I had to clean out some sheds while I was there so I drove my truck.  It has dual tanks and holds 30 gallons of gas.  A 25 cent difference per gallon equals a $30 difference per trip.  Virginia gas prices vary greatly depending on the station and the area.  I know the cheapest prices locally so I always fill up on my way out.

I also know that North Carolina has a high gas tax and that drives their prices up considerably.   Their gas prices are generally 25 – 30 cents higher than Virginia or South Carolina so I try my best to get gas in those states both coming and going.  While $30 is not a huge amount, it is money that could be either spent on something else or money that could be saved.

I have not found any really good source online to check gas prices in different states and cities.  Does anyone know of one?  Do you shop for cheaper gas prices at home or while you are traveling?

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by DenverDwellings

Do you pay attention to where things are made?  Have you noticed that American made items are few and far between?  Really!  Even things that are made by American companies are often made overseas.

The news is full of more and more companies closing.  The biggest industry, our car makers are getting a lot of news coverage simply because of their size and so many companies produce materials that are used in the manufacturer.  Unemployment is at it’s highest level in 25 years and yet we still don’t hear a lot about supporting American industry.

I think that two things need to happen.  We need to start paying attention.   We need to pay attention to where things are made.  I think most people would be surprised to find how much is imported from other countries.  And we need to start buying American made products whenever possible.

I challenge everyone reading this to pay attention.  Before you buy something, take a look at where it was made.  Chances are good that it was not made in the USA.  If it wasn’t, look around and see if there is an American made product available.   Check the price difference and if all possible, buy American.

If you have trouble finding American made products, here are a few websites that list American Made Products

American Made Products is a database of American made products.  They list everything from pet products to crafts.

Still Made In the USA is a directory of American made products.  They list accessories, clothing, toys, etc.

Buy American is a list of products that are American made.   They have everything from office supplies to truck parts.

Local Harvest is a listing of farmers and growers across the US.  You can buy direct and save by cutting out the middleman.

Americans Working is another listing of American made products.

All American Clothing is a list of clothing that is US made.

US Stuff is an alphabetical list of American made products.

We can support US workers and help keep them working.  We can help our economy by buying American.

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This statement shocked me.  My parents are retired and have a perfect credit record.  I cannot imagine them making a payment late, much less letting a house go into foreclosure.  However, I cannot fault their decision as in today’s economy and real estate market, their choices are limited and their savings are already shrinking due to the instability in the economy.

I know that this decision was one of the hardest in their life.  My point today is not to dissect their decision or situation and come up with solutions but to illustrate that we are all facing and making really hard decisions.  I would like to use the responses in an article on how the economy is forcing us to make decisions and how they are affecting our lives.  We hear a lot about how the economy is affecting the middle class but what about retired people who are struggling to live on a fixed income or families whose income has fallen to at or near the poverty level.

So readers, speak out.  Have you faced a hard financial decision?  How has your decision affected your life?  Was the end result positive or negative?

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by Phil Romans

With the most recent quarterly statements from Exxon, I am feeling raped.  With almost every American heavily dependent on oil, Exxon’s 58% increase in profit in the last quarter seems obscene and Exxon isn’t alone.  Oil companies across the board have been booming while the rest of the country suffers in the economic downturn.  Am I alone in wondering when we will have had enough and do something about it?

In my particular case, I, like most Americans, have to depend on gasoline to get to work whether I drive my car or ride a bus.  My house is heated with fuel oil.  The monthly cost right now to keep my thermostat at 60 degrees would be approximately $348 per month.  It would go up in January and February when the temperatures generally drop.  Between fuel costs and heating costs over 50% of my budget goes to the oil companies.  Even if you don’t have a car or heat with fuel oil, you still bear the cost of high oil prices.  If you buy groceries, you will be paying more as production costs rise due to high fuel costs for farmers and delivery.

Am I suggesting that we regulate prices or have the government intervene with profit taxes?  No, I’m suggesting that we wake the hell up and realize that there are alternative sources of energy.  We do not have to be totally dependent on oil whether it’s foreign or domestic.  There are viable alternatives that could significantly reduce our oil dependence.

There is an 80 year old oil man from Texas who is crusading for change.  His name is T. Boone Pickens and he has a plan.  The Pickens Plan uses a combination of wind, solar and natural gas which can all be produced in the US to reduce our consumption of foreign oil.

The changes that Pickens is suggesting would not change our daily lives.  We would not be driving solar or natural gas powered cars or heating our homes with solar panels.  The plan uses wind & solar farms to produce a large percentage of our electricity and natural gas to power the commercial fleets of trucks that keep American produce on the move.

But a national shift in energy sources is not enough in my opinion.  We all need to take a look at the way we live and the things we take for granted.  As a nation, we regularly waste energy.  We drive big inefficient cars, we think nothing of driving a few miles to pick up what we forgot on our grocery trip instead of doing without for a day,  we leave lights on, we throw a pair of jeans in the dryer to dewrinkle them, and the list goes on.

