Sluggish Economy Affects Shopping Trends

As kids are heading back to school, many reports are springing up citing that parents are looking for ways to scale back their costs. For some that means less designer clothes, for others it means reusing last year's backback or lunchbox. Discount and outlet stores are attracting new customers.

Shopping has been a special challenge for me this year, as both my fifth grade son and second grade daughter are in a school district which is implementing a new dress code. That means that all the stores in my area are sold out of most of the district approved styles and colors. While I have never before been a big shopper of clothes online for myself, I am finding it to be a great resource for getting the kids outfitted. It's much less hassle and very often, it's cheaper.

Finding great deals online has also got me thinking about the holidays. Because I am due to have a baby in mid September, I know that trooping around the mall or the big box retailers with a young baby, a two year old, a four year old, and my two older ones, will not exactly inspire in me a lot of Christmas cheer. Shopping crowds make me cranky. Whiny, tired-of-being-dragged-around kids make me even crankier. The two together is a noxious combination which will likely bring out my inner Scrooge. So...I am already starting to formulate a plan.

There is a great website called blackfriday.biz where you can get the early scoop weeks in advance of what specials retailers will be offering on the Friday after Christmas as well as on Cyber Monday. You can even set yourself up to receive e-mail alerts so that when new black friday ads appear, you won't miss out on any great deals. Whether it's electronics from Best Buy or baby pajamas from Babies R Us, I plan on getting my Christmas gift list knocked out in warped speed. Best of all, I can do my shopping online. No standing in line at 7:00 a.m. waiting for the stores to open. Instead I plan on shopping via computer in my slippers, sipping hot cocoa.

The sluggish economy and high prices has a lot of us down, but with careful planning you can still get a lot for your money and hopefully enjoy a more stress free holiday season.

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Soaring Fuel Costs Drive Personal Loans

It is an increasingly common scenario at lending institutions across the country. Couples are seeking personal loans to keep their family afloat financially until something is done to lower the price of gasoline at the pump.

Bill, a contract worker in road construction, is currently making an eighty mile commute one way to the bridge project he is currently on. His wife, Joan, works at a hospital thirty five miles from their home. She has tried to negotiate a longer four day work week but has thus far, been unsuccessful. In addition, they have had to increase the salary of their babysitter who drives to their home daily to care for their four year old.

Today, while Congress is enjoying a five week vacation (which they like to call a recess) Bill and Joan are sitting in an office at their local bank seeking a loan.

Perhaps the Bill and Joans of the country are letting their voices be heard, as Nancy Pelosi has given indications in the last few days that she might be willing to allow a vote on offshore drilling. The Democrats are on one side of this issue and close to eighty percent of the voting public is on the other side. Self preservation alone might be enough for Congress to change their tune.

In the meantime, people in circumstances similar to Bill and Joan might want to look online for their loan. The self employed and those who work on a contract basis might especially be interested in a Payday Loan. There are many other options available as well and going online saves you the trouble of taking off from work in order to go to a bank.

Though a positive vote on the House floor for drilling could have an immediate impact on speculation and the price at the pump, I wouldn't hold my breath. Pelosi really doesn't want to have a vote, in part because she doesn't want to put Barack Obama in the position of having to cast a vote up or down.

Of coarse Obama is too busy body surfing in Hawaii to bother showing up anyway.

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Bankruptcy - Legal vs. Moral

I recently heard conservative talk show host Dennis Prager speak of how he has never understood the concept of bankruptcy as it is currently employed in our country. He acknowledged that he did agree that people in serious debt should be given a chance to get back on their feet and reorganize financially without fear of losing their homes, vehicles and other needed assets. But once they are back on their feet, he questioned why they should be freed from their obligations. Why should filing bankruptcy make someone's debts null and void?

I agree with his point, to a point. He felt that there was confusion between what is legal and what is moral. I believe that is a valid assessment of many things in our country that might be legal but not necessarily moral. On the question of bankruptcy, I do think there should be room to evaluate on a case by case basis.

When new bankruptcy laws went into effect a few years ago, it supposedly made reformations that would prevent abuses by people looking for an 'easy out' from their responsibilities. I am not familiar with what the changes were specifically but I understand that people filing bankruptcy today are subject to much stricter conditions as to their obligation to their creditors.

Perhaps it is due to my experience as a pastor's wife, but it is hard for me to say that filing bankruptcy is always immoral. I think of one female parishioner who was in her early eighties who lived with her son who was in his late forties and in a wheelchair. When faced with difficult financial problems, there was no "getting back on his feet" (to use Dennis Prager's term) either physically or financially.

For many others, the decision to file comes on the heels of a devastating medical emergency or chronic disease for which they are un or under-insured. While it is easy for those of us with good insurance to smugly say, "Well, they should have planned better" I have had conversations with parents of critically or terminally ill children who had no way to plan better for the heart-rending situation in which they find themselves with hospital debts sometimes exceeding a million dollars.

So while I am in general agreement with Dennis Prager's view that bankruptcy should be avoided, I am hesitant to sit in judgment and declare that is is always immoral.

The best solution for those who do have the ability to work and get back on their feet financially is to seek Debt Relief from a company willing to negotiate with their creditors. Freedomdebtrelief.com offers a program that can drastically reduce the amount of your outstanding debt by working directly with your creditors. Unlike many consumer credit agencies who actually work on behalf of credit card companies, debt relief companies only make money by saving you money. Bankruptcy does carry a stigma and represents a blot on your credit history that will last for many years. Every effort should be made to take responsibility when humanly possible.

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Politicians: They Know, The Just Don't Care

Friend #1: "How can Democrat politicians NOT know that deep-water oil exploration is the right thing to do. It will take the speculators out of the market resulting in an immediate 25% drop in gas prices, and the money will be going to American companies to reinvest in American jobs and in new energy technologies, AND the money won't be going to some Middle East country where it can be used to support terrorism. How can Democrat politicians NOT know this?"

Me: "They know, they just don't care."

Friend #2: "How can all of these people NOT know that Barack Obama is an empty suit. He has no experience and surrounds himself with terrorists, racists, and crooks. He hasn't a clue when it comes to policy; he was for unconditional talks with dictators and tyrants before he was against it, he was for public funding for elections before he was against it, he was for his pastor before he was against him, he was for all kinds of things before he was against them. He is as much a waffler as John Kerry. How can Obama supporters NOT know this?"

Me: "They know, they just don't care."

I have never been able to understand the way some people can ignore what they know to be true, simply because it doesn't match up with what they want to be true. And, it is not limited to the realm of politics either. Consider this example taken from the book Casanova Was A Book Lover;

The Beardstown Ladies, celebrated for their putatively brilliant investment club, sold eight hundred thousand copies of their first book, success that led to other books. Nothing much changed when a mean-spirited little whippersnapper in Chicago reported that their investments really weren't that good and neither was their math. The little old ladies had not known the right way to calculate annualized returns; the proper calculations showed their returns fell far below the market annual averages. They were sorry. "We're saddened by the people who judged us guilty and suggested we were in it for the money," said Betty Sinnock, the lady who can't add. "I feel like [the reporter] really didn't related what the Beardstown Ladies were all about." Accepting the apology, the public keep buying the books, in which the publisher didn't work too hard at inserting corrections slips. Sinnock remained on the individual investors committee to the New York Stock Exchanges. The reporter attended a speech for which Sinnock received a standing ovation. "The got away with it, and more power to them," of of the members of the audience told him. "Look at how many books they've sold."

In other words, for this member of the audience the popularity of the Beardstown Ladies excused the lack of substance. Sounds familiar doesn't it.

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