Window Shopper

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

With all the problems concerning the recalls from China, with the situation with gas pains at the pump, though that’s getting better, we have had to change the way we think about shopping trips. Have you had the same problem? For instance, before even though it was going to take more gas than we planned, often we would find a reason to go to the store. We forgot something essential to a meal, it was going to be storming the next day, no time since we had to work. All the excuses in the book. Heading out to the store seemed to be at least a two to three times a week event. Since the gas prices went up, since the goods and food prices went up, we simply did not have the money to be spending on frivolous trips to the store anymore. Due to that, I think we developed a different attitude which is saving us more money.

In the past, we were aware of how far away the store is but when you have a food emergency….. The reality is, there is no food emergency. You simply wanted something so you went to get it. We did that. Now, we have decided to plan when we go, what we get and what we can do without. I realize that many of you are doing that and have been but maybe you let your plan slip a bit over the years like we did. But now is a great time to get back to the basics. We have and it has changed many things. Especially now when Christmas buying season is upon us, it is so important to seek out the best deals, save as much as possible and feel better about our trips to the store.

One of the more basic ways to save money on shopping is to do it online. The resources here are amazing. You can find nearly anything you want. With the auction sites, the discount stores that are online, the only online stores that have amazing discounts because of the low overhead, the sales that you would not know about except for the research that you did, these are all good ways to save money. If you do more of your shopping online, you save that gas for a true emergency. Saving money by not using as much gas is fantastic because it will show at the pumps and the oil companies want you to keep driving.

For those who work, this is a great opportunity to pack the store trips into your time out. Perhaps you can take a few moments at lunch time to do your shopping and eat at the desk. Yes, that’s a real pain but I found that getting away from the work environment did wonders for my thinking abilities when I got back. I was more fresh to do the afternoon part of the day. Yes, it can be a difficult way to do things but it is possible. Now, if that store is on the way to work and home, easier. Stop right after work. It might mean going home a few moments later but the shopping is easier too. Or do it in the mornings when you are fresh. There are ways to save the money on driving. You will certainly be able to work your own ideas out. There are as many as there are gas pumps, I am pretty sure.

How much can you pack into a single trip out to the store? If you have not tried it, you will be amazed at how much you can cram into one trip out. For instance, the other day we had to go to three stores, the doctor, the pharmacy. And while we were out, we also were both working on videos that my husband and I were making for a contest. We packed all that into one trip. To really appreciate just what a long day it could be, you will have to understand that most things are not right next to each other. This trip includes many, many miles of travel, no matter which thing you are doing. I did not keep track of the mileage but we were gone a good share of the day with our errands. You know, one of the benefits of all that, as long as you do not go to the fast food places, is that you might get to lose weight with all the activity. I am counting on it!

So, even though prices for gas are falling right now, we save money by conserving how much we do in a single day. Having done that, unless there is some type of unexpected occurrence, we will be able to stay at home for many days. That saves a lot of gas. My husband and I have already noticed a difference in our gas money extending farther than before…for both reasons. The price is lower but we are doing less driving too. Frankly, I believe that the best way to get the big oil companies to sit up and take notice is to hit them where it hurts them most, in the wallet. They have done their best to hit us there. You know the old saying…payback is a b***h? I agree. It is. And it’s their turn.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

All I want is to be able to say something good right now in these disastrous times. I found the very thing. Gas prices are down. Of course, you probably already know that but it’s great just to say that after all the price hikes this year that killed everyone’s budget. In our area, the price is still at $3.27, something that surprised me considering that some of the other parts of the nation have much lower prices. We traveled up to Missouri yesterday to see a price of $2.99 which was a fantastic surprise to us. Of course, we filled up.

Normally, I would have a lot more to say but with the prices going down, there is not much to say except….keep on going down, down, down. I did hear that heating oil will be at an all time high which just goes to show that just because one price goes down does not mean the other will too. But I am glad that we do not have to pay those ridiculously high prices right now and hope those prices either stay where they are or go lower still, especially in our area. We need the price to go way down since our area is even more economically distressed than other parts of the country. It just means that we have been this for years and the rest of the country appears to be catching up to us.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

It is with a great deal of pleasure that I can safely say that the price of gas has gone down here to the lowest we have seen in a while now. At the lowest priced pump in our area, the tag reads $3.29 as of yesterday. Nice. Not nice enough to happy dance but certainly on the way to being a happy dance moment. That moment would come only when the price got below one dollar so it is unlikely that I will ever have to do that dance but the thought is good anyway. The problem is that we may not see this price going down much longer.

