the door.
See's Chocolates isn't losing my business over this(not that I'd buy overpriced sugar in the first place), but I'm not hacked off at wisebread either. I'm kind of glad that wb tipped me off to a potential deal...
The guests make some fair points. Paul certainly did take an aggressive stance on this, and I agree that approach might not sit well with everyone.
On the other hand, I've seen MANY "too good to be true" deals offered by companies that are NOT mistakes. Rather, these deals are used by companies to generate viral buzz around the Internet.
It is not always possible to figure out when something is a viral campaign or that it is a mistake.
...when I called See's I did let them know that I felt I had let a lot of my readers down. I had called to verify the offer, as my article stated, but they were cloed for New Year's Day. Usually when the mistake is a typo or some such error, the order form picks it up and won't let it go through. In this case, both the price and the free shipping were consistent throughout the process and several people had contacted me saying "don't buy it, it's probably old candy that has gone past it's sell-by-date" which makes sense as it was a Holiday gift box. In any case, deal hounds are always looking for these things, and I am a one of those lowly dogs. But my intention was hardly to make See's go broke. Something tells me that if this was not See's, but a company that's a lot easier to dislike, such as Wal-Mart, I would not be getting such flack. And if you don't think companies take advantage of similar errors, think again.
By the way, frugality has never been something that has everyone's best interests at heart. I look out for myself, my family & friends and my readers. If I find a way to legally take advantage of a great offer, I really don't see the harm in putting a dent in a large company's huge profit margin.
I only learned this recently, in the last few years. My "little" boy is 16 now and the stuffed animals have long since been relegated to the shed.
However, in the interest of discovery, I have done a bit of research on the life span of dust mites. They take about one month to develop from an egg into an adult and have an adult life span of about two to four months. A single adult female may lay up to 100 eggs.
I'd guess freezing the buggers every 2-4 weeks would be adequate, but there are a lot of factors involved - whether the child was playing with the animals in an environment where everything else had been boiled, frozen and/or scoured or not for example. The degree of the child's allergy would be another factor to consider. How big of a freezer you had might be another.
I like the idea of freezing because it’s free and very easy to do for most people.
You're just trying to take advantage of a mistake. Not nice. Not frugal. Just cheap.
Then how are you priming us on currency? Currency markets are incredibly complicated motivated by central banks, debt, jobs, credit markets, and other factors that are currently impacting the global economy. The dollar didn't go down because of supply but because our central banks are injecting liquidity at frightening levels. The dollar declined last year pretty much against every other currency out there. Even though our stock market went up last year, in relation to gold/silver it was down for the year. We are seeing a slight shift back into other forms of reserve currencies especially since it looks like we will have asset deflation in real estate and inflation in other items (i.e., energy).
You may be doing a lot of eating in if all your money is in US dollars. I'm not sure you can pay Molly Maid in Euros.
MyBudget 360
Not informative, not funny, and hugely embarrassing coming from someone who supposedly gradumacated from journalism school.
You and commenters have raised excellent questions (and provided great answers) and not just about whether education is worth it but about the FAFSA process.
I am learning about FAFSA for my children's education. Recently, I attended some sessions on getting into college with some brief discussions about financial aid. The focus was on college prep in general and this is being done in a helpful atmosphere where no one is selling anything -- at my church with people I have known for years and trust. Still I thought that the FAFSA discussion was misleading. Parents were encouraged to consider private schools in addition to public schools because aid is available; FAFSA can fill the gap between what you have and what you need. But there is a huge difference in getting a scholarship/grant funds + doing work-study vs. getting a student loan (though packages may include a mixture of all these things).
Also, I've written about student loans and paying for college here at Wise Bread: Stopping The Student Loan Debt Stress and 529 Plans; as has Mark: The College Cost Reduction and Access Act.
This is a somewhat familiar story to me, as an elderly family member did some of the same things. In her case, she purchased several whole closets full of junk items from a company called US Purchasing Exchange.
After she died, we discovered she had spent thousands of dollars on expensive items, mostly junk.
There are any number of companies out there willing to prey on the elderly.
Probably the best we can do is pay more attention to the older folks we care about.
That is such an unfortunate story, I am also sorry to hear that that happened to such a wonderful lady. There should be something done within the law to prevent such things....maybe someday we will see these crooks paying for the things they have done.
