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August 2007 - Posts
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Have you ever been digging around in the bottom of your desk drawer or been cleaning out your purse or wallet and realized that you were still holding onto a gift certificate that someone had given you a long time ago as a gift? Were you really bummed out when you learned that the gift certificate would no longer be accepted at your restaurant or wherever because it had mysteriously expired? Well if you answered yes to these questions, you are definitely not alone according to a short but great news article I read this afternoon. As it turns out, restaurants are now required to do one of two things regarding their gift certificates in many states across the union. Apparently, restaurants make out like bandits on expired gift certificates, since the more that people forget to spend their certificates, the more free money that these businesses are making. After all, if I go and buy my brother and sister-in-law a gift certificate for their Christmas gift with my fifty dollars to their favorite restaurant, and they forget to use it, that restaurant just got a free fifty dollars, right?! Well, in some places in the United States, laws have been recently enacted that required that restaurants either have to extend or eliminate the expiration dates on gift certificates or turn over the funds from expired gift certificates to their respective governments. If you ask me, it's pretty much a toss up. I mean, you're going to lose money either way, but one way might be easier and cheaper in the long run. OK, say that you end up extended or getting rid of gift card expiration dates. That means that customers will likely use the gift certificate some day down the road when they discover it in their kitchen junk drawer. Not only do you have to provide X amount of dollars for food for those customers, but if you take the overhead cost of heating/cooling, electricity, water, and waitstaff into consideration, you're maybe losing some money. If you just say "oh well" and turn over the money from the expired gift certificates to the government, you really are only losing the money that you really didn't earn in the first place. If you do that, at least you're not spending more money on all those other extraneous costs that I mentioned above. If you look at it on the flip side though, the whole expiration date thing is a little bit ridiculous anyways. The fifty dollars that I paid for that gift certificate isn't going to expire, so why should the gift card that I receive for it? Fifty dollars today is surely going to translate to whatever fifty dollars can buy on that particular menu no matter how long down the road you look to spend it. If restaurants do away with the expiration dates, they are ultimately going to keep their customers happy and coming back. They might even end up making some new customers if people end up receiving a gift certificate for a place in town that they have never thought to try before. I guess that in the end it's a toss up like I said for restauranteers, particularly in these states. I would imagine that other states aren't exactly all that far behind in implementing similar policies. That seems to be the way that it works in the United States anyways...good thing, bad thing, I don't really know. I suppose that it depends on the situation. I'm just glad that someone decided to speak up about this gift certificate travesty. There is nothing worse than knowing that you or someone that you care about has this worthless piece of paper sitting around that someone paid a lot of money for at some point in the past.
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This past Summer I noticed many different instances where people who are trying to make some big money have decided to tap into "old school" ideas that still attract the attention of some older generations of people. I hesitate to include myself in a category labled the "older generation", but of course it's the people in my own age bracket that I am most familiar with. The different things that I've noticed people trying to make some money on recently have come in the form of movies. Movies are absolutely huge for people my age, although I tend to like to wait until they come our on DVD to rent them and watch them in the comfort of my own home. Anyways, movies appealing to people of my generation, such as those related to comic books and comic book characters have been all the rage in the past several years. There are now three X-Men movies, three SpiderMan movies, The Hulk, Predator, Daredevil, a couple of Fantastic Fours, Ghostrider, Elektra, as well as Wolverine and Magneto on the way. I'm sure that I've left at least one out, but you can probably see my point. People my age have the money to spend on going to the movies, buying the DVDs, the posters, and all the other soundtracks or accessories that come along with movies. In addition, there has been a Transformers movie, a Simpsons movie, and who knows what else. These are all ideas from television shows, toys, and games that were huge when I was a kid about twenty years ago. (wow...now I feel old!) Items like these from the generation just younger than mine have not hit the mainstream yet. You don't see a real Power Rangers movie, and they haven't made too many movies out of video games. Harry Potter of course is the one main exception, but even that whole craze has been around for many years. I really can't blame the movie and entertainment entrepreneurs for this latest venture into images from my childhood. You've really got to go where the money is, and people my age who are just graduating from college or getting settled into their careers have lots of money to blow on nostalgic images from their middle school and high school days. I will gladly admit that I really like the X-Men movies, and I have watched some of the others several times as well. Watching these movies reminds me of seeing old friends that you were really close with in high school. Sometimes it seems like time hasn't changed anything and things are just as familiar as they were when you last saw them. I used to love my Transformers when I was a kid, and I would play with them every day. I can't exactly place a reason or a date on when I stopped finding the time to play with them, but if I could go back, I would surely have paid more attention to that last day. Things that you are so close to tend to spark such fond memories that it's refreshing to see these memories brought back to life on a big screen, almost definitely to appear to people just like me who miss the days of long ago where I had the time and the energy to sit around and waste away an afternoon playing with my Gobots and Transformers. Oh man...those were the days!
