The Capitalist Maven

This week one of the local grocery stores is having another Catalina deal, buy $20 of Proctor & Gamble products get a $10 off your next order coupon.  Pretty good deal especially since you only need to spend $20 at “regular” prices and many of the items are on sale.  Normally I can just do the shopping myself but since I have no idea what kind of Olay and Covergirl products my wife is going to want, I took her with me.

First we end up parking and using the door furthest from the health and beauty section, this leads to us coming in and walking past the overpriced flowers section.  “I want a tulip” she says.  “That’s not what we came here for” I respond.  Needless to say a tulip ends up being the first thing in the basket.  I try to walk quickly to the health and beauty section but notice that she’s stopped and looking at some chocolate bunny’s on the display.  Fortunately we have plenty of chocolate at home, so none of them end up in the basket.  We finally make it to the Olay section and she looks straight to one of the most expensive items on the shelf:  a $25.99 moisturizer.  “Is this what you normally get?” I ask.  “No last time I got that $11.99 green bottle over there” she responds.  After the 20% off sale price and the $10 Catalina, it ends up being $10.79.  It’s less than the green bottle so I agree.

We then check out the Covergirl section to see what she likes there.  Here the sale is 30% off plus the Catalina so some great deals are possible.  I tell her to pick out a combination of things she likes that add up to $20.  Eventually she settles on some things she likes.  Then it’s off to the checkout, again I try to walk quickly.  Again I look back and find her looking at some fancy decorated cupcakes strategically placed on a low table (right at eye level for the kids).  These $1.99 each cupcakes intended to catch the eyes of 4 year olds had ensnared my 31 year old wife.  I think the look on my face was enough to get her to move on.

So we end up spending $36 on the cosmetics, some cat food, and a tulip, nearly half the monthly grocery bill and have a $10 catalina to save for next time.  Was it a good deal?  We’ll see if she actually uses all of the cosmetics…

Jon Budget, Deals

While we probably could have done without it, my wife has been bugging me if we were ever going to get a landline phone. I heard about MagicJack which seems like a really good deal with an entire year of phone service for $40 ($20 for subsequent years). Unfortunately it’s just too unflexible for me. It’s a USB device that you have to plug into a PC and install some software/drivers. Naturally I don’t want some flaky device hooked up to my PC, and just the electricity to set a standalone PC to run it would cost $5-$10 a month.

So I looked into some more standards driven options. Vonage and most of the other big name VoIP providers use a standard called SIP to route telephone calls over the Internet. Unfortunately Vonage $17.99 a month for the least expensive plan. Then I read about how some people are combining GrandCentral(a free forwarding phone number service) with Gizmo (a SIP based competitor to Skype) to give them telephone service completely free (incoming service anyway). Unfortunately for me GrandCentral doesn’t seem to have any numbers available to give to me for free, so I’m SOL there. Gizmo however will sell me a number for $4 a month ($3 a month if I sign up for a whole year).

So I decided to go to the Gizmo route. I picked up a Linksys PAP2t-NA SIP device on EBay and hooked a regular telephone up to it. After some quick configuration (simple but not exactly user friendly) I was able to make a test call to my cell phone. I am quite pleased with the audio quality, which so far is equal or better than an old school regular telephone from the phone company.

So now we have an old school phone number. Still waiting for it to ring…

Jon Budget

Over the weekend on my bachelor party, one of my friends while lamenting some losses at the blackjack tables, commented about how he is saving for his new baby’s college.  He is a lawyer and makes pretty good money, his wife is an engineer and also makes decent money.  He said he is contributing $500 a month to his daughter’s college fund.  He recently discussed with his financial adviser that he probably needs to be contributing $1000 a month, otherwise it is only likely to be enough for state schools.  This is for one child!

Well I looked up it up and found a calculator on MSN Money.  This adviser is correct.  If you intend to save enough to send your new baby to a private college and start today you need to be contributing $1000 a month.  How many people do you know that are putting this much away for their children’s college?  My guess?  Not many.  People complain about spending an extra $50 a month on gas and you think their going to put away $1000 month into college savings?

Something has got to give.  When I went to college there were basically 3 groups.  Those whose parents were poor and got to go for free, those who were “rich” and parents paid the bills, and those stuck in the middle that ended up with gigantic loans.  It seems like the third group will be greatly expanding in coming years as the “rich” no longer have enough saved.