I am just as guilty as the next person although my energy costs are high enough that I do make a conscious effort to conserve.  I still find myself making extra trips back to the store even though I drove by it on the way home from work.  When my favorite pair of jeans are wet, I will throw them in the dryer rather than wearing something else and hanging them out to dry.  I forget and leave lights burning in rooms that I have left.

These small things do not add up to much in my monthly budget.  They might increase my energy costs by one or two percent.  They won’t break my bank on a personal level but if you start adding the costs up in your town or in your state or even in the country, a two percent drop in energy consumption is significant.

So what can you do?  Be informed.  Check out the Pickens Plan.  Write your elected officials and let them know that you are tired of our country being enslaved to foreign oil.  Be conscious of your own personal use of energy and try to find ways to reduce it.

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Without quoting it word for word, there are three steps to the plan.

Part 1

Reduce foreclosures by providing a Government backed insurance program for subprime bonds and mortgages.  This would immediately increase their value and desirability.

Refinance any mortgage that is more than 3 months past due at 6% fixed interest rate and bring these mortgages current giving homeowners a fighting chance to keep their homes.

Eliminate all prepayment penalties.  This would encourage people to try to refinance or sell their homes instead of letting them go into foreclosure.

Mark to Market

Remove Mark to Market accounting practices for Subprime Tier III bonds and mortgages for 2 years.  “Mark to Market’ according to Investopedia is the practice of recording the value at the current market value rather than it’s book value.  Dave believes that this would stabilize failing and ailing banks that are currently being forced to record their subprime bonds and mortgages at much lower value than the mortgages and real estate they represent.

Part III

Eliminate the Capital Gains Tax. Investors looking for tax free investments would buy up real estate and stocks.  This would provide the needed boost to the economy.  Yes, this would definitely help the more wealthy but stimulating the economy would provide jobs and help our ailing retirement funds.

The best part is that it won’t cost us 700 Billion dollars in new debt.

You can read the full text of Dave’s Common Sense Fix here.  I understand enough of the real estate/mortgage market to believe that Part 1 would work.  Experience has shown that eliminating the capital gains tax will stimulate investment in both the stock market and in Real estate.  I’m lost when it comes to Mark to Market accounting and really don’t want to comment on that.

I’d love to hear other’s opinions on Dave’s proposal.  He recommends sending it to all of your legislators if you agree with it.

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1. Contact your local Board of Realtors and ask them for a list of the top listing agents. In our area, they are called million dollar agents. This list should be generated by the dollar amount of their listings that have sold. Even if your best friend is a Realtor, you owe it to yourself to at least talk to the best. These agents are highly professional and motivated to sell the homes they list. They can give you valuable advice on price, market, improvements and repairs.
2. Make a list of questions. You will want to ask each Realtor what price they think it should sell for and ask for the statistics to back it up. You will want to know what they see as the strongest selling points and the weakest. You will want to ask them what they would like you to do to the home before you list it. They should have a fairly extensive list of things that you can do to make your home sell quicker and for more.
3. Mow the lawn, weed eat, trim the hedges, weed the gardens, sweep the sidewalks. The outside of your home is the first thing that people see and you will want to keep it as clean and neat as possible while it is on the market.
4. Neutralize the inside of the house. You will want to remove as many personal items as possible before you list it. I remember looking at one house that had large velvet Elvis pictures in every room. It quickly became the Elvis house. Now depending on your views on Elvis, that might be good or bad but I want my house known for the big rooms or the gorgeous gardens and not my artwork.
5. Fix anything that you know of that is broken or damaged and paint anything that is in need of paint. It doesn’t cost much to put on a new coat of paint and it might make thousands of dollars of difference. I finally got my screen door fixed, it’s been bugging me ever since I moved in.
6. Take pictures in every room. It never fails that when I take pictures I see things that are out of place. Somehow the 2 dimensions of a picture just make things stand out. Things might have been there forever and I just didn’t see them.
7. Declutter!  Clean the closets, bookshelves, cabinets.  Buyers will open them and look.  You want to give the appearance that there is room for everything and that everything has a place.  If your closets are crammed full of stuff, how will they know there is room for their stuff?  It’s better to go through every room and pack, give away or throw away anything that doesn’t have a specific place or use.
8. Remove things you want to keep.  If you have curtains that you want to keep, take them down before you put your house on the market.  Buyers become attached to things in the house and you could lose a sale because you refuse to part with Great Aunt Edna’s drapes.
9. Make a list of the things that you love about your house.  Buying a home is a personal choice but generally what appeals to you will also appeal to buyers.  Make sure that your agent is aware of the features and benefits your home provides.  Do you have great schools?  Neighbors? Low energy bills?  All of these are benefits that may not be immediately apparent to a buyer.
10. Be realistic about the value of your home and be prepared to negotiate.  Know what you would like to sell it for and what the lowest price is that you can possibly accept.  This will help you in choosing a realtor as well as in negotiating the sale.

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The town that I live in is close to the interstate and gas prices are sometimes 30 cents per gallon higher there.  Along the way, prices go steadily down the further away from the interstate that I get.  This morning prices near home were running about 3.79 per gallon while gas prices where I work are about 3.55 per gallon.

