State of the Economy

JDT · Post by **JDT** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 10:19 pm

So gas has dropped to less than half what it was last summer. Sounds great but it is misleading.

Two cases in point...

Saturday my wife went to the grocerey store. She came back with 4 boxes of food and a 17 lb Xmas turkey. She said they must have made a mistake and asked me to check the receipt.
I did and it was correct to the penny. $303.28!!! What the world? There were 93 items on the list. Only two were less than a dollar.

Yesterday I got two new snow tires put on her car. Cost was $178 each. I ordered two other tires for the back of her front wheel drive Chrysler. Cost is going to be $232 each. I shopped around and this was a "good" price.

So the prices of everything that followed the oil prices up last summer has stayed up.

My medical insurance will increase 29% on Jan 1st. But you can bank on my pay check only going up 4%.

Maybe we need to pay attention when they tell us it is going to get much worse before it get better.

S_Kyle · Post by **S_Kyle** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 10:42 pm

Well I bought a truck October of 07. To pay in full would be 26,000 now, talked to the sales guy last time I was in for a service and he is selling 08's with similar km's to my 07 for 20 ish
:eek: . So I owe more than my truck is worth and that's not counting the year and a bit of payments made. But the low gas price will help my upcoming trip south. Win some loose some.

Scott

69camaro · Post by **69camaro** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 11:13 am

I kind of get a kick out of utility companys. Our garbage bill has gone up Quite a bit in the last year. We live in the country so I called them last week and notified them I was getting a burn barrel. WOW, they dropped $15 off of 3 months and all of a sudden it is cheaper than a year ago.

I am waiting for the Dish Network right now. I upgraded so I could get the NFL Network and guess what channel doesn't work half of the time.

They told me it would be $50 minimum for them to come out and check it out. I told them to get their equipment out and I would be calling Direct TV. Now the repairs are free like they should have been in the first place. :lol22:

These companys are reaching for cash and maybe a year ago I would not have argued with them. Duane

AJ Sparko · Post by **AJ Sparko** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 11:34 am

It's actually not quite that misleading, these lower gas prices haven't been around long enough for us to see it have an effect on other products. Grocery stores don't operate on a very high profit margin so it will take awhile for the prices increases that were associated with the higher transportation costs to come down.

Same way with tires as I believe that it's something like 50-60% of the cost is derived from oil based products. It's going to take some time for the "high oil cost" inventory to pass through, prices to the distributors and retailers will only drop when that happens. And if people aren't buying, product isn't moving as fast.

Just like the other day I called another metal shop looking for a short piece of DOM and the price he shot me was really high and usually he just gives it to me at cost. When I asked him why so much he replied, "I bought 3 months ago."