When it comes to college costs its evident that the law of unintended consequences is in full effect.  When government attempts to make college “affordable” for everyone, it just makes it more expensive for everyone.  Basically those who meet the government requirements get to go, but those just outside the income guidelines often get left behind as the costs have gone up so much.  Just like the housing bubble, the supply of easy money for student loans has contributed to a run up in costs.  Perhaps some day if the supply of easy money runs out and enrollment falls, colleges will be forced to tighten their belts.  For our children’s sake we can only hope.

Jon Budget

We went to a local italian place for lunch today. While waiting for our meal one of my coworkers told us how he went to the Olive Garden a bit further away and didn’t like it. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t like it but just didn’t. He then relayed how he knew someone who had worked there and they said that the pasta was the only thing fresh there everything else was frozen.

I can’t understand why people love to hate Olive Garden. Yes, like the DMV, they always have a long wait. But would a restaurant (which you certainly have a choice of) have a long wait if it wasn’t any good? I’ve been to Olive Garden many times and never had a bad meal. In fact, I frequently eat too much there because it is “that good.” Yes, the breadsticks do look manufactured, but they sure do taste good. And I certainly believe the rumors that the food comes frozen. But what is wrong with that? Many research grade chefs working on dishes and picking the best ones on a huge scale, is it any wonder they create some incredible food? It’s not like the chefs in Boston’s North End (Boston’s playground for italian food elitists) are growing their “fresh” ingredients out back, their ingredients are shipped in the same as Olive Garden. In fact I’m certain the research people at OG have a much better idea how to get fresh tasting food into their kitchen than the italian guy in the North End trying to recreate food from the subtropical italian countryside in snowy Boston.

I love the food at OG. It’s loaded with fresh garlic (well fresh tasting anyway, who knows if it actually is) and premium ingredients. The meats are always very tender and very good cuts. Some dishes have a wood fired oven taste to them which is amazing. The service at OG is always extremely good. Yes, frequently you end up with a long wait. On the flip side however, I’ve had reservations at North End restaurants and still had to wait 30 minutes for my “reserved” table. I’d rather have the convenience of arriving whenever I please if I am going to wait either way.

So what is the real reason why people hate the OG? I think it boils down to elitism. When a farmer in Iowa and a factory worker in Michigan can experience the same food, it spoils the experience for the elitist millionaire in Boston. If it’s more expensive and highly localized such that it’s only accessible to an elite few, it must be better right? Wrong if you ask me.

Jon Budget

Recently I’ve been begun to detect alot of Jones envy from my fiancee. We have several friends that anything but careful when it comes to their spending. They always like to show off their newest toy. So my fiancee happened to be playing around with their Ipod and decided she had to have one.

I’ll admit in retrospect my approach to persuading her away from this purchase was wrong. I insisted her existing off brand mp3 player was just fine rather than help her investigate alternatives. There are currently many Ipod alternatives available from Sandisk, Creative, Microsoft, etc. many of which are praised for their innovative functionality. The Ipod by comparison is starting to become pretty long in the tooth. It’s been around along time by technology standards, nonetheless it is the Tiffany of high tech. So off she went to Circuit City and with the saleman’s help came home, not with the Nano she had been talking up, but with an 80GB Ipod Classic. So she’s using about 1.5G of a device with all the weight and durability disadvantages of spinning media. When I asked her what she planned to do with 80GB, she wasn’t quite sure… “Movies maybe?” I asked her, “What movies?” She really had no idea. Video codecs and conversion are really beyond her computer ability level.

Another time visiting friends they were showing off their fancy wine refrigerator. That became her new Jones item.

Her: “I want a wine fridge.”

Me: “What are you going do with that?”

Her: “Put my wine in it.”

Me “Putting a few $6 bottles of wine in a fridge is worth $200 + whatever it costs to run?”

As it turns out, running it for 2 weeks costs more than a bottle of wine. The thermo-electric coolers used in these Chinese made wine fridges are small and light but horribly inefficient. Most seem to use around 70Watts 24/7. That comes to about $105 a year with Massachusetts electric rates. I don’t think she was fully aware of the operating cost of such a device and has pretty much dropped the idea.