OPEC cut production again. Of course, that tends to cause shortages like the one in the southeast that has been going on for a couple weeks now and no one sees it letting up anytime soon. Okay, I will ask the question. What happened? Why is there a shortage on the east coast that no one else seems to be having? Guess I missed the media hype on that one. If anyone can answer that, I will certainly listen.

Prices on food and goods should go down now that gas prices are declining. Yet, I get the feeling that we are in for a rough Christmas season anyway. So, now would be the time to get in on those sales and the online extreme bargains. Do your research. That should be my second line on this blog, I say it often enough. Do your research. You can find good deals even in these sad times if you do a little work. Computers are marvelous inventions. They can be used for many things and research is one of them. Then go shopping. Get those deals that will not be there in December. A case in point would be the Wii console. Not a shot those will be available in December unless you happen on that one guy that still has one left to sell. Right now, they are still available in several locations in brick and mortar stores and online. But Christmas is coming on fast. Too fast, if you ask me. ACK!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I guess I have been pretty hot about those nasty, rising gas prices. They have been awesome in their shot at the moon. But in recent days, the price has fallen dramatically. It is with a hope for the future that I talk here about falling gas prices. Our local price was highest at $3.89. I do realize that was nothing compared to other parts of the country, but for our area it was quite high. As of the last time I saw the sign going by it today, the price was at $3.51. That is not even the lowest price I’ve seen recently. We took a trip to our west about 60 miles and spotted the price at $3.41. Fantastic! Now if only they will continue to fall.

We do believe that since most of the oil companies showed record profits for the last many months, it would only be fair that we get a break in the pocketbook. I am happy that this is happening but we have seen this before. I just hope that it continues. Frankly, I cannot believe I’m saying this but it would be great if we saw $2 gas again. See, I grew up at a time when gas was cheap, at 19 cents a gallon. It took years and all that crap in the early 70’s to get the price over 50 cents. I was horrified when it went over a buck. Wishing I had all that gas from back then, it seems to me that gas simply should not cost that much.

Since the rich oil companies do not see a need to build new refineries or that our really great government does not see the need to approve such things, I believe that the gas prices should still be somewhere under $2. The reason they are not is greed, pure and simple. The oil companies are now hoping we will shut up about the record profits now that the gas prices are down a tiny bit. Oh yeah, that’s going to happen. Ummmm, nope.

But today, I am thankful for the prices where they are but wishing for lower and lower costs so that we can get back to paying regular bills instead of having to pump it into a car tank.

gas pains, gas prices, oil companies, good gas prices, greedy oil companies

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Going to the pump these days is bad enough, don’t you think? I have not heard of one person who is happy with the current gas prices. The greedy oil companies keep on pumping it out to us like we do not matter to them at all. And you cannot get them to even acknowledge that they are ripping us off. Congress does nothing about it. And NOW there is one more ripoff. Credit cards at the pump. HELP!

Have you been watching your receipts when you buy gas with a credit card? If not, you should. The credit card companies love to tack on a fee for use at the pump which they do…..but wait, it gets better..or worse….Now the gas stations are tacking on a fee for using the card. The price can be a lot higher than if you pay cash. WHAT? Yep. The price can be as high as *9* cents more, sometimes more than that. That was as high as I had seen it on the news today.

EDIT NOTE: As awful as the 9 cents might have sounded, it’s not compared to the 50 cents a gallon that some stations are charging simply for using a credit card instead of cash. If a person uses cash, they have to go inside where they can get ripped off by the prices of the goods in the store. There is no win here unless the person buys the gas with cash and refuses to buy anything else in the store.

It seems that the local gas station wants you to come inside to pay because if you don’t, you do not also buy other things. They have been losing money with the plastic. So, if you don’t pay with cash coming inside to do that, you can count on paying more at the pump. It’s sort of a penalty for having a credit card.

I call that a ripoff. It forces the customer to do things they did not want to do. On a purely physical note, if you need the exercise, go ahead and walk inside. Might do you some good. However, if you are just mad because they are making you do things you had no intention of doing, perhaps finding a new gas station to buy from might be in order. I do not believe that they all do this. But it looks like they do this in the bigger cities for certain.