Thanks for writing this article. I had a friend discuss a similar situation involving her dad, who was constantly entering contests though he didn't send checks in large amounts to anyone as far as I know. As I recall, she would get involved directly with the companies, canceling orders, asking to stop sending items, etc. I think when the companies realized that there was someone watching out, they backed off. She said he would have never entered contests, ordered "free" items that weren't free, etc. in his more clearheaded days.
The solution is tricky though because your aunt is/was limited in what she could do legally. Since occasionally scammers are family, you have to be careful about what powers you grant to other people.
Changing the number was a great idea though it turned out not to be effective. You could also try a change of address form and routing mail to a Post Office Box.
There may be readers who specialize in working with the elderly who can give additional insight into this topic.
I completely agree with Paul, and I thank him for posting their website offer on Wise Bread. I heeded his advice and ordered 4 one-pound boxes of their "Holiday Special." When See's wrote me and said the whole thing was a mistake, I replied to them that they should honor their offer, regardless. Who is responsible for proofreading a website? The customer or the owner? Why, the latter, of course. I feel that See's owes me some candy...4 boxes of it and nothing less.
Amanda and Jenny--It's actually not widely known that the FAFSA qualifies you for grants, so thanks for pointing that out. It is, however, most widely associated with loans (but you probably already knew that).
Guest #1--I'm sorry I didn't spell out the acronym (though it is only a simple Google search away). In my defense, the article is geared toward those considering taking out student loans, which is a group of people who would know what it means and recognize it immediately.
Guest #2--I actually work a job that doesn't require my degree, and there are non-degreed people who work the same job who make more money. The degree is relevant to my work, but I didn't automatically get any sort of pay raise for having it. So I may have started out making a few cents more that I would have without a degree (and I really mean, a few cents). Sure, it adds up over the years, but it will take a long, long time (between 40 and 50 years) before that makes it worth the value of my loans.
On the other hand, props to you for considering going back to school. I know several people who have chosen that, and I think they're some of people I look up to the most!
I am having a hard time with this statement:
"...I don't necessarily get to make more money than I would have otherwise...". It really peeves me when 'degreed' people claim they aren't necessarily making any more money than if they didn't have a degree, and they say it all the darned time. It's not your fault that I didn't get my degree when I was young, but believe me, you DO necessarily get to make more money than you would without it. It's like that old saying: If you think getting an education is expensive, you should try living without one! It's a nightmare out there trying to earn money without a bachelor's. We're not all real-estate gurus and some of us loathe sales. What's left is clerical (menial) junk. I'd rather have student loans and it looks like I'm heading that way!
Sadly, your grandma's story seems all too familiar to my grandma's. Recently, my grandma was scammed by some low life who claimed to be government agents investigating my grandma's bank account and scammed the old lady out of about $31k.
The scammers called her to forward money to their government account which would then be forward back after a hour or two of investigation. to ensure my grandma didn't ask any questions, they told her it was urgent investigation that she can't tell her children about, otherwise, the investigation would stall and her savings would be in trouble. Well, it was only after the money's been transfered that my grandma realized it was a fraud.
The thing is, this scam clearly sounded fishy with red flags flying throughout that most people would know is a scam, but since the old lady wasn't as sharp as she used to be after the death of my grandpa and of old age, she fell a victim of a crime that happens way too much nowadays.
Personally, I'm angry, not only at the disgusting people who prey on old people, but more importantly, I'm angry at the bank that let this transaction of money happened.
The person that handled my grandma's account has known her for years, yet, the bank person failed to notify my grandma of the suspicious transfer of fund to an account that my grandma has never dealt with.
Needless to say, after the scam, my grandma was tremendously shaken emotionally, which definitely affect her mental health as well as the physical health. I think there should be tougher laws and more safeguards in place for these seemingly faceless crimes. The bank needs to be more responsible for our financial wealth. and it just makes me sick that these bad people got away with these crimes and continue to scam old people out of their savings.
but I doubt See's will do anything about it. I've made two calls, I don't want to badger them too much. After all, they make candy, and who doesn't love candy?
FAFSA - Free Application for Federal Student Aid
http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/
Failure to define the acronyms. Some of us would love to know what FAFSA means. Not everyone has ever heard of this. I haven't and I would bet others haven't either.