Now it’s back to the Ipod, this time for the accessories. Having an Ipod is not enough, you’ve got to show it off. Just like nobody keeps Tiffany’s jewelery in their pocket, your Ipod must be on display. “I want to be able to listen to my Ipod around the house without headphones, I want an Ipod speaker system.” Ugh… one of those crappy plastic things with 1 inch speakers that makes your Ipod sound about as good as a cell phone ringtone. I pull out a 3.5mm to RCA cable from my pile and explain that she can hook it up to the stereo and it will sound awesome. “No, that won’t work, I want it to charge it too.” So off to Ebay I go to find a piece of plastic that can both charge and provide audio out, and most likely hold the Ipod up in display position to show off to the friends… $12 later, I’ve got a device that does both but also adds a remote. It’s still in shipping but I don’t have any worries. It will make her happy and sound great.

Jon Budget, Money lessons

There was a recent Slashdot post about how it would cost $24,000 to send an MP3 at text messaging rates.  Maybe I’m crazy but I’ve always thought that text messaging was overpriced.  Even at the ridiculous overage rates ($0.35 a minute) voice is still far more costly for a carrier to transmit.  A GSM voice call has a data rate of 22 kpbs, so 1 minute of voice data is 1,320,000 bits.  Compare this to a text message at 1120 bits.  To send 1 minute of voice using text message rates would cost $235!

Being the cost conscious person that I am, I think I have sent something like 4 text messages in my life.  All were at times when it was physically impossible to carry on a voice conversion due to the noisy environment.  Would I use it more often if the price was reasonable?  Absolutely.  But would I use it like I see others doing, carrying on slow conversations using a cryptic compressed English coding (LOLspeak)?  Absolutely not.

When I got my HAM radio license, you still had to learn morse code to operate on HF bands.  So I spent a few months learning morse code and eventually passed the test.  I could transmit 5 words per minute using a simple binary encoding of the english alphabet.  Aside from a few diehards, most HAM’s preferred to use voice.  For many of us its just not fun to peck away at the key.  For HAMs though, sending morse code was a way to get a message through when other mechanisms were impossible.  A simple lower power radio could transmit a message around the world using morse code.

Texting is different.  Here you are using an extremely complex and powerful device to transmit what amounts to smoke signals at astromical prices.  It’s like you are using paper money to burn to generate your smoke signals.  I’ve comtemplated disabling texting on my account.  But I always remember those maybe 4 times when texting got the message through, so I leave it turned on.  I never send any messages when voice is possible and I respond via voice to messages sent to me.

Sure I could buy a text message plan or just suck it up and pay a few dollars a month.  But why?  I’ve got a mechanism that communicates information much faster and more reliably:  my voice.  I can immediately confirm receipt on mesages when I hear the other person respond.  I don’t have to learn a cryptic english shorthand to communicate.  Eventually data enabled phones with IM capabilities will replace texting until then I’ll be sticking to voice.

Jon Budget

Well with the Memorial Day weekend, the heating season in New England is officially over. Personally I would have declared it over April 1st and turned off the furnace, but I was vetoed by my fiancee whose thermoregulation abilities are not quite as adept as mine.

So now is time to look back over the heating bill for the season. From 10/12/07 - 5/15/08 we used 1138 CCF. That total also includes gas for hot water, cooking, and clothes drying, which I estimate at 12 CCF per month. So 1138 CCF total - 84 CCF non-heating = 1054 CCF heating. We are actually billed in therms (not sure why they can’t just bill in the unit that the meter measures) so multiply by 1.031 to get therms: 1054 x 1.0337 = 1087 therms. During the period the total heating degree days were 5951. Giving a therms per degree day of 1087/5951 = 0.1827.

Considering that this winter was the coldest of the last 3 years that I’ve been tracking I’d say I did alright. The same periods in the ‘05- ‘06 and ‘06-’07 heating seasons were 5799 and 5653 degree days respectively. Don’t blame the leap year because February 29th, 2008 only accounts for 52 degree days… Unfortunately I have not lived in the same place the past 3 heating seasons, so next year when I actually plan to stay put, I’ll get a real basis for comparison. I used weatherunderground.com to obtain my data.

Recently I’ve been increasing annoyed by all the people complaining about their oil heat bills. I grew up in a region without the crazy oil heat infrastructure that exists in New England. Where I lived in western Pennsylvania, your choices for heating were gas or electric. I think there may have also been some propane infrastructure in place but it was unusual. It was clear for most people gas was the cheapest alternative, although heat pump electric was highly competitive. Resistive electric heat was a clear loser. So I showed up in New England and experienced my first winter.

