It's the economy...

This economy is a topic for much conversation lately. We went out to dinner Friday night with some friends who are from Russia and have lived here for a little over a year. They were very interested in what we thought of the economy, and if we were feeling the effects of it's current state. Our answer was yes! First of all, my 401k both at my previous job (which I have yet to roll over) and my current job have both been on a study decline for the last 6+ months, which is depressing. I hate seeing our money disappear, especially without something great to show for it...like new furniture or our student loan balance going down or something.
David mentioned groceries. Our grocery bill is skyrocketing! We buy the same things we always have, but as David pointed out, you may not notice a little increase of 50 cents or a dollar here or there when you are only buying a handful of goods, but when you are filling a grocery cart full, those increases sure add up!!! He did our grocery shopping last - actually he does a lot of our grocery shopping as it is one of the few kinds of shopping I hate, second only to bathing suit shopping...Ugh. Anyways, he managed to spend $117 at Food-For-Less. Food-For-Less!! I don't know if you all have a Food-For-Less near you, but it is the cheapest (and most disgusting) grocery store around us. I refuse to shop there. You have to check the expiration dates on everything because it is not uncommon for expired milk to be on their shelves. Ew. I ran there once just for flour in a baking emergency and seriously needed a shower when I got home. I told David then that I am not going back. I do not care how cheap the groceries are, they are comparable to Winco, and I am not too pretty for Winco... so it's where I draw my limits.
As far as gas goes, in the middle of a purging and organizing rage recently, I came across the budget I wrote up when we first got married 4 1/2 years ago. We had budgeted $30 a month for gas. $30 a month. Granted we both had small, amazing mpg hatchbacks, and we lived close to both our jobs and church. But that is still jaw dropping! Our little golf-ball sized cars had 10 gallon tanks, and it would cost about $12 to fill them up. Now we have upgraded to compact cars, and 4 1/2 years later, we can't even fill either our Jetta or our Kia for $30...our entire months budget less than 5 years ago. Yikes.
Another interesting thing is I am really noticing my penny pinching. I am ad shopping for groceries, and thinking twice before little $2 purchases I wouldn't have batted an eye at buying a few months ago. But this has had some negative feedback. Let me explain....
A few nights ago I had stopped at Safeway to pick up just a few things we needed. I went through the check out line and my total was $31.07. The check out lady asked me if I wanted to round that off to $32 to help fund breast cancer research. Doing quick math I realized that would be 93 cents -almost a dollar - so I smiled politely and said "no thank you", and she looked at me with complete disgust! She stared at me for a moment with a look on her face that said "why do you hate women?" and then half-rolled her eyes, pressed some buttons on her register, and handed me my receipt, minus the standard "have a good day!". I felt so wrongly accused!! I wanted to cry out "I like women!! I am a woman!! I am anti-cancer, I really am!!! I am pro-fighting cancer!!" But instead, dejected, I grabbed my bags and headed out of the store, a woman scorned.
In an effort to obey the scriptures of not letting the right hand know what the left hand is doing, I will just leave it at saying my husband and I pray about where the Lord would have us give. We try and remember that everything we have is His, and we only have the things or money we do because He has allowed us to. So it is not that I am against giving, I am very much for it and believe scripture has called us to, I was just not feeling particularly led to donate my almost-dollar at that time...but something told me the woman behind the register did not really care to hear my reasoning. Her mind was made up about me already.
Our pastor this morning very humbly discussed giving and stewardship during these hard economic times. He quoted a study saying that on average Americans spend $450 billion on Christmas shopping every year, and that it would only cost $10 billion to solve the entire world's clean water crisis. You can read more about it at Adventconspiracy.com. Really interesting.

Oh, and yes, I do realize the possible hypocrisy of me starting this post out by stating we were out to eat while discussing the hard financial times...try not to judge me too harshly...=-)
Happy Sunday to all of you out in Bloggerville.