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I remember that about a month ago I wrote a post about an article that I read in the newspaper decrying the increase in prices at Starbucks around the country. When this article came out, I remember thinking that the increase in price would eventually affect me, but then again the end of the Summer seemed so far away, and I couldn't have possibly imagined myself as I am today only two weeks into the Fall semester and already needing coffee to make it through the day. One of the great things about being in a small town is that there are some local coffee places around that don't seem to change their prices all that much from semester to semester, but the fact that the student union has recently added a Starbucks makes trekking off campus to the local coffee shops all that much less convenient than just swinging by the union. Here's the problem though...those pesky prices are just way too high...especially for people like me and a lot of my graduate student colleagues who visit the coffee shop several times a day to keep the energy flowing in a positive direction. I've noticed that a lot of departments around campus now have coffee available for students and faculty, but the drawback to this is that it's hot coffee. I don't know if any of you out there have the same dislike as I do for hot coffee, but for me, it's iced coffee and iced lattés all the way. I think that it's really the smell of the brewing coffee that I can't handle, and the hot coffee smells too much like it. Anyways, I've noticed now that we're two weeks into the semester that this high priced coffee several times a day is really eating into what I had planned out to be my weekly budget for miscellaneous things. It's not that I'm one who really sticks to a tight budget, but I try to do my best to make sure that I'm not spending all that much on unnecessary things each week. I end up spending a lot of my budget on eating out, because frankly I just either don't have time to cook, or it ends up being the last thing that I want to have to worry about at the end of a long day. I also don't like getting up any earlier in the morning than I absolutely have to do pack lunches...call me lazy, but I need my sleep! Anyways, I've tried to do my best to curb my rising coffee budget by switching from my used iced lattés to regular iced coffee. You get pretty much the same amount of caffeine kick for about half the price. The idea of "half price" is definitely something that I can get used to, and I'm anxious to see what it's going to do to help me curb my caffeine spending each week. I'll keep ya posted!
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Here I am sitting up at the multimedia center at my university and fretting over the fact that I have to print some big fancy poster for one of the organizations that I'm part of. It's not so much the printing that I'm worried about, but it's the fact that every single document that I have to print for this group is going to cost me ten dollars out of my own pocket. Maybe in the long run, the money will find it's way back into my pocket, but as I said, right off of the bat, it's out of my pocket. You see, that's the way that things work here at my university. No matter what you need to do for club X, Y, or Z that you belong to, you have to go ahead and purchase whatever it is that you need and then wait to get reimbursed. Of course the whole process of reimbursement isn't as easy as walking into the office with your receipt and getting cash or a check handed to you for the amount that you've spent. On the contrary, one designated person from your group, usually the secretary, has the authority to bring receipts on your behalf to the student activities account office to have them submitted. After a period of review, the checks will be cut...but just once a week. After that they get sent to you in the mail, and then of course you have to wait to bring them to the bank, deposited them, and wait for the funds to clear. It's a rather long and drawn out process, and it's not one that I am much of a fan of. This becomes a particular pain since I am a very active officer of three groups of campus, and it just so happens that I end up having to buy a lot of things for these groups throughout the semester. As I look at it, at any point in the semester, my university has about one hundred or so dollars out on my credit that I'm waiting to get back, though usually always in small increments. This whole system is a little bit suspect, because this particular office has to run the show for every group on campus. We are all told that there is no way to get money right off the bat to pay for things ahead of time, and this is mostly because of the fact that having petty cash around is just not acceptable. After all, I suppose that cash has an easily time of walking away or getting misplaced than a check does. I suppose also that the university policy is in place so that there are not unacceptable amounts of money spent that will then be expected to be refunded. Sure, when you think about it, the system isn't all that bad of an idea, but that does not make it any more convenient for people like me who have to do this all the time. The other way that a lot of individuals on the graduate student council had suggested getting around this whole thing is to have group credit cards, or more appropriately group debit cards. That way, the officers or faculty representative of a given organization would be in charge of this debit account and who used it for what. That way, we have access to our own money when we need it, and we don't have to spend any money up front...which can turn out to be problematic for some students at certain times in the semester. There has been somewhat of a compromise as we have been given cards through the university that have a number that we can use at places like the bookstore and printing services on campus. The only problem is that these on campus services are about three times as expensive as the same types of things that you can get off campus. It's not a very good plan or situation any way that you look at it.
