Window Shopper

The year I graduated, lots of things happened. The Prom. Dates to the park and the movies. Yeah, I know. Not all that exciting. Those were not the most exciting times…unless, of course, you are a girl who is finally dating the guy she wanted to date for years. That makes it pretty exciting, wouldn’t you say? We did get to the prom. I had an awesome dress! Beautiful night. We danced for what seemed like hours, then went out to eat with another couple to a great place. I say that with all the straight face I can.

The place where we went to eat requires a reservation so you might figure it’s classy, right? Thought so too since my parents and I had been there several times prior to my date there. It was always nice….until. After the waiter took our orders, we talked about the prom, well, we girls did. Frankly, I have no idea what the guys talked about. But we were interrupted several times by the guy vacuuming the floor next to our table. Are you serious? We could not believe how rude the guy was. But I guess he wanted to go home and we were stopping him. Not just us, of course. There were other diners. We laugh about that night now. Well, my husband and I laugh about it. Not the guy I went with. I have no idea where he is now.

Ya know, if I had known then what I know now, I would have taken that brand new luggage I got for a graduation present, gotten into a car and taken off to see the world or at least the portion of it that I could get to then. Surely there were some places out there that served good food AND had their vacuuming already done. Don’t you think so? The memories get a bit hazy over the years but I really do not think I will ever forget about that date and the night of the great vacuum caper. LOL!

For years, the credit card companies were allowed to be on campus to seek out new customers. The students were ready, willing and able and wanted them there. They bit into the credit card apple very heavily. But somewhere along the line, the colleges and universities decided that it wasn’t too healthy to have those greedy individuals on campus to get to the students who were simply there to have an education.

Way back when this first was occurring, it wasn’t so bad. The student got the credit card and used it for a pizza with friends, some groceries, snacks and a couple of tickets to the latest concert. But now, the students who do get the new credit cards are using them for much larger things…like tuition and books. This creates a bigger problem since they are unable to pay the companies back without an income. The credit card companies were preying on them because they knew that at some point these people would have better incomes. They struck while the iron was hot.

Now, since they are banned from many campuses, they have found new ways to get into the pockets of the students and it’s quite devious. A student will find that they have a coupon for a free sandwich at the local fast food store. But when they get there for the free food, they find out that in order to get it, they have to fill out an application for a credit card.

The problem I see is that too many students are vulnerable to having something “free”. In this fast paced world, they believe that free is truly free when, in fact, it may be totally different. Confronted with having to fill out an application, many will do this for the free food. They figure..what the heck…I don’t expect to get one anyway. Why not? Then, in a few weeks, a credit card is mailed to them with a good sized balance on it.

What they do not see is that the credit card holds fees and charges that are not incurred until they use it the first time. For instance, let’s say that the tuition is due. Hey, pay the leftover with the credit card! Not bad. It gets that out of their hair and saves money to spend elsewhere. Good idea. Is it? The first fee is the start up which could cost $100. The student would not know about that one until the first bill showed up. Then there is the monthly charge posted ahead of the month. An annual fee is charged to the card unknown to the customer until the bill comes. Late fees. Rising interest rates because they are not locked into a specific rate at the time of sign up. From there, it gets pretty costly.

Anyone who has had to deal with low credit ratings can tell you that a card like that will have a very high interest rating plus attached fees. This way, if the company does not get all it’s original money back, it can keep the student broke for years. The only way to deal with that particular type of card is to pay it off when the bill comes. Period. Then cut it up.

I consider credit card companies that prey on students to be a form of low life. They are well aware that many students are not going to resist this dangling carrot. It means the rest of the tuition paid without worries. It means concert tickets when they could not otherwise have it. It means extra pizza for finals week. It means more snacks for study time. It really means more debt before the student even gets out in the world.

Most students do not come out of college with a clean slate. That’s bad. It puts an amazing pressure on them that they would not ordinarily have. Perhaps the best way is to do without the card and the things it provides because, in the end, it will be a huge albatross on the student’s neck even after they get out of school, perhaps more so then than when in school.

I had to check this out for myself but it looks to be a good plan. So many families are going under because they are paying things that will not matter and do not pay things that really do matter. People need a place to live. They need food. They need to have lights and water. They need to have heat in the winter and, frankly, these days with the weather outside looking the way it does, they need the air conditioning as well. It is no longer an option. Now it’s a necessity.

But you can do some things to help your family. These are just suggestions. They are not a rule of thumb or any type of real advice since everyone’s situation is different. These things may not have anything to do with your situation at all. But if this is good for you, then it helps.

1) Deal with credit card debt. Pay the bills on that because the interest rate is going to kill you financially if you don’t. When the things are paid off, CUT THEM UP!!! Get rid of them. They are a huge part of the problem.

2) Pay what you need to have….utility bills are top of the list there. Also, your rent or mortgage is very important. If you don’t pay that, you won’t have to worry about utility bills. As homeless people you won’t have any. If your bills or mortgage are out of control, contact those whom you owe. They will work with you. DON’T IGNORE THIS! The bills do not go away magically. Things get shut off or you become homeless. That should not be an option.

