Rising Food Costs

Can you believe this? The Today Show was talking about economic woes this morning and did some comparisons of rising costs of a few items, over just the past few months. It's not just gas costs we should be worried about...it's also those simple grocery items we all need.

Tomatoes are up 19%
Milk is up 26%
Eggs are up 41%

They pointed out that this is outrageous if you ask yourself, "Well, has your salary increased over the past few months?" Over the past year we are seeing a 25% of retail store closures and more and more stores are taking out bankrupt insurance, such as The Sharper Image.

Keep your job

The Today Show had a segment today about keeping your job during this recession time. Geez, I wish they would have a segment about how hard it is to find a job during the recession. These simple steps seem easy and for those of you out there who aren't willing to try...well, you disappoint me. I've listed the bullet points below and especially like the last one. (If you follow through, I may have a lot of friends coming to me. One thing I've noticed in the work place, when you lose your job, is who your friends really are. It was shocking to me how certain people, who just don't feel comfortable around you anymore, find it hard to say "hi" when they see you outside the workplace now.)

1. Be a good sport-don't be a drama queen and don't complain
2. Don't expect to get a raise-don't offer to take a pay cut, but don't turn one down either
3. Work harder and smarter-re-commit yourself to the job
4. Review your company health plan
5. Update yourself-it's time to learn those new skills
6. Add 20% more to your emergency fund-save your tax refund check
7. Prepare other options-there's no shame being open to other jobs and keeping your resume updated
8. Redirect a portion of your 401k to savings
9. Reconnect with people that have lost their jobs-they can give good advice and perspective



On a sidenote- this brief portion came on to help caution workers about work email. I kept on saying to myself "Who is dumb enough to do that?" because not sending your resume/personal emails from your work account just seems to be common sense, right? Well, they say that half of all businesses scan companies emails. They use software that detects key words because they want to protect company secrets, personal information and monitoring inappropriate contact. Courts are finding that businesses have the rights to do this and an employees' right to privacy just doesn't outweigh that interest. That's it in a nutshell.

Would you snitch on your neighbor?

I was watching the Today Show this morning and they had an interesting segment on cybersnitching your neighbor. There is a website called RottenNeighbor.com where you can go and complain about your existing neighbors. They say that this is a wonderful thing when you are house hunting because finding out about your "neighbors-to-be" can be difficult. While watching this, in the back of my mind, I kept thinking about my crazy neighbors. When we moved in, we really loved the location. It's about one mile from Historic Downtown and we sacrificed some other things to live in this spot. Well, about three months later, our neighbor decided to let her GROWN son move a full size trailer into the front of their driveway, which blocks the whole view up the street. Yes, he actually lives out there. It's pretty clear when he hooks up his satellite TV and the lights are on all the time. It doesn't EVER move except for stupid Nascar races either. I've been that pesky neighbor and have called the city codes department about it, but they seem to not care. They say that it's against the rules for him to be out there, but maybe he sweet talks his way out of it...that is, if they have ever looked into it. My husband and I did a lot of work on the exterior of our house so that is why it bugs us so much. We love curb appeal so we painted the brick of our house, did some landscaping and even more. We can't help but feel that this situation just shoots our efforts down and lowers the property value. We have tried explaining to them our side, but it doesn't help either. So, we just continue to be stuck.

This RottenNeighbor.com wouldn't have done us any good anyways when we were buying. I haven't mentioned it yet, but I live in Grandpavillle. I am sure that maybe only three to four people on my street even own a computer. So, there wouldn't be any complaints on there to have researched. I talk trash in this blog, but I think that I am taking the advice from the creators and won't snitch on the site. They say that it can also hurt your own home's value if you complain, especially if you are trying to sell, which we might do maybe in the near future.

Just as a disclaimer, I'm sure the website is getting a lot of hits because I've had trouble with the page loading today.