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I spent the majority of my afternoon today sitting in the computer lab at the library on campus trying to figure out exactly what exactly I was going to need as far as materials in order to get me through the semester. Although we have one of the best and largest libraries in the whole country, finding the opportunity to get up there to recover what you need can be a real hassle. There is inevitably no place to park...ever...and it's a long walk up a big hill, so getting there walking in the midday sun is just not a fun task. Therefore, at the beginning of each semester I try to figure out what kinds of print-outs, hand-outs, articles, books, etc. that I'm going to need right off the bat so I can get everything in one fell swoop, which ultimately knocks down the number of unnecessary trips I have to take up there throughout the semester. It's even a worse trip in the cold and snow! I often run into a bit of a conflict of interest though as I'm deciding on my materials for the semester. As a graduate student, it's always necessary to be reading up on what is current in the field, which means looking through lots of journal articles and new books. Although a lot of these materials are available electronically for students, I find it absolutely impossible to read things on a computer. The only exception that I usually make to this is when I'm writing my papers and assignments, which of course necessitates that what I'm working on be on the computer. The problem that I have with electronic resources and materials is that I have no where to take notes. I like to jot notes to myself in the margins, underline important ideas or terms, and ask myself questions for pondering later on. As you can imagine, these little practices that I've developed over the years just do not lend themselves well to a computer screen. As a result, I like to print things out. Over the past several years, I have accumulated quite a bit of materials that I have painstakingly catalogued so that I can find things. While this is great for me to be able to have immediate access to materials that I will probably need someday or use more than just once, it's not such a great thing for the environment. You see, each semester graduate students are alloted a one thousand page printing quota to print anything they need from university printers. Believe me, it all adds up quickly. When I think about the amount of printing that must go on, it makes me just about fall over. I would hate to be the one to have to calculate how many trees that graduate students at my university kill each year just for their printing allotments. That's just this university, and just the graduate students. Throw in thousands of undergraduates, and all the faculty, and all the staff. Yikes! I know very well that the electronic alternative is much better for the environment, but I also know that I will have no chance of being productive if I have to do everything in front of a computer. It's inconvenient, slow, and really not good for the eyes. So with all these things to weight, I find that it's really a toss up about what to do. I want to be productive, but I also don't want to kill trees by either printing all the things I need or purchasing my own personal copy of every single resource. What's a grad student to do?!