Edit your article to please include what this is. EVERY acronym needs to be defined the first time it is used in any article.
Help us out....
Still wondering
My daughter's teacher made this in her pre-school class. She used mineral oil or baby oil instead of water. It stayed wet, even in a bin sitting outside in the California sun. When I made it at home I added a couple drops of ti tree oil to kill some germs.
if you want to color this, you have to do it before you add the oil, otherwise it won't absorb.
We kept our home phone service but just recently cancelled all the extras like caller id, call waiting, call forwarding, long distance...etc. Cut our bill from about 60.00 a month to 20.00 month. My husband almost cried when we cancelled caller ID, but has found that we really don't miss it!
Okay, I'm so out of it, do you all let your kids play with sand in the house? Yikes. Playdoh is bad enough. My 3-year-old grandnephew can make an incredible mess with whatever he has in his hands in less than 5 minutes. I love the textures and colors of that stuff, though, ha-ha. At least I can keep him occupied in one place that way for maybe a half hour or so. I bought the kid and his brother a sandbox last summer, that's been fun. Will have to copy these instructions for the niece (which she will probably laugh at and pitch, tee-hee).
Whether or not it was a mistake, it was See's mistake. If they accepted the order, then they are obligated to fulfill the order. After all, they are the experts and it is their web site.
Perhaps you can make them "See" the light.
Robin Hood has a nice ring to it.
In publishing, when the new year comes and we have calendars, they go in the dumpster. When the baker has bread going stale, he marks it down and puts it in the 'day old' bin.
I know a dairy that sends thousands of gallons of milk into the sewer - every day...
So if a chocolatier posts a deal in January for a Christmas/Holiday themed gift box, isn't it entirely possible that they just want to get rid of excess stock?
The shipping seemed a little 'too good to be true' to me, but it seemed entirely possible that they wanted to blow some old(and aging) inventory out the door.
See's Chocolates isn't losing my business over this(not that I'd buy overpriced sugar in the first place), but I'm not hacked off at wisebread either. I'm kind of glad that wb tipped me off to a potential deal...
Chris
The guests make some fair points. Paul certainly did take an aggressive stance on this, and I agree that approach might not sit well with everyone.
On the other hand, I've seen MANY "too good to be true" deals offered by companies that are NOT mistakes. Rather, these deals are used by companies to generate viral buzz around the Internet.
It is not always possible to figure out when something is a viral campaign or that it is a mistake.
So far my batch has lasted a week or so, and apart from the occasional spruce up with water, it seems fine. I'll let you know.
...when I called See's I did let them know that I felt I had let a lot of my readers down. I had called to verify the offer, as my article stated, but they were cloed for New Year's Day. Usually when the mistake is a typo or some such error, the order form picks it up and won't let it go through. In this case, both the price and the free shipping were consistent throughout the process and several people had contacted me saying "don't buy it, it's probably old candy that has gone past it's sell-by-date" which makes sense as it was a Holiday gift box. In any case, deal hounds are always looking for these things, and I am a one of those lowly dogs. But my intention was hardly to make See's go broke. Something tells me that if this was not See's, but a company that's a lot easier to dislike, such as Wal-Mart, I would not be getting such flack. And if you don't think companies take advantage of similar errors, think again.
By the way, frugality has never been something that has everyone's best interests at heart. I look out for myself, my family & friends and my readers. If I find a way to legally take advantage of a great offer, I really don't see the harm in putting a dent in a large company's huge profit margin.
I heard the best line several years ago pertaining to all cooks...
"There's one thing that's paramount for every cook to keep in the back of their mind... Only you know what goes on in the kitchen!"
*not advocating serving food off the floor*
I only learned this recently, in the last few years. My "little" boy is 16 now and the stuffed animals have long since been relegated to the shed.
However, in the interest of discovery, I have done a bit of research on the life span of dust mites. They take about one month to develop from an egg into an adult and have an adult life span of about two to four months. A single adult female may lay up to 100 eggs.
I'd guess freezing the buggers every 2-4 weeks would be adequate, but there are a lot of factors involved - whether the child was playing with the animals in an environment where everything else had been boiled, frozen and/or scoured or not for example. The degree of the child's allergy would be another factor to consider. How big of a freezer you had might be another.
I like the idea of freezing because it’s free and very easy to do for most people.
Jill