Things are expensive

[projectnut]

We brought the motorhome to the house yesterday to do some work on it. On the way home we decided to fill it with gas. It only needed a little over half a tank, but the bill was still $235.00. A few weeks ago, we went from Wisconsin to Nebraska to see the Sand Hill Cranes. We were bucking 35 mph head winds the entire 700 miles going west. The cost of gas for the round trip was $770.00. Who would have ever thought that the biggest expense on your vacation would be gasoline?

 

[mattthemuppet2]

Here's how I get save money on commuting, company test rider program. Never needs gas ever, if I need to top up it just uses that little grey cable on the table in front of it. Otherwise I just plug it in when I drop it off in the morning at prototype & test.

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John

Here's how I do it

I'm usually a bit jealous of people in their climate controlled comfy seats but I did feel a little smug riding past the gas station queues during the hurricane Harvey panic buying attack in San Antonio.

I've kept track of expenses over the last 5 years and it's worked out to around 5c a mile, not including the price of the bike.

 

[Janderso]

News is not what it once was, the AP included.
The AP is owned by its contributing newspapers and radio and television stations in the United States, all of which contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists. Most of the AP staff are union members and are represented by the Newspaper Guild, which operates under the Communications Workers of America, which operates under the AFL–CIO.”

"For decades the media has fallen under the ownership of a few corporations who through their editorial control have created a socially engineered construct which represents a fabricated version of reality. In order to maintain this artificial illusion the media exercises a program of censorship of all news and events of importance and replaces the truth with lies, distortion, distraction and omission. The media thereby create a false version of reality in order to keep the public compliant and controlled."

I tend to go with my grandfathers advice. "Don't believe anything you read, or hear, and only half of what you see."

The press is a powerful tool. Scary stuff, that.

 

[Janderso]

We brought the motorhome to the house yesterday to do some work on it. On the way home we decided to fill it with gas. It only needed a little over half a tank, but the bill was still $235.00. A few weeks ago, we went from Wisconsin to Nebraska to see the Sand Hill Cranes. We were bucking 35 mph head winds the entire 700 miles going west. The cost of gas for the round trip was $770.00. Who would have ever thought that the biggest expense on your vacation would be gasoline?

I get about 12 mpg pulling our trailer.
It’s defenetly a big expense but still worth it.

 

[Janderso]

I guess I got a big dose of the news ain’t what it’s cracked up to be early in life. My mom was the first female reporter in the little hometown newspaper The Sunstar. As with her and all her siblings she had to it better than anybody and lived, breathed and ate her job. She had the city council and police/highway patrol beats. It was a constant battle over what the story was she turned in and what was edited out. Being a teenager with a different focus I just mostly remember her frustration. Especially with the dirt that was going on in city politics. It was so bad she was paranoid.

I got a direct dose when I was desperate for a summer job and took the assistant proofreader job. I read the craziest stuff that went right into the round file. The only one that sticks was I think from ’68 about several soldiers dying, basically freezing, during an experiment by the Army to see how they would do with summer equipment in someplace like Alaska. There were a bunch of other stories like that and just saw the round file.

So that soured me on politics. But along about ‘06 I started to listen to a guy name prof. Michael Hudson on the radio talk about economic history and to me it was like reading an engine manual. It took something that had never made sense, economics, and showed how it worked through history. He was saying everything was lining up to crash HARD and as I was talking to others who were into real estate and stock markets they said it was the usual “the end is nigh” crap and completely dismissed it. But when the whole thing crumpled like an empty beer can just like Hudson said I was convinced there were others who knew too. So I read the Big Short, Flash Boys, both by Michael Lewis. And then Homewreckers and the last was probably the most astounding Tower of Basel by Adam LeBor. The BIS, Bank of Internal Settlements. Created to deal with Germany’s reparations after WW1. Incredible story and a huge cast of characters like the Dulles Bro’s. It sounds like a total tin hat fever dream but the biggest bank nobody has ever heard of. Right out in plain site but completely behind the curtain for a century.

Some of these army experiments could have been worked out on paper.
That’s criminal imho.

 

[wachuko]

I traded my diesel truck for a car for my wife... the old car I was going to use will not go to my niece so she can move around campus and the area (she is at University of Central Florida and need some wheels)... I sold one of my motorcycles, the adventure bike....

As much as I want to get a new truck (miss mine already), I am really thinking of just pulling the trigger on a Chevy Bolt... 247 miles range... 6,300 discount right now, and they install a rapid charger for free...

We can always use my father-in-law's XC90 to pull the trailer for moving around stuff...

 

[34_40]

I know a cherry farmer who belongs to a cartel. He explained how they got together and set prices for all the growers and I was amazed that what he described was legal, it sure wouldn't have been for my business. But they had the power and got laws passed to make it happen.

Every time the farmers in our area dump cherries it causes massive fruit fly swarms and outrage from locals who don't understand what's going on.

John

And I am or rather was a cranberry grower here in Massachusetts. A cartel under the name of Ocean Spray, who pass themselves off as a group of farms promoting the cranberry fruit, when in fact they are a large corporation controlling the whole cranberry crop and who can supply or grow it. They control who gets paid and how much. To fight back we spent a number of years dumping our fruit rather than them giving us nothing! It's an industry where you grow a crop on the promise of a certain price... and then sign a contract for that price. But after you deliver the crop, it may take them 9 to 12 months to pay off.... oh,and that contracted price,you remember that promise.... forget it. They could'a promised you 50 bucks a barrel in the contract.. but then explain - there were "unforeseen costs"... so they pay you 18 or 19 dollars a barrel.. Guess what, no one can live at that number for very long, so in protest - we dumped it. The processer we used was chased out - they went all the way to Canada to escape. Welcome to america!

 

[addertooth]

I was very happy with my raise a couple years back, it really bumped up my standard of living (thus having the spare money to build a small garage shop). Now I have been watching it erode with dismay.

They only things we can do these days is try to control costs. My daily driver was made in 1991, and it is much cheaper to keep it running, than make car payments and have the more expensive comprehensive insurance.

Groceries are climbing at a notable rate. I used to pitch in 160 bucks every two weeks only a year ago. It is now up to 200 for the same time period.

I "had a bad feeling" and moved my money to bonds just before the market started to decline; I am happy that choice was made at that time. Most of my co-workers have seen about a 15 to 20 % decline in thier 401k accounts over the past few months. It is painful for them.

It is shocking that precious metals have stayed suprisingly flat in value.

 

[mattthemuppet2]

you're lucky you got a raise, I haven't had one for 5 years thanks to the state of Texas. But my Dean did tell me I was appreciated and valued, though clearly not enough to pay me any more.

 

[Aaron_W]

I would highly recommend the book Fast Food Nation if interested in the subject. Despite the title it is not all that focused on fast food so much as how industry has evolved from trained workers being valuable assets to the model developed by the fast food industry treating workers as cheap disposable cogs.