It seems that prices vary daily and I have devised a game of checking prices at stations along the way in the morning so that I will know where to get gas in the afternoon.  I am sure that the few pennies that I save per gallon won’t change my life but on the other hand, I like to give my business to the people who are keeping their prices as low as possible.  There are a couple of places that routinely have the lowest price and one of them is a national chain but every once in awhile I will find a surprise along the way.

I call this the Gas Price Shuffle.  My own personal rules of the game are:

• I cannot drive out of my way to find a lower price.  This would eat up any savings that I might have pretty quickly.
• I can only get gas when I truly need it.  No sneaking into a station to top off the tank.
• If the price has gone up at the station that had the lowest price that morning, I can drive to the next station but I cannot drive back to the previous one.
• I have to put as much gas as I can afford in the tank when I stop.  As unstable as gas prices are, I don’t want to gamble that they will be lower again the next day or the day after.

There isn’t much point to the game but I can tell you that the 50 cent reduction in gas prices over the last month has come as a welcome relief.  It has brought the cost of my daily commute down from $17.95 per day ($359 per month) to $15.97 per day($319 per month).  It’s only 50 bucks but that will pay for any of the following:

• internet service
• telephone bill
• car insurance
• a weeks groceries (if I shop frugally)
• a healthy snowflake to one of my bills.

What about the rest of you?  Are you doing your own version of the Gas Price Shuffle?  Do you drive out of your way for the cheaper price?  What are you doing with your savings?

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In subsequent testimony, both Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson testified that both companies reserves were in excess of the requirements and that they were “working through this challenging period” but neither would speculate on what the consequences would be of either a government bailout or the failure of either or both companies.

Jon Ogg at 24/7 Wall Street takes a look at the impact that these giants have on not only the mortgage industry but the entire financial system.  He states

But think about the ramifications if one of these or both of these actually failed.  If you thought a Bear Stearns meltdown would have caused a panic, “you ain’t seen nothing yet” sure comes to mind.  It isn’t that the lending institutions would be changed for future mortgages.  The ramifications for the entire financial system would be at risk.  Imagine if all the outstanding debt issuances, mortgage-backed securities, CMO’s, and other pieces of paper widened out to massive spreads over treasuries.  You would have write-down waves at banks, brokers, insurance companies, credit unions, every pension system, mutual funds, and private money managers.  It would effectively destroy more value in just about every portfolio that exists.

The mortgage industry which pretty much depends on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans is in a wait and see  mode and not sure they want to read the news on Monday morning.  I personally hope that the Congress will pull the white rabbit out of it’s bag of tricks and we will see some stability on Monday morning.  I’m not even sure what to hope that the white rabbit is anymore and will be interested to hear any comments on what others think the Congress should do.

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The cost of fuel is the primary concern as all farm equipment has to be run on either gasoline or diesel.  Farmers who spend a large majority of their time on plowing, disking, raking, mowing, etc are truly feeling the pinch of rising cost of fuel.  Stop and think for a moment how high your monthly fuel costs would be if you drove all day long, five to six days a week.

The cost of fertilizer, seed, feed for the stock, and labor has also been rising steadily.  While the price in the grocery store seem to be going up right along with them, you would think that the farmers would be getting more for their produce but it seems to get lost somewhere along the way.

Most of the farmers that I know have full or part time jobs and farm in their ‘spare’ time and to help pay the taxes on the land and they are struggling to accomplish that now.  Add to that the continuing drought in the South East and more and more farmers here are throwing in the towel and turning the family farm into a subdivision.    There doesn’t seem to be any good solution in sight as the real estate market is not booming either.

If you have been thinking of buying a farm or a part of a farm, here is a listing of available farms in South Central Virginia.  It’s a fairly extensive listing…

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When I checked the label, sure enough, these were 16 oz bottles instead of 20oz.  Coca Cola has reduced the size of their bottles by making them thinner and a tad bit shorter.  At first glance, they still look the same size as the larger bottles and it is very deceptive.

I am sure that Coca Cola is reducing the size to keep the bottles priced right around a dollar a bottle.  However it certainly seems as if they designed this bottle to mimic the larger 20 oz bottle.  Frankly 16 oz is probably enough but Pepsi has so far maintained the larger bottles.  Pepsi has also been running sales locally with their 20oz bottles priced at $.99. 

It reminded me of the 70s when the price of gas started rising and some areas or stations started measuring their gas by the liter instead of the gallon.  While this may not have been deceptive, it was very confusing but it made gas seem less expensive. It still cost just as much to fill your tank but it just doesn’t sound as bad to say gas prices are $1.05 per liter and it makes it hard to compare prices.

I would expect that we will be seeing more ‘economy’ size products in the near future.  It is a way to reduce sticker shock and cut company’s costs.  However, you will need to be aware of what you are paying by the unit and not so much by the box or bottle when you are comparing prices.

Have you noticed that sizes are getting slightly smaller?  Is this a sign of the times?  Do you think that as prices of fuel continue to rise, we will be seeing gas sold by the liter again?

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