3) For those who use heating oil or propane, contact your company and see if they have an incentive plan to pay for the oil or propane in the summer time when the prices are lower. Most places have such plans. Then, in the winter when the prices are way higher, you will get the fill up for the summer rates. The risk is that the price will go down but since that is highly unlikely, it’s worth the risk.

4) You can do things around the house to lower your heating and cooling bills by simply..in winter, lowering your thermostat a couple of degrees. Believe me, you get used to it. We did. In the summer, raise the thermostat a couple of degrees. This will save you some money. That bill is going to be high enough.

5) Insulate if at all possible. That will cut down on your loss to the outside.

6) Prioritize what is needed and what is not. Be brutal if you have to. No one needs that many snacks or cokes. Do you really need that extra cell phone? Does your cable or satellite have to have all those extra channels? Stepping down one level on either of those will save you quite a bit of money. Must the family eat out all those times? Go back to home cooking. There’s a benefit. You have family meals again.

It’s getting so that people are desperate now. I understand that. But it’s time to get in there and find ways to survive all this. With families helping each other, this can work. People don’t always have to lose out.

No, utility bills aren’t new. But with today’s rising prices at the grocery store and the gas prices at the pump getting higher and higher, in many cases, it’s all a family can do to survive each month. And now the rise of the utility bills just to put the icing on the very bloated cake. It seems that with the end of winter, because of the difficulty people are having in coming up with the money for all the bills, the utility bills are starting to suffer. Lots of people have opted to stop paying the light bill and the gas bill since it’s not freezing out there anymore.

Okay, our family is one of those that lives almost completely on Social Security. Anyone who gets one of those checks or knows someone who does, knows that there is nothing rich about that. The crime is that the checks do not keep up with the continually rising prices of literally everything in sight. So, what is a family going to do when there is no food in the house, some of the people need medications that are sky high priced and the bills need to be paid? They either end up removed from their homes or they find themselves buried in bills they could not pay. Where do you draw the line? In the past, it was a rule of thumb to pay the bills especially those that were going to keep the family in lights, hot water and heat or coolness. I remember when the amounts of food coming into the house depended on how much the bills were each month.

These days, people are thinking more about making sure they have enough food instead. But the reality is that there is not enough money to go around anymore. Most of the middle income, lower and lowest income people are being touched by this incredibly bad situation. What can anyone do about this? I have no answers here. Perhaps when the greed dies down, we can survive all this. I have no idea. And the reality is that it will get worse before it gets better. Count on it.

This is not a fun subject but it is reality and it must be addressed. Since the congress appears to be doing nothing about all this, maybe if we made enough noise about it something would have to be done. What do you think about that?

EDIT NOTE: We just got our electric bill for this month. It was up considerably from last year at this time. We actually used less wattage but were charged more for it. Big shocker. The funny, as in very peculiar, thing is that the amount our bill was for this month was the largest bill we ever paid before. The largest bill we had last year was in August and was slightly lower than the one we just received. This is not going to get better any time soon.

There was a time when I wanted to sit down and watch one of the most popular reality shows on the tube. It was good because, in this case, people were getting a lot of help for their families. I’m talking about Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. It still comes on on Sunday nights but we don’t watch anymore. This is difficult to say but they got to be pretty much the same thing each week. Yet, I believe that they are doing a great thing. I am just not sure I could put my family through what they go through to get on that show. Whew!

So many times, though, they are helping people with such heavy problems. There were the ones where the returning vet gets help for him and his family because he was wounded and could no longer provide for the family. There were others who had a member of the family that was sick with some very heart wrenching disease like mesothelioma cancer that comes from being exposed to asbestos or another thing where a girl could not stand to be out in the sunlight. Something bad happened to her skin. I cannot remember. But what I did remember is that each and every family that was helped got a new or reconstructed home to live in when the crew was done. Now I think that is worth the effort, don’t you? I just couldn’t watch the pain part anymore.

As an over-the-road trucker, I was expected to go into New York City from time to time. I ended up at the Hunt’s Point market quite often. Not your best spot to visit in New York, trust me. Dangerous. But I have been in all five boroughs in New York and I can tell you that it is a very interesting, if large, place. Having been in some huge cities, this one is very compact but lots of places to go, places to see. I simply did not have the time to do that nor could I leave the truck sitting so I could see things while there. I did find an incredible sub sandwich that I think they called a hoagie or a grinder, not sure which. Might be wrong there.

But I did see some of the sights that you see in the movies and the television shows. Most shows have some type of scene in Manhattan, for instance. But Broadway was not a place I could get to in a truck. I did see the General Post Office for quite a while one night and next morning. The post office still moves as slow as ever. Wow! I was going to say that you could see lots of the shakers and movers New York has in that fine city but that would be a lie. Most famous and important people have no clue where the post office is let alone how big it is. Sigh.