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I found an interesting new feature this morning as I was going looking at new news articles online in the personal finances section on CNN dot com. Since I visit this particular site nearly every day, I am able to keep more or less up to date on the changes that they make to the site. Little do people realize that most companies that run large and busy websites like CNN have a team of website developers, optimizers, and content builders and administrators who are constantly looking for ways to improve and rebuild the sites to make them more functional, usable, and optimal for search engine use. A lot of times the changes are minute and behind the scenes, but sometimes you will find new forums, blogs, columns, and even more drastically new graphics, formats and layouts for the site as a whole. I noticed today that there is a new help function on the personal finance page at CNN dot com called "Money Helps". From what I can glean from the site, Money Helps is kind of like a Dear Abby column for people on the internet who can write in with questions, comments, or concerns and ask for advice on a given topic or topics. Although the answers appear to be a little bit bland and dry, the questions that I've seen are pretty interesting and amusing to say the least. The question that I saw today posted on the site had to do with expired airline miles, something that apparently a lot of people don't know all that much about. To paraphrase the content of the entry, a gentleman wrote in asking for information on recovering over eighty thousand airline miles that he had racked up over the years that his airline of choice had all of the sudden taken away from him. As it turns out, he had been acquiring these airline miles on a particular airline for many years while he was working so that he could do so free or inexpensive traveling when he began his retirement. He retired now not too long ago and when he went to use his miles, he learned that the airline had made them disappear. When inquiring about the whereabouts and the why-fors of this disappearance, the airline responded that they had begun to phase out their unused airline miles program several years ago, and they were not obligated to contact customers from whom they were taking these miles away. Apparently it's all written down somewhere in the fine print...go figure. So in short, this gentleman had saved his travel miles diligently for who knows who many years only to be hoodwinked by the fine print in the bylines of some airline corporation's operating manual. I can't even imagine what a let down this must be to this particular gentleman and his family. Eighty thousand air miles is quite a bit. From what I understand after talking to my father about the situation, that is pretty much equivalent to three round trip tickets anywhere in the continental United States...definitely not anything to shake a stick at. This whole thing just makes me think back to the airline miles that I have been supposedly accumulating since I started going to school in Florida many moons ago. I've never seen anything come of the miles that I've accumulated, although I do get a little reminder in the mail about once every six months or so informing me of my balance. The problem is that I no longer have any idea what my login and password are for the airline miles account, and no one seems to be able to help me recover them. Therefore, mine will be just another set of thousands of airline miles that end up getting lost in cyberspace and thereby saving some undeserving airline the cost of a round trip ticket or thereabouts. So, for those of you out there who are currently racking up airline travel miles through air travel or purchases on your credit card, do yourselves a favor and keep track of what miles you've got accumulated, what the terms of use are for those miles, and if they ever retire. A little bit of extra planning and paying attention at this point in the game will help you to avoid some major disappointed later on in life.
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I had gotten into such a habit of writing about the ever changing gasoline prices that we had experienced over the last year that I decided a couple of months ago that it would probably be a good idea to put the topic to rest for a while. In the time since I last talked about the crazy state of our gasoline prices, I've realized that the prices have hit a somewhat uncomfortable plateau. Now that I'm back in town and not doing any major traveling like I had done towards the end of the Summer months, I haven't really had much of a reason to fill up my gas tank. I think that I've probably done so just twice in the last month or so. After all, when you can comfortably walk from one end of your town to the other in about an hour, you can easily see how the distance translates into miles and how I don't really need to be driving around all that much in my car. I think that I probably waste more gasoline waiting around in traffic at intersections or waiting for the trains to pass than I actually do driving from place to place. I had been thinking ahead about my blog posts for a few days and thought that it was high time that I revisit the important financial topic of gasoline prices since it is one that really affects all of us, perhaps as often as once as week on average. I decided to start taking a peak at the amount for the regular unleaded and diesel fuels each day as I take the shuttle bus up through campus to our student union. It just so happens that we pass by a gas station just on the edge of campus, so it's a great opportunity for me to take advantage of the consistency of the morning and check up on the prices. I've noticed over the past week or so that the prices at this particular gas station have stayed just under three dollars per gallon for the regular unleaded variety of gasoline, with the plus and premium grade at ten and twenty cents higher, respectively. Diesel falls much lower as usual. I was curious if the other gas stations around town were hovering at the same levels, so I took a little ride around as I went out for some groceries, and I noticed that prices fluctuated anywhere from about two dollars and eighty nine cents per gallon up to about three dollars and five cents per gallon at some of the places closer to the highway. I figured that that made my two ninety nine observation pretty average for the town. I then wondered though why had have hit such a plateau on prices. I suppose that it isn't really something that any of us should complain about. At least if we have hit this gasoline price plateau they aren't going any higher. Of course it would be a nice relief if they would take a turn in the downward direction, but let's not get too picky right?! I would like to think that the prices will eventually start to fall by at least a little bit as the nice weather of the Summer months starts to come to a close in portions of the country. People who are out traveling on vacations and even weekend trips and holidays tend to send the amount of gasoline consumption way up during the four or so months of the Summer. Once people return to school and to work and buckle down for the Fall months, gas consumption should probably go down, and with it the prices will as well. Maybe by the time that people are getting ready for their Thanksgiving or Christmas holiday travel, the plateau will have settled a little bit lower. OK, yes, so I'm being optimistic about it...but can you blame me?!
