Financial Rescue/Bailout?

I've been paying a great deal of attention to the news lately. Between the presidential debates and the "financial rescue", I'm almost news saturated. What irks me about the financial bailout are the foolish people that we are bailing out. Although I have great respect for V.P. candidate Sarah Palin, she made a comment Thursday night during the debates that the people we are bailing out are "financial victims". Baloney!

Buying a $500,000 home on an Adjustable Rate Mortgage (ARM) when you can only afford a $100,000 home at a flat rate mortgage does not prove stupidity, yet it does mean that you might have low self esteem and feel the need to compete with the neighbors. Charging up all of your credit cards and living beyond your means will hit you hard during the next few years. You have a good chance of losing it all.

For the last 10 years, I've lived on nothing more than the money I make and what we can afford. I do admit to having two lines of credit...one for the car which is a necessity to living in Houston; and, another one for the heavy duty washer/dryers that I NEED for day to day living. That's it!

What we can't afford, we don't buy. Sometimes it hurts to the point that I want to cry. We all want the best for our children. Right now, $60.00 high school yearbooks and $100.00/month guitar lessons have been cut out of the home budget. I would love to go out and buy the best film-making equipment for my son's class projects, yet what would I be teaching him in the end? Mom's an endless source of money and I'm going to live with her forever?

Hopefully I am teaching my son to live on what he makes and that saving makes sense. Also, maybe I can prompt him into growing up and getting a job, and finally getting brave enough to take driving lessons?

And, we're starting to rethink college. My son is already saying he wants to spend his first two years at the local community college. With this mom's frayed nerves and just trying to make ends meet by breaking the glass salary barrier, I'm almost nodding my head "yes" in agreement with him.

The media says that we're in for approximately 3 years of high inflation in order to pay for the bailout. I will be going back to the ways of the recession of twenty years ago...shopping the grocery sales, taking my calculator to the grocery store, buying only what we need, and becoming a fanatical couponer.

By the way, check out some of the various blog sites on couponing. You'll find lots of good tips, including one lady and her fan club who give you real examples of how they spend $2.00 or less by shopping the weekly bargains at CVS. Nothing like buying something for little or nothing!

Take care of you and yours...Terre

Shop those cellphone prices

I admit it. My son and I had to trash our cellphones two years ago because the pricetag of $90.00/month was killing our household budget, especially as summer electricity bills kept rising.

Recently, we lost our home phone service for a whole week due to a bad thunderstorm that knocked out our landlines, and courtesy of the "new and improved extremely large mega-conglomerate phone company" passing the buck on the customer service front. I was not happy to say the least.

So being a good mom and not wanting to leave my child stranded at home without a phone line, I started shopping the internet for a temporary cellphone. The range of prices vary greatly, everything from those old family package plans to finally, a new and improved system of buying your cellphone and the number of minutes you want to go with it.

Here's what I did. I went to Walmart one morning and looked at the different phones. The sales clerk was very helpful, especially when I started asking questions about coverage areas and which satellite systems the phones ran from. Guess what? The cellphones are runnning off of the same towers your high-price major cellphone companies are using!

I'm not endorsing any one product here. However, I ended up choosing a remanufactured Nokia cellphone running off of the Net 10 system. The wonderful part? The cellphone purchase and two months of service are only costing me $40.00 total. When my 300 minutes expires after 60 days, I have the option of buying the number of minutes I need in quantities of 150, 300, 450, 600, etc. minutes - all at 10 cents a minute. If you're a low-end user, like myself, this plan is perfect. My potential $15.00 a month bill certainly beats the $90.00 + I used to pay.

Good luck in your cellphone search!