All About Kimberly

Sailing Along the Life of Single Parenthood

Tag Archives: economy

I Don’t Care for Reruns or The News

Excuse me for this rant and rave, but geez, I need to get this off of my shoulders.

WHEN DID TELEVISION SEASONS GET SO SHORT?

Seriously, I was just getting really caught up in Grey’s and Private Practice and I get all my housework done as soon as I get home tonight so I can settle down and watch it and I quickly realize I’ve already seen Grey’s.  Then I flip to the guide to see what episode will be on Private Practice and it’s another rerun.  ICK!    I didn’t rush to et all of that done for reruns!  I want to see NEW stuff.  *sigh*

I am too lazy to change the channel though – ok, not really.  I’m too lazy to read the guide and find something else to watch so I just let them play waiting on the 10:00 news.  And now I realize that I may just have to ban the news.  It’s just plain depressing. Did you know we are in a recession, and practically everyone is hurting?  If I hear that one more time, I’m going to scream.  As soon as that started, I flipped over to another station to watch their news and was happy to see that they were at least focusing on ways to cope with the economy. They had a special  on where they were working with a FAFSA office to help east Texans fill out the FAFSA and then discussed credit counseling through places like Care One Credit.  In these times it is especially important to practice debt management. I know I’m applying extra to all of my debt right now in hopes of becoming debt free.

I still am not happy about seeing so much dang bad news and especially news about the economy but at least the second station was focusing on how to make a bad situation good instead of just bad numbers, bad numbers, bad numbers. UGH

So are the seasons really already ending? Or was this just a bad week? Are you sick of bad news followed with a little bad news?  We need to start a good news only news station.

Economic Woes?

The market just seems to keep going down every time we turn around.  No one will take blame – it’s everyone else’s fault.  Personally I’m not sure who’s fault it is, and I’m not sure I even care. But what I do know is that as this continues pocketbooks I’m afraid or going to have to get tighter and tighter.  We’ve been lucky so far and haven’t had to make many changes.  I have decided to not mess around anymore with my fun hobby of doing some little online trading.  With things like they are that just doesn’t seem like a wise hobby (so instead I’m buying a couple extra lottery tickets).  :)   Has this sudden change in our economy effected your family?  Do you foresee major problems in the future? I’d love to know more about your life.

Bush Speaks of Economic Woes

After watching President Bush’s latest speech, I have been struck by just how bad it is.  Yes sometimes we live in our own worlds.  Overall we’re lucky. We’ve made a few changes here and there, but overall, we’ve not had to do that much with the changes in the economy.  We’re lucky that my house and property are paid for – no hidden fees.  No concern with interest rates. With my car loan now paid off, I’m working on that old personal loans and credit cards, but overall, I’m still just going a little here and there.

But many aren’t so lucky and for those people, making ends meet is getting harder and harder.  Watching the President and the newscasters that followed, it’s easy to see why many are needing to combine some of their loans and find other solutions to their financial problems such as payday loans just to put food on their tables.  Our local news station is doing a series on living off of limited checks and food sources such as social security and food stamps.  Select reporters are limiting theirselves to only spending the money that some of our less fortunate have.  It’s really enlightening to watch, and really frightening.  How long until these worries start hitting closer to home?  I know that I’m going to get more serious about building up a savings – a definite weakness of mine.  What changes are you making in your homes?

$3.68 = Lines, LONG Lines

Yes..gas today at our local grocery store was $3.68 and I had to wait behind TWO cars to get gas.  I know I need to adjust, but this still just blows my mind – $3.68 and we are excited!  So excited we are all filling up our cars with gas!!  In my defense, I actually NEEDED gas to get home, but I would have probably still been in the line – even if not in that situation. I actually was able to fill up for $3.61 as you get a discount every time you spend $100 on groceries. I’m not old – really I’m not, but gas prices are one of the things that make me feel old. I worked at a local grocery store that also had gas pumps in high school and even the first couple years of college, and do you know how much gas  was then?  $0.86 a gallon!!  That’s how much!! Less than a $1.00 and now we are excited to see it less than FOUR DOLLARS!!! WOW!!

Saving Money

As gas prices and energy prices continue to rise, it is becoming more and more important for me to find ways to save money.  Raising two girls on a teacher’s income doesn’t really allow for these sudden skyrocketing prices. So we’ve started making some changes around here.

One thing I’ve done is reduced my Credit card debt and small loans. This has been an ongoing process, and I’m still working on it, but my goal is to become debt free. The only exceptions I’ll make are my house and car, but at this moment, both of those are all mine too!! When I became a single mom, the expenses took me by surprise causing me to make some unwise (but at the time necessary) decisions and I’m now in major Debt relief mode. So far I’ve been able to avoid Debt consolidation, but there were times I thought this might be necessary. To Consolidate debt I know proved very beneficial to a couple friends and family members of mine.

We’ve started going a lot less too. We make sure we have two or three reasons to go somewhere now instead of running to town everytime it pops in our head to do so. (Sorry for the less frequent visits Mom and Dad.)

Electricity is a hard one for us in the summer. I’m afraid as we’ve gotten into the dog days of summer here in East Texas, the air MUST run. It’s not negotiable.  However, we are more consious (or at least I am and the girls are doing ok) of turning off lights as we leave rooms. This was something that I used to never worry about, and then as light bulbs are going out, we are replacing them with the smarter bulbs with lower wattage too.

And finally, I have gotten back into the habit of coupon shopping. I at one time was really good about this, but somewhere along the lines I guess got really busy and just finally stopped all together. This has been a great help as we have a grocery store that doubles and triples coupons.

If you are looking for ways to save money and be smart, finding out your Bills IQ at Bills.com is a great place to start. After you take their quiz, they’ll also guide you into the right actions (if any) for your financial situation.  I’ve started checking them out and finding it reassuring that I’m actually on the path it seems they recommend for debt help

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