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I learned an interesting tidbit of information this afternoon as I was sitting down to have lunch with some of my classmates. We were in the process of catching up on what we had missed in each other's lives over the Summer months where, although most of us were still in town, we were all so busy with our respective jobs that no one really saw much of each other. One of my colleagues mentioned that he had been working at our local Target store for his Summer job and I asked him how the job was, how the pay was, and most importantly if he got a decent amount of hours. He explained to the group that the hours that he was able to receive were never the problem with the job owing to the fact that the Target store here in town is the busiest in the entire nation at this particular time of the year. It really made a lot of sense after he explained it to us. Living in a town where one of the largest universities in the nation is located, where thousands of undergraduate and graduate students flock into town in the beginning of August to buy everything that they need to stock up their dormitories and apartments, it is surely no surprise that stores that offer inexpensive furniture, clothing, and food like Target and Walmart end up practically swarming with students and their parents in the weeks before the semester begins. One difference between the two stores that I mentioned however is the quality of their products and service for the price that you're paying. It's interesting that our Walmart doesn't rank among the busiest nationwide and our Target does. Perhaps it's partly the location, as the Target store is located relatively close to campus, but still the Walmart is only about two miles away. I think when it really comes down to it, it's the quality of the products rather than the price that really sticks with students and their parents. Target has really found its niche in the megastore market by offering products of high-ish quality at a very decent price. The items are always new, most always in stock, and they are items that people want to have in their homes. As far as clothing and housewares go, Target has a long list of designers that have created signature lines for the store chain. Their is therefore a little bit of prestige, style, and class that comes from choosing Target rather than the Walmart alternative. Another thing that attracts me to Target rather than Walmart is the quality of the store itself. I don't think that I've ever once walked into a Target store and thought to myself..."oh my gosh...this place is disgusting". I don't think that I've ever even walked in and considered that the place was even somewhat of a mess. At Walmart on the other hand, the place is always a mess, and it's always crawling with individuals who I would not necessarily want to have over for Sunday brunch or even run into on the street. If I had to do any shopping at Walmar, I make sure I know what I need in advance so that I can get in, get what I need, and get out as quickly as possible. Back at Target though I like to browse around the store and see what's new. I don't necessarily buy my clothing at the store...it's just not my style at all...but I will stroll leisurely through the housewares section and even the computer and outdoor items to see if there is anything good and useful on sale. I also like their speciality food section which often has a bunch of products that aren't typically available in grocery stores but can be found in Targets at a much more reasonable price than in speciality and healthfood grocery stores. All in all, the executives at Target are literally right on target with their vision and administration of their chain of stores. People actually want to shop at these stores. People recognize quality in many ways, and they are looking to get the most bang for their proverbial buck. It's obvious that if a Target is available within a close distance from a Walmart, people are going to choose the higher quality products and service along with cleanliness if the prices end up around the same.
