How Is This Recession Affecting Your Stamp Buying Habits ??

Hello everyone......

With the cost of everything rising, especially food and fuel, have you cut back on stamps and covers ? I sure have, my wife drives about 60 miles to and from work five days a week. When I bought my pick-up I could fill both tanks for about $45.00. Last weekend it cost well over $100.00 for a tank and a half. For many years I've been making homemade bread (from scratch) every two or three days. We don't buy junk food, anything we want I make. We go out to eat about once a month. There are just the two of us and groceries are near $100.00 a week. How are you folks with families managing ?

I've put my Civil War era collection on hold, haven't added to it for quite some time. The few things I've bought lately have been more modern items of modest to lower value. And, I've created a few side collections that cost next to nothing but satisfy my urge to collect and provide enough busy work that appeals to my idea of the fun side of collecting.

What about you folks.....what adjustments have you made ??

hi, its not going to affect my hobby at all...i pay the dentist, the oilman, my property taxes..i have to get some pleasure out of what I worked for or I may as well pack it in....

Funny thing our eating in and out habits a pretty well Identical. I only have 20km drive to work and a tank of gas lasts me 11/2 weeks.

I'm putting my last thru college and that's quite a feat.

However my collection is quite new and i'm still buying stamp lots at a very reasonable price on ebay. I do find albums quite expensive and can't really afford the ones I want so I decided to make my own.

Like you Phil I've worked my whole life to make other people happy so I figure it's time I got a little enjoyment myself

Dianne

Diane, wait until the education is over and its just the two of you in the house..you are going to notice a little xtra money laying around...my three kids ..staggered just slightly stayed at home until age 25 and they were welcome..but now they are out and we do not want them back !

Well mabe I should back up a bit..with the euro at 1.55,we are not planning any trips to Europe any time soon..when we married back in 1966 and my wife took me back to her home on the honeymoon..we had no money..but the buying power of the dollar gave us an advantage of 4 to 1 to the Dutch guilder..i would flinch when people would put gas in their cars by the liter aand I was thinking in terms of dollar a gallon gas...they would kind of shrug and say "its normal". well the tide has turned....

Tom,

I see it less of a recession than inflated fuel costs. Fortunately I usually don't have to drive very far, but for all this global warming stuff, it sure has been a cold winter up here and heating oil is probably 50-cents a gallon or so more expensive than gasoline and comes 200 plus gallons at a time, about a $700 bite last week.

Too bad we are hamstrung on further developing our oil resources while everyone is doing it all around us. Yeah, long term the alternatives are a good idea but it's the energy policy that's killing us while futures speculators play off of every scrap of news to drive up prices and ethanol is played up to the point that diverting corn and farmland to grow more corn effects food prices.

Oh yeah, how has it affected my stamp buying? That has fallen off a bit, but since I'm a general collector and not looking for rarities or even $50 items but just out to relax and have fun, it's easy to pick something up on ebay, a mail sale, or dealer from whom I occasionally buy an interesting lot and stay happy with it.

Modern_Who I agree, I can deal with a car tank fillup by the week..but when I have to come up with $3,000 for next winters heating oil..thats going to take something away from what we would be spending on the economy...when we started going down to my Dad in Bradenton 1350 miles away I did it on 4 10 dollar tanks of gas...now its 4 35 dollar tanks of gas...but we will still go....

Recession! What recession?

Here in Western Australia, we have the opposite problem. We are in the midst of a mining boom. Too many jobs and not enough people to fill them. This is driving wages up and thus spending is up. There are many well paying jobs on the mines, if I felt like working there I could earn $100,000 just for washing dishes.
The extra spending is driving inflation up and thus the government has to control this by raising interest rates. Mortgage rates have risen about 2 percent in the last couple of years. Many home buyers are reaching there limit (we don't all have the big wages from mine jobs) and will be forced to sell. This creates another problem as there are not enough rental homes to go round and thus the rents have also risen dramatically over the last couple of years. Rent in my suburb is between $350 - $500 a week.
So in the long run, for the majority, it still has the same effect as your recession. No money to spare!

Triggersmob..thanks for the info..in the early 1960's I was in the U.S. Airforce in southern Italy working working with Italian military on missle sites..some of the Italians were immigrating to Australia after their hitch...i think it was a 60 day boat ride..so I hope they liked it there !!

Philb, I'm sure they did. There are plenty of them here in Fremantle. We actually refer to Freo as Little Italy.

You guys remember Fremantle,Hey? That's where we held the America's Cup after you lost it. LOL

Steve

Steve, we have a guy from Melbourne in our stamp club..But Hes a Nice Guy ! Squash coach at a large college..sometimes he even gets free or almost free trips home..say his team has a match in New Zealand..

Thank goodness I live in the south. My electric bill is never over $120 a month year round (levelized billing). If I fill up my truck and bass boat at the same time after a long weekend trip I can easily kill 2 $100 bills though!

I haven't had to cut back on my buying yet, but If gas keeps going up I will have to. I have noticed that I've been buying more low value items now that I think about it though.

I'm going to a small show in Baton Rouge in May so I'm going to have to start saving up now for the gas, hotel room, goodies, etc.