A variant of this is becoming Public Enemy #1 because the shelf tag price is 'way lower than what’s rung up. Checker calls up someone to go look, and nothing happens… Gunplay becomes likely.
Actually, the store-brand regular cream cheese now comes in a tub as well.
ShopRite now has paper coupons in their circular that have no digital equivalent, digital coupons that can’t be loaded until a couple of days after you get the circular, and a sheet of (different) paper coupons as you enter the store. (And there may also be another sheet in the kosher section.) All this in addition to sale prices, and lower sale prices with affinity card.
There’s a lot to be said for the Costco/Aldi model: stuff on sale is on sale for everyone with no extra work.
5 Likes
How about that. I am snotty about cream cheese, though, and never buy supermarket brands.
1 Like
I really wish they had stuck with foil, or paper, rather than yet more plastic.
2 Likes
I hear you.
I just had this talk with kids about debt and what it can mean to pay towards the principal. It is peace of mind, in the end. Only go into debt for appreciable assets. Cars and boats are anything BUT appreciable.
1 Like
My young college students overwhelmingly have no concept of this; they were apparently never taught.
1 Like
That is an excellent question, although I can’t imagine carrying a check book, but not carrying cash. After months of carrying a sleek new wallet, designed to protect my cards, maybe hold a bit of paper money, I found myself needing a check, and realizing I no longer carried one!
1 Like
I’ve had this discussion with my 3 oldest kids in one way or another as they’d come home on college
breaks, and describe their various roomies’ or friends’ tales of woe. “Didn’t their parents teach them anything about finances?”, they’d ask.
I think a lot of parents don’t know, either (see bold).
My oldest graduated with a friend who shared a parent-funded apartment with his twin sisters (1 year younger than him, also attending the same state U), and who earned nice summer salaries in internships, who still took out the full loan permitted as against the school’s reported “cost of attendance” (except his final semester) and apparently just blew through the excess. She said he thought of it as basically just free money - like, “Hey, this is what the college FinAid office says I can have”, until she and another friend in their group had some stern talks with him (early in their 7th semester). (I’m not positive but I think she said some of his loans were separate/private; and I’m so removed from the school loan system that I may have some details wrong)
He graduated about $80K in debt, plus his parents had taken out additional loans at about $40K for him to cover tuition “shortfall”, and were basically doing the same with his sisters. All so unnecessary. And many similar anecdotes from them, on the news, etc. The parents who are still trying to discharge Plus loans while retired on social security… gack.
She still chats with him every so often and the good news is he got a big burr under his saddle about the debt; he’s paid his parents $40K, which they agreed was his share of their debt, and is down to about $30K on his own loans. My daughter claims partial credit, but who really knows? Maybe it was after making a few payments at the suggested rate and watching the payments do pretty much noting to principal that woke him up.
I get the absolute bare minimum quantity of checks from my bank. Probably 200 (a single box). And I’m still working through the last 35 or so. The checkbook is separate from my wallet, and pretty much stays in the bottom of my purse. But it’s there if I need it. (I think I ordered this last batch of checks maybe 6-7 years ago.)
ETA: A young coworker ONLY used her debit card for paying things…she never carried cash. Until she lost her debit card, which was from a small local bank, and it took about 6 days for her to get a new one due to timing of going to the bank in the afternoon, a weekend holiday, etc.
She now carries a small bit of cash on her. 
1 Like
That is a scary and sad story.
I’ve shared this before, so feel free to skip it, but it’s what I think of when we talk about educating folks to avoid debt.
When I was growing up, we had no credit cards. I don’t even remember having heard of them until high school, when I heard tale of a Bloomingdale’s credit card that might somehow be available to me in my senior year. I don’t remember if that ever happened. I also had not heard of financial aid, or student loans, and instead was “encouraged” to accept an ROTC scholarship. For about $3000.00 , probably less a year, in exchange for a 4 year commitment to the military. It turned out okay, but it was a horrifying moment for me when I came to grips with what I had done.
I think the best part was the VA loan, without which I don’t know when I would have understood the potential value of a mortgage.
4 Likes
I had been regular Army for 8+ years before college and getting married and, sitting here now, I can’t recall why we didn’t go with a VA loan on the first house. Maybe the rates were the same as the regular marketplace? (*)
Instead, we scraped together a 10% down payment and paid an extra 1.5% (atop what was then a 7% going-rate loan) to cover mortgage insurance since we didn’t have 20% for down payment.
I do recall the Realtor and lender both encouraging us to cover the PMI with that extra 1.5% (rather than buying a traditional policy) because the market was trending up pretty steeply at the time, and at the same time, mortgage interest rates were falling. They were right; within a year we were able to refi that 8.5% (total) 30 year as a 15 at less than half the rate.
(*) Edit - I remember now. We were moving to a new city and I was the only one with an assured job, so as a safety buffer we insisted lenders only include my income, which put the house we were looking at a few thousand over the VA’s commonsense debt/income ratio.
1 Like
For us, the draw was no money down, and we had no money down!
1 Like
I graduated from high school in 1976. When I was 18, Mom encouraged me to start establishing my own credit. She suggested I start with a gas card (probably both Mobil and Exxon, as we used both stations) and start paying that off every month. Then I graduated to my own department store cards (Bambergers and Abraham & Strauss in northern NJ). Soon I was able to get my first “real” credit card - probably a Mastercard. I waited a bit, but eventually got a green Amