First we got Al, then we got George, then we got Al, then we got George – then we didn’t know who we got due to a bunch of hanging chads in another Bush’s state – then it went to the supreme court and we ended up with George W.

Both men went on to change the world in their own unique ways.

Gore went on to write an Inconvenient Truth and galvanized to make the world a greener place, less reliant on oil.

Bush went to war and proceeded to make $50,000 feel an awful lot like $30,000. Both with oil and the price of it. Conveniently (or Inconveniently depending who you are), also the source of his family’s fortune. Now, that’s a thing that makes me say Humm.

Now, we’re here again, as is our way in America. This time I’m a little happier.

First there’s more diversity this election: We’ve seen the first woman (Hillary Clinton), the first black man (Barack Obama), the first hispanic (Bill Richardson), and the first Mormon (Mitt Romney) candidates. Have there been other Baptist preachers (Huckabee)? I dunno. Other Ob/Gyns (Ron Paul)? I doubt it.

Happily, none of the candidates appear to have a personal financial stake in oil.

Please, no hanging chads this year.

Post from: Blisstree

Election Flashback

I pride myself of being frugal, fiscally responsible and downright cheap.

It’s downright genetic and in my upbringing and out of middle-class economic necessity.

Inflation is out of control as going to the grocery store gets more expensive every time I go. The increased price of gas is leaking out to the price of everything.

I’ve been combating the guilt and frustration at the grocery store by raising my budget and saying, It’s out of my control. We have to eat. I don’t control the price of gas or groceries.

Imagine my shame when I heard Kate Gosselin, mother of twins and sextuplets from Jon & Kate plus Ei8ght,  say she feeds her kids as organically and healthily as possible for $150 a week. Which is about what I spend, only I accidentally go over nearly every week.

It makes me feel like I’ve got to step up my game. Last week I saved about $1.50 just by telling the Walmart clerk that Brookshires had a better price in the paper on melons.

I’m going to try coupons too. I’ve never really use them because I figure .15 cents and .35 is a pain in the badonkadonk. But, then watching my grocery bill skyrocket every week is a pain in my budget.

I’ve got a coupon organizer and I’m logging onto Couponbug.com to print the coupons I want. Wishing a grocery store in my area had double coupon day.

Anyone else have a coupon source that can save me money? Thrifty Mommy?

Post from: Blisstree

Feed 10 Organically for $150 Wk?

But, not Jenna Bush. The President’s daughter has been on my television all day long because she wrote a book.

Which brings me to a post I wrote earlier on Quit Coping, called Fair Smair, about fairness and how it’s futile to think about it.

I mean, I could bring up how my family’s economics are such that my child is getting asthma from living in a mold-contaminated home. What does that have to do with Jenna Bush?

Absolutely nothing, except that it’s her father who has put us in a big expensive war and that’s why the gas and grocery prices have doubled in the last two years, which is also why my family works harder and harder to to no avail. We just work to pay for more expensive gas, more expensive health care, more expensive milk, more expensive groceries.

He’s just my dad, she told Diane Sawyer.

Yeah, well your dad is screwing with my standard of living in a very real way.

But, what the hell does fair have to do with anything?

Post from: Blisstree

That Bush Girl

How to Survive on $50,000 to $150,000 a Year

Here are some of my favorite excerpts:

• Ten, fifteen years ago, when you looked ahead you thought that if you ever earned $60,000 say, or $90,000 with two incomes in the family, you’d be rich. Yet here you are, you and your wife are pulling in $90,000, and one thing you’re sure of: You’re not rich.
• First, Perception. You are not earning what you think you are earning. Or what you thought you would be earning if you reached this point when you looked up at it ten or fifteen years ago.
• You must stop looking at your earnings as if you were pulling down $75,000 or $80,000 and it were still 1965 or 1970 or earlier. You don’t have the buying power you would have had in those days.
• It could violate your sense of accomplishment – which could also be inflated – but for a sense of reality, you’re better off thinking of your $75,000 to $80,000 as if it were more like $30,000 or $40,000 in old-fashioned dollars.
• Try to bring it more up to date, in 1983 you needed an income of $60,000 to match an income of $40,000 in 1977. Alas, it’s a little like having a big title but not that much power.
• I went into my litany. That 8% interest meant 4% for Uncle Sam, 4% for Mr. and Mrs. Doremus after taxes. And with an inflation rate at 6%, that nice safe bank account was losing them 2% a year. 
• Take $10,000, invest it in anything that returns you 8% a year. In sixty years your $10,000 will have compounded to $1 million. (Providing, of course, that we don’t have 8% inflation, in which case the $1 million will have exactly the purchasing power of $10,000.)
• I regretted the words as soon as I said them. It’s a problem I have. Sometimes things seem so clear to me, I can’t understand why somebody else doesn’t feel the same way I do.
• I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve given extremely sound advice and had it rejected for personal reasons.
• Everybody is searching for the new Xerox.
• They could certainly understand the math, but emotionally their hearts were still in that bank vault.

In 1984, I believe I was in junior high and I have to admit my perception of $50,000 versus the reality of $50,000 was a tad off, just as Mr. Cohen points out. I remember taking a careers class where we looked up prospective careers and their salary equivalents and I admit to thinking $50,000 was a lot of money.

If $60,000 in 1977 was the equivalent of $40,000 in 1984, the equivalent of $60,000 in 2007 factoring in the inflation of gas, groceries and healthcare, would be what? Maybe $15,000?

Post from: Blisstree

How To Survive on $50,000