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Now that I've gotten back to school, I have much more of an opportunity to check out what is going on in the news. Today, I found a particularly interested article about the massive gaping hole that compares the salaries of the average working class American with the cheif executive officers of corporation around the country. The difference was pretty staggering, as it explained that these corporate higher-ups make about three hundred sixty-four times more per year than the average American. Now, I suppose that I could be doing my mathematics incorrectly, but if the average American is making roughly thirty thousand dollars per year, that would mean that the average big corporate executive is making thirty thousand dollars a day. Can that possibly be correct? I shudder to think that it is. Just to know that there are hundreds of thousands of people out in the world who are starving and without proper medical attention and that there are others who are making tens of thousands of dollars per day is just absolutely absurd. What could these people possibly need with all of that money? I seriously doubt that they are doing their best to put it to good use by providing some donation to charities and other needy parties. My guess is that the vast majority of people who are making this kind of money are just keeping it for themselves to buy fancy houses, cars, vacations, and gadgets that they don't really need. All I can do is shake my head. I suppose that we all look forward to our futures and hope that we end up making enough money so that we can live comfortably. Many of us probably hope that we can make enough money so that we can leave some behind to our significant others, children, or even close friends. The executives who are making these many thousands of dollars each day will never have to worry about that problem. They will have millions of dollars by the time they head home to their maker, so their family and children (if they ever have any) will never have to think that they won't be taken care of. As I get older and maybe a little bit wiser, I slowly begin to realize that this is just absurd. I'm sure that if you chanced to survey Americans throughout our country, the idea of earning thirty thousand dollars per day would seem unfathomably. That is more money than a lot of people see in several years. After all, thirty thousand dollars per year is the 'average' for Americans. That means, of course, that forty-nine percent of Americans make less than that amount in an entire year. Scary scary stuff! I suppose that we will have to leave it to those among us who bring in more humble amount of money each year to continue to put our money to good use through charitable work and donations. I don't believe that we or those less fortunate than us can afford to rely on the kindest of big corporate executives who really can afford to donate every single day and not even blink.
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It became completely clear to me today that certain companies out there are out to do nothing more than rip people off. At this time of the year, many businesses do everything that they possibly can to cater their products and services to the likes of students returning to school at high schools, colleges, and universities all over the country. A lot of the time these companies provide students with good deals to help sales, but others are just out there to rob students dry. Last year when I started back at graduate school, I remember marveling at the fact that the supplies and books that I needed for my classes weren't really all that expensive...well at least less expensive than I would have imagined that they would be. They still cost me a bit of money, but I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Once again, I was pleasantly surprised when the Spring semester rolled around when I simply had to replenish the school supplies that I had stocked up on and buy just two textbooks for class. Again, not too bad. Fast forward to this year, and everything has changed. The service, the products, the availability, and the prices have all gone haywire. The cause of the problem is none other than big corporate America. Allow me to explain. Previously, the bookstores on my university campus were owned by the university privately and the products and services therein were distributed through this private company. That meant that costs were kept down, service was great, and the availability of all kinds of products was pretty much guaranteed. This year however is a totally different story. The university administration, somewhere in its vast collective wisdom, decided that it would be a good idea to outsource the bookstores on campus to none other than Book and Media mogul Barnes and Noble. By doing this outsourcing, the way that students on campus are able to do their textbook and supply buying went through a huge change. Why is that? Well, it's because the university no longer has any say it what happens and how it happens at the bookstore, and especially no say on what things are going to cost students. As if the price increases weren't bad enough, the Barnes and Noble takeover has brought about an added headache for students and probably some faculty on this campus. In previous years, since the bookstores were university owned, they were therefore interconnected, computer-wise, to other campus systems, including the financial aid offices and the university bursar. What that meant was that students who were expecting to receive financial aid were able to charge their books and supplies to their bursar account, and once financial aid was released, the amount of their supplies would be automatically debited from their bursar account and life would be good. At other points during the year, students could also charge things from the bookstore to their bursar account, much like a line of credit, whereafter the would be billed for the full amount of their monthly purchases by the university. Another good thing, right?! Well, this is yet another of the conveniences of our university system that Barnes and Noble has done away with. Students therefore have to have the money upfront to purchase their textbooks, which means that they need to provide it for themselves with their hard earned summertime job funds or of course ask mommy and daddy to foot the bill until the financial checks get deposited. As you can probably surmise, this system isn't working out well for any party involved...well maybe for the big corporate book company who is making a quick buck sooner by taking away all the conveniences that had been formerly afforded to already struggling university students. In short, it's a really bad idea, with really unfortunate and inconvenient consequences that I (and probably many others on campus) hope will not last for too terribly long.