I saw Lady Liberty though. That was awesome. And I saw the Twin Towers as well as the Empire State building. Since I quit trucking in 1992, you can tell that I saw things that, sadly, no longer exist. But it was a great experience for me. To travel into one of the most important cities in the world was an honor even if I was just delivering produce and letters to the post office (not at the same time, of course).

For those of you who do not take any type of meds, this will seem possibly trivial but for those of us who are on medications 24/7/365 it is a pain in the posterior and other places too. This has been a running problem for me for years. You go to the doctor, he/she gives you a prescription that, sadly, you have to take every day of the year.

The rub? Each and every prescription is written for a 30 day supply of medication. That’s great. Has anyone looked at a calendar lately? There are 4 months of the year that are 30 days long (April, June, September, November). There is one month that either has 28 or 29 depending on whether it’s a leap year or not (February). And there are 7 months of the year that are 31 days long (January, March, May, July, August, October, December). Clues anyone? Those are the months when you will find that you do not have enough medications to make it through that particular month. Why is this?

1) Because the doctors are not about to change it. They have done this for years and are not about to stop it.

2) Because the government, in it’s ridiculously infinite wisdom (Laughing so hard she falls to the floor laughing hysterically), has decided that they are not going to pay for medications for more than 30 days at a time. Never mind that it is going to hurt people. It’s just done that way.

3) Because the drug companies like it that way. No known reason other than it’s always been that way. Got any ideas why they would want it that way?

4) Because the insurance companies are not about to pay for more than 30 days at a time.

The reality is that for 7 months of the year, I am coming up short on the medicines I take because most of the months are 31 days. I am not alone in this. And people on Social Security are hit particularly hard with this. I should know. The government, as in Part D insurance, will NOT allow anyone to get their meds early, no matter what. I have run into that several times now. And in effect, I have lost 7 days of the year on medications. Now, the doctor requires me to take them every day of the year but he doesn’t apparently feel the need to write a prescription for every day of the year. Even if he did, the government would not allow me to have it before the day it’s due to be renewed. Well, I have gotten it a couple of days ahead. There is not a lot of leeway there.

How about some sanity here. Doctors, government, insurance companies….GET A CLUE!!!! People on lifelong prescriptions, I realize that this is not an earth shaking problem but it is a problem. It needs to be addressed. Call or write your congressperson about this. This is insane! And really, really stupid.

Most of us these days buy stuff online. Or at least we buy things online here in the sticks because we can get much more than if we were relying on what’s available right in our area. I am so glad of that. I have no idea what we would be doing without that. Well, yes I do. We would be traveling to some large city to buy what we need meaning that we would buy that sort of thing once in a great while.

But for those of us who have sold online there is another situation. I used to sell on eBay where you can literally sell almost anything. I used to sell fantastic Christian games that were challenging and very good. The problem that I found right away was that I had to have a good shipping container. Now we do have a box manufacturer here in the area but they sell wholesale to businesses. While I considered me a business, it wasn’t what they thought. So, what I really needed were custom boxes since they were an odd size. Do you think I could find them? Nope. We ended up using other things that were not specifically for that purpose. I sure wished I could have the right container since what I was shipping was crushable. I think I would do it differently these days. Live and learn.

I think I mentioned a while back that we had a new puppy. She was new at 5 weeks old. Now she’s over three months old and no longer new in the house. In fact, I’m pretty sure she decided to take the place over. We do have a problem or two since she seems to want to be in charge. Yes, I know. We are the humans and the adults here so we are naturally the ones in charge of the house. Got it. Well, we do have it until the puppy decides to whine. Believe me here. This pup whines with the best of them. And she does not simply whine for one thing. Oh no. She whines to go out, to get food in her bowl, to get noticed by any of us who are willing to play with her and whines to simply get attention.

Want to know what her last adventure was? Yeah, I didn’t either but that’s life. Now we have three computers in our house. All of the plugged into a wall socket. All of them have wires running everywhere. And she is a puppy. Starting to get the picture? Uh huh. When we caught her, she had been chewing on the latest edition of the CAT5e cable coming off the back of the computer. I’m not even sure how she got back there in the first place. She is getting really BIG! At three months old, I believe that she probably weighs in around 25-30 lbs. How can a puppy that weight get into the place she was in to do all that? I guess that’s another mystery of life.

When I think of all the things that I have been doing and all the things that still need to be done, ACK! Have we been busy this last few weeks. I’ve been a little short on the shopping trips this time. Too many other things going on. I am telling you that if this keeps up, I’m gonna be looking for a few cheap hotels to check out. That way we can have the rest we need and still be in the right place at the right time. Does this make any sense to you? Probably not.

See, we go at least 50 miles north of us into Missouri to shop at a store in West Plains that has a lot of things we need. But I hate to travel when it’s hot. These days, it’s been pretty hot no matter what time we go. But we only travel there once a month. I do realize that if we got the hotel room, we would really lose all the savings we get when we go there but sometimes it just feels like the right thing to do when the body is exhausted. Of course, at that point I would just give up on the whole thing and go home. The whole thing is beginning to sound like nonsense. I think I need a nap.