We live in a rural area where we use a gas card from a well known retailer. We get a discount. But my husband watches to make certain we get that discount every time. If we don’t, the pump does not go on and he goes inside to find out why. In these times, you have to watch your every dollar going out. If you don’t, all of a sudden you are broke and it isn’t anywhere near the next paycheck time. We should know.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Ordinarily at this point, I would be wanting to tell you about places to go, things to see for vacations. This year, I cannot think how to do that because of the astronomically high gas prices which, shockingly, have reached a national average of $4 a gallon according to AAA. And of course, it is conveniently at just the time that most Americans are wanting to travel on their family summer vacations.

I think it is an absolute shame that the oil companies, who are increasingly greedy and self interested, are causing the American public to change their whole lifestyles to serve the CEOs and companies so that their pockets can be lined with bucks from those of us who can ill afford to even pull up to the pumps these days. I don’t know about you but in our house, we cannot afford more than a couple of tanks of gas a month even in our rural area. The price at the pump here is somewhat lower at the current rate of $3.89 which is horrifying to us but much lower than other areas of the country.

At our house, we could not afford the gas prices over the $3 mark let alone $4. We, like so many Americans, live on a fixed or semi-fixed income. We unashamedly find ways to have an income but are constantly stopped by other just as greedy companies that think they can run our lives. The oil companies make us pay extremely high prices at the pump while the internet company, Google, chooses to slap us down when we do the horrendous thing of blogging for money online if we do not do it Google’s way.

Through it all, these money grabbing companies are going to not only bring the American public to it’s knees, it is going to bring down the whole country as they are currently doing. What is it going to take to change all this? I have no idea. Wish I had a magic bullet to fix it all but I do not. My only advice, as crappy as it may sound, is to stay home this vacation…not going to the pumps at all. Let the greed of the oil companies have their day by not having the sales they expect to have. The problem is that all people do not go on vacation at once. So it will hardly be seen at the pump unless we all agree to boycott the pumps for a few days. Yeah, like that’s going to happen.

As for Google, that greedy company online that does not want others to share in the wealth of the net, we are choosing to blog for pay anyway. Some of the blog for pay companies are getting the idea of not basing their criteria on the page rank that Google shows those of us who do blog for pay. That is a step forward and I certainly hope that Google falls on it’s nasty little internet tail bone. It AND the oil companies as well as the oil people in the middle east deserve everything they get when they do fall on their posteriors. I just hope we can enjoy that instead of standing in a food line somewhere. Sigh.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I do not have to tell you this. You already know the pain that is going on at the pumps. The problem is that we could have a few solutions but the congress will not deal with this like the American public needs. They seem to have stopped doing anything about this. Maybe I am wrong about that. But the last thing I heard was when the senators were a bit indignant that the CEOs wanted more tax breaks after having posted record profits last year. Unbelievable that they had the gall to want that.

One of the solutions to this problem is more economical cars. Want a laugh? As I started driving some years ago….ah hem…many years ago, the cars then were getting somewhere between 25-35 miles to the gallon. We had heard of test cars that were getting above 45 miles to the gallon. Yep. Then somewhere along the line, and here I would check out 1972 when the lines at the gas station were huge, they stopped trying for economy.

Lately, the car companies are seeing that big oil is turning against them (who would have seen that coming? Anyone with a brain) so they are scrambling to get more gallons per mile out of those new cars. The wonder is that they are thinking that 30 miles to the gallon is great. Uh no!!! All we need to do is go back to the older cars that get more mpg than today’s cars and we have it made. Well, see there’s the rub.

What’s the problem? When those cars were getting that great gas mileage, they were using actual gasoline. I know the difference. You could smell good gasoline at the pump. It had a distinct smell. Now, the gas smells funny and not good funny. They have changed the gas of today so much so that it took out most of the good fuel economy away.

And lets talk about using up our food to put in our tanks. Doesn’t anyone see a problem here???? We are not planting enough food to get us by for the rest of the year as a country. Yet, we are growing a vast majority of food plants to refine into fuel. Does NO ONE SEE????? What kind of stupid does it take to make this the solution to the problem? We are sacrificing our food for fuel!! COME ON!!! Get a clue, someone!!!

For the record, I have no intentions in using ethanol unless and until there is no other way. I refuse to be part of the massive stupidity that has come out of this so-called solution. NO, NO, NO!!! Someone please get a grip on reality here. If we use up our resources to make fuel, we don’t eat, our kids don’t eat, massive famine. What happens then? We start looking like a third world country. Hey, I do know we could get our belts tighter because most of us need to lose some weight anyway but not at the sacrifice of our children. Someone PLEASE think!!!! Stop the insanity!!!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!