It seemed so crazy all these oil trucks driving all over the place, in fact it seemed highly inefficient. Have a bunch of guys drive a bunch of trucks, manually filling a bunch of tanks, many of which were filled even before they were empty. Then there were the advertisements, offering specials on delivery, locking in your price, fixed monthly prices, etc. Oil much like gas is a commodity: its prices are really determined by futures traders in Chicago and New York, not that screwball townie who owns the heating oil delivery company. So all these crazy offers that he gives you are nothing more than creative mixes of futures contracts and marketing, to obscure the fact that all you are really paying him for is moving some oil from his tank to your tank.

Natural gas companies are far more forthcoming with their pricing, they clearly delineate delivery charges from gas charges. While gas is a commodity and its price is determined by the market, delivery charges are not. You pay them for safely delivering a constant gas pressure to your house. It’s somewhat unfortunate that there is only one set of pipes in the ground because it gives gas companies a monopoly. It’s tough to say competition would work either, how could companies differentiate their services? My pipes are better than yours? Unlikely. I’d be curious what Milton Friedman’s opinion on this apparent natural monopoly would be. Nonetheless, I’m still going to guess that gas costs far less to deliver than oil even without competition.

What’s given heating oil an advantage for so long is the low price of oil. If it takes 1000 therms to heat my house for the winter, thats equivalent to 721 gallons of heating oil. Check out the calculator here. With gas, those 1000 therms cost me ~$1800. So my breakeven price vs. oil is $2.49 a gallon delivered. It’s clear that until recently oil had a price advantage. To get an accurate measure of true oil costs I found http://www.codoil.com/. Here you can just put in your zip code and get a spot price for an oil delivery without any fancy futures contracts or marketing gimmicks. A truck will show up at your house and fill you up for the price quoted. Want price stability? Hedge it yourself. Buy UHN, the US heating oil ETF. Say you think you will spend $2000 on heating oil, instead of paying a company for a contract, buy $2000 of UHN. When you need an oil delivery, sell shares to pay for the fill up. If you estimated your usage correctly when you bought the shares, you’ll find that the shares of UHN will exactly pay for all your oil. If the price is up when you buy your heating oil, your shares will be worth more. If the price is down when you buy your heating oil the shares will be worth less. In the end the shares should exactly track the price of your heating oil. Pretty neat huh? No calling around and deciphering marketing gimmicks, just a quick and easy deal provided to you by Wall Street not that monkey in an oil truck.

I’d love to buy a natural gas ETF and do the same thing for my heat, but unfortunately due to state regulations the utility is not allowed to offer market based pricing for gas and we are stuck paying a fully hedged rate that while it results in stable prices, does not always get us the best deal…

Jon Budget, Economy, Investments

Unfortunately for me, Verizon is now a cable company. I fondly remember the good old days of Internet service. You know, when every year the price would go down. It used to be something like $20 a month for 20 hours of internet access. Then they gave you 50 hours. Then it was unlimited. Then the price dropped to $10. Then they offered DSL for $40 a month. Then DSL dropped to $30. Then $20…

Then I moved and couldn’t get DSL any more. Signed up for Comcast Internet for $40 a month. No problems. Then Comcast kept increasing the price of their TV service enough that when I moved again, I took the leap to FIOS. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It was new technology, their prices were better than Comcast, and they didn’t have the bad reputation that Comcast does. I didn’t know just how painful Verizon could be.

First came the installation, where I signed up online. I was told I would receive an email confirmation within 24 hours. It never came, so I called. I was told that my order didn’t make it into the system, but they would gladly enter it for me. Problem now was the soonest installation date was 2 weeks later. Grrr. So two weeks later, the installer shows up. He really was a good guy, very knowledgeable, and did a wonderful job. The problem was it took a good 6 hours to do the install so I had to take a full day off work. What a pain…

Then comes the first bill, which reflects none of the discounts I was to receive. I was supposed to receive:

1. A $25 Target gift card

2. First month free

3. $10 off for months 2-7

So I called to find out what was up. They said they could not add this promotion after the fact but that they would give me a one time credit for it. I cross my fingers and wait for next months bill. Sure enough they had come through as the next months bill showed a $25 credit, a $39.99 credit, and a $50 credit.

Fast forward 8 months… Month 8 bill shows the charge for internet is now $44.99, not the $39.99 I paid the previous 7 months. So I call to complain.

