April 1st...Fools and their money shall be soon parted!

The Main Theme today is Thrift: 

Are you saving money for the rainy day?  Do you live from paycheck to paycheck?  Have you ever thought about winning the lottery?

These are elements which get into today's thrift message.  Saving is great, but where do you put the money that you save?  The banks have such low interest rates that it might be better to invest your money into candy and gum...LOL.  The reason is simple, the prices of commodities shall be rising as the time marches on.  Look at the cost of oil, food, and other necessities of life.  They are constantly going up and yet wages are stagnant and in some cases are retreating. 

Those who are on fixed pensions get a little relief with cost of living increases, but do those increases really reflect the rising of prices?  There are some things which we all need and those prices are up and down.  Take oil for instance.  The cost of gasoline affects everyone.  Even if you take a bus the costs are passed onto you in one form or another.  What can you do about it?  VOTE!  Yes, vote for those candidates who are not aligned with interests which are detrimental to you.  You can easily check out the voting record of Senators, Congressmen, and local officials in your states.  If they seem to be voting along with the bloc of money grabbers, get them out of office.  If they are voting independently and based upon principle, then by all means keep them in!

One of the things that the internet is providing is a means for us to invest in foreign countries which have the same values that we have here in America.  An example is Australia.  The banks there are paying higher interest on deposits than we are paying here in the US.  We see that interest on savings accounts amounts to 1 percent if that.  They are paying more than that and we should investigate the banks there and determine if it is wiser to send out hard earned savings out of this country to another.  There are taxes to consider because you can be taxed on earned income from foreign countries just the same as the income from here which you earn.

It is the Day of Fools!

I can recall being pranked on a job when I got out of the Navy way back in 1958.  It seems that one of my co-workers thought it would be a good thing to leave me a message that Mr. Bear called and needed me to call him back.  Now, the co-worker did not know that my Step-Father was named Baer.  I thought tht it might be an emergency that he called because my mother had been ill.  However, there was a phone number left with this call so I returned the call to this number all day long.  It seems that the number was for the Zoo.  The Zookeeper kept getting calls all day long for Mr. Lion, Mr. Bear, Mr. Fox and so forth.  He was very pleasant about it when I finally got through, but can you imagine the number of hours this fellow wasted of the taxpayers money just because of foolish pranks?  If you try a April Fools joke make sure that it is of short duration, does not waste time and further that it is not a complete annoyance.

Just a personal note...my cold is a lot better now and at least I can sit without coughing or having a runny nose.