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It's really not every day that you get the opportunity to see real advertising for Christian businesses, especially out in the middle of nowhere. I had mentioned in my post from yesterday that I had seen a very relevant piece of material for my Christian Finance Blog that I wanted to tell you all about today. As many of you know, I happened to be going up with some friends to a location about an hour from where I live to do some back to school shopping at the outlets malls near here. My friend Amanda decided that she would drive us up there, so I had the opportunity to just sit in the back seat of her car and relax and watch the scenery go by as we made the hour long drive. I just happened to be staring out into space when I started to watch the billboards go by as we passed through a small town along Route 37 in central Indiana. Most of the signs were for gas stations, small restaurants, and little shops. One in particular though caught my eye. It looked like your typical billboard sign for a small business. This one in particular looked like it was for a painting contractor. The thing that caught my eye though was the little emblem that the company used for its logo. It was a little book with a Christian cross next to a paint brush and paint can. The name of the company was "Painting for the Master". In the brief moment I had to survey the billboard, I noticed a little caveat at the bottom of the billboard that said something along the lines of "practicing Christian business for over twenty years." I thought that this was absolutely amazing, because I had never really seen a "real life" billboard or advertisement for a Christian business that was really so subtle. I immediately thought that I would like to contact the owners of this small business and thank them. They had successfully advertised for their business, and while not hiding the intent of their business, they did nothing to turn away any customers who might not share their religious affiliation or views. In my opinion, this is the perfect example of how to create and market a small Christian business. The thing that was even more interesting to me was the fact that this small business devoted to Christian ideals was really out in the middle of nowhere. I would have to say that it was easily thirty miles in any direction from even a decent sized town, and probably an hour away from a large city. How nice that people in small town America are the ones who are leading the way in religious subleties. It seems that the Christian businesses that I've seen in larger communities and cities are the ones that are throwing the religion down your throat and perhaps even turning people away who don't share their views. It seems funny, but this brief moment driving seventy miles per hour in the car really stuck with me and changed my outlook on the day. It's life's little mysteries and happy moments that keep us going...so here's to all the small Christian businessmen and businesswomen out there in America...you make us all proud!
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Let me start with a response to my last blog post. I had asked if it was possible to save money by shopping at retail outlet malls, and after spending the day at one yesterday, I have to answer with at least a tentative "yes". The tenativity of my response is because, although I saved a lot of money yesterday and had a great experience at the outlet mall up here, I really have had much the opposite experience at several other outlets that I have shopped at around the country. I don't know if it was the particular time of year or the selection of the stores that were available at the particular outlet mall that I visited, but everything worked out for the best on my first, last, and only big shopping trip of the Summer. I justified spending a little bit of extra money on this trip because I found that I was able to save a little bit of money, and I needed some new things for the school year. I remember back to the days that my mother would take my brother and me shopping for school clothes a few days before the school year started. I'm sure that that was not the most fun night of the year for her, because she had to put up with two pain in the toosh little boys who wanted to buy way too much stuff that was way too expensive for what we could afford. I really give my mom props for making due with what we had and never having us end up "wanting" for anything. Fast forward to today when I'm responsible for everything for myself, including my new school clothes for the new semester. A few years back when my mom stopped buying me socks and underwear for Christmas, I realized what a drag it is really is to have to go out and buy that kind of stuff. Those necessities are expensive and everyone has their own brand that they like. I remember my mother having to go around to find my brand, then one for my brother, and finally my father's...again, not so fun for her...my mom has definitely been a trooper over the years when it comes to catering to the three of our needs. So back to the outlets...what surprised me about them was the fact that things were actually on sale. Again, I don't know if it was the luck of the draw of the week of the year that we decided to go and shop, but everything seemed just great. The prices didn't appear to have been marked up just to be marked down like I've found so many times in the past. The items that I was looking for were available in the sizes, colors, and styles that I wanted, and they were all on sale. I bought polo shirts at the Gap for just ten dollars a piece...regularly twenty-five dollars each. I bought boxer briefs for just three dollars there too...normally ten dollars a piece. I found some new running shoes at the Adidas outlet, normally eighty dollars, that were marked down to just twenty-five dollars. As you can see, these are some serious items at some serious sale prices. I only wish that every outlet mall had these prices to offer to the customers, as well as the availability of such great products and such a wide selection. I've also got something interesting and related really well to the Christian part of my Christian Finance Blog to talk about that I saw while on the drive up to the outlets yesterday, but I think that that will be best suited for tomorrow's post. Talk to you then!
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