First CSR: “Price went up.”

Me: “I’d like to cancel my service.”

First CSR: “There is a $99 early termination fee to cancel your service before 12 months.”

Me: “So you could raise the price to $100 a month if you wanted to and I would still have to pay $99 ETF?”

First CSR: “Yep”

Me: “Sounds alot like extortion don’t you think? When my wireless service changes terms they give me 30 days to cancel without penalty ”

First CSR: “Yeah it sounds bad to me too, tell you what, I’ll talk with my supervisor”

10 minutes later

First CSR’s super: “First CSR gave me the scoop, turns out you didn’t have a contract, we can change prices any time we like.”

Me: “So there’s no ETF?”

First CSR’s super: “Yeah you still have to pay the ETF because we gave you a free install. The terms of the free install were that you maintain service for 12 months. So no contract you can cancel anytime, you just have to pay us back for the free install.”

Me: “I think you are going to lose alot of customers with deceptive tactics like this.”

First CSR’s super: “If you think we’re deceptive you are going to love Comcast…” (apparently it’s no big secret that customer service in this industry is non-existant)

Me: “Agreed, that’s why I going to give RCN a try in August when my “no contract” 12 months are up. Have a good day.”

First CSR’s super “Thanks for calling Verizon.”

Angered, I run through all the stuff on my desk trying to find the T&C from when I signed up for FIOS. I find it! I knew I saved all this old crap for a reason. Here’s a word for word copy of the pricing terms (I have 5/2 service):

“First 30 days free with bill credit. Monthly rate of $29.99 (5/2 or 10/2 Mbps) and $39.99 (15/2 or 20/5 Mbps) applies to month 2-7. Monthly rate of $39.99/$49.99 applies to month 8-12. Rate increases after term plan expires”

It states pretty clearly that month 8-12 are $39.99 and the rate will not increase until the “term plan expires.” So I call back.

Me: “I already called today about the price of my internet service being increased and I found that T&C outlining the price.”

Second CSR: “OK what does it say”

Me: I read off the above statement.

Second CSR: “Your bill hasn’t reflected that offer at all.”

Me: “I know, I had to call and they gave me a service credit for it.”

Second CSR: “Well it looks like they already gave you credit for the $5 difference for the months 8-12.”

Me: “I don’t have my bills in front of me but it sounds like if what you say is correct, everything is fine”

Second CSR: “The promotional offers are very confusing”

Me: “Certainly had me confused, thanks for your time”

So then back to check the bills, sure enough he was wrong, I didn’t receive any $20 credit for the months 8-12 increase. At this point I have given up. They have exhausted me. It’s just not worth my time to keep pursuing this for $20 as I’m sure the next step will involve faxing in copies of bills and T&Cs and several phones calls. In the end, they will lose however when my $40 a month is going to RCN and not to them.

Shame on you Verizon.

Jon Budget

This weekend my fiancee and I went to look at tuxedos for our wedding. Some of our friends had told us about how they had gone to Men’s Wearhouse for their tuxedos and received a great deal of around $60 per tux. So this weekend we decided to go looking. We went to a store called MW Tux, which my fiancee assumed was where they went. Sure enough the store was owned by Men’s Wearhouse apparently having been taken over a few months ago. Nowhere was the $60 deal to be found. The lowest price in their catalog was $106.99. The saleswoman showed us some tuxedos and my fiancee picked out one that she liked. We asked about the price: $130 and change. I asked if there is anyway to cut that price down. Then she throws out the pitch that my tux will be free because we have 6 groomsmen. I counter that, I will personally be paying for all the tuxes so I’d like to cut the price down. (Side note: At the $60 price that I expected, I was planning to pay for all the tuxes in place of a groomsman gift.) She then offers the $106.99 tux and states that this is the least expensive they have.

So I went outside and called my friend. He said that they had actually gone a regular Men’s Wearhouse store after hearing about the deal at some kind of bridal event next door at Long’s Jewelers. We went to the same store as our friends and asked for the prices, sure enough they were the same as MW Tux. We asked the salesman about the special our friends had received. He said it must have been a show special but that all the shows were done for the year. Ugh. Since I have 6 groomsmen, the nearly $50 difference in price adds up quite quickly. I decided to head home to research this situation. The salespeople clearly had an informational advantage over me that I needed to resolve.

Here’s what I’ve found. Apparently Men’s Wearhouse, Mr Tux, and After Hours Formal Wear have all gotten together and created a huge national monopoly in the tuxedo market. All of these places are now working for George Zimmer… I also found several mentions of the promo prices from various shows in a quick google search. I also found on the Men’s Wearhouse site itself that there will be a show upcoming in my area. I wanted to just sit tight until the show since our wedding is still 4 months away but the fiancee was less patient. She wanted to go back and negotiate. Even though these places seem to operate like used car lots in terms of salesmanship, I don’t think they have much room for negotiation on price. The promos come down from corporate management. So we went back to MW Tux and they explained that we could go ahead and order today and that if the show price was lower they could cancel the order and reenter a new order. We’ll see how well this works…

It’s clear that even the tuxedo industry is preying off the typical wedding sentiment that price is no object. They seem to be counting on the fact that people will not shop around, that they will not do research. And, since somebody else is paying, that couples will not be price conscious.

Jon Budget

It seems I’ve been reading many articles lately where the author contends that CPI(consumer price index) is not a accurate benchmark for inflation. They claim that because gas and food have been increasing in price so dramatically, that the CPI is not a true reflection of reality. In my usual “everything you heard is wrong” style, I’m going to argue that this is yet another attempt at media manipulation of the economy and inflation is just fine.

The first step in looking at this problem is to analyze my personal budget. First let’s look at the largest expense, housing. My rent has stayed steady for the past 3 years. Although I can’t see the landlords actually reducing our rent, it’s clear the rental market in my area is weak. I make it a habit to monitor the Craigslist rental market to see how things are doing. Sure enough I am seeing some of the same listings I saw last year come back up as leases expire. Most of them are for the same price, I’ve found a few that seem to be slightly lower however… At first glance this doesn’t make much sense. The housing market is crashing, people aren’t buying, so they must need somewhere to live right? In fact, I’ve seen alot of what appears to be townhouses and condos that the owner is now renting out due to them not selling. So a flood of properties coming into the rental market along with the declining Massachusetts population makes for little to no rent inflation. It also raises another good point, property values are falling in general which is a deflationary effect.

I just got my car insurance bill for June 08 - June 09. Again, no change whatsoever over the same period last year. My mobile telephone bill is the same as it’s been for 6 years. My cable/internet bill has stayed constant though only because I changed providers. My expenses for fun stuff, like computer and video games also seem to be relatively constant.

Now for the things that did seem to show inflation, which can be summed up quite easily: food, fuel, and travel. In reality my grocery bill really hasn’t gone up at all, in fact while it’s difficult to compare exactly due to a being highly irregular month to month, I would say it’s actually gone down. The grocery store sales have been good and I’ve gotten even better at finding the deals. Where I have seen some food inflation is at restaurants. The entrees at Olive Garden have seemed to creep up a dollar or 2 over the past 5 or so years. I remember when the Grand Slam at Denny’s was $1.99 (it’s $5.99 now).

Yes prices at the pump have been increasing. I’ve hedged against this with investments in energy ETFs. I’ve also started riding my bike to work on nice weather days. Overall I’d say the run-up in gas prices has treated me well as I’ve made alot of money on these funds and riding a bike to work has various physical and mental health benefits. The natural gas heating bill was high this year but that was just because it was freaking cold (global warming my a*%) not because natural gas was more expensive. For the 06-07 heating season it was $1.24 per therm vs. $1.19 for 07-08. It actually went down $0.05 per therm (explain that you crazy inflation freaks). The increasing price of fuel has also shown up in airline ticket prices. While alot of the price increase is due to capacity to reduction, I’m willing to accept that even without the capacity reduction prices would be up. For example, there really haven’t been many capacity cuts to MCO yet prices are up a good 10% over last year.

In looking at the overall picture, the things that have shown the big inflation are a relatively small part of my budget. They also happen to be prices that are highly visible. Sending off that constant rent check every month doesn’t have much visibility. Car insurance is only revisited once a year. The monthly phone/internet/cable bills are unchanging and unexciting. Yet shopping for food and gas is something that is done every week. It’s fresh in our memory, we notice when the prices go up. Yet all those big unchanging expenses in the background go completely unnoticed so we assume inflation is high. Don’t buy the hype, dig into your own personal budget and see if your inflation is as bad as they claim. Just because one or two highly visible but relatively low expenses are getting higher doesn’t mean your overall expenses are.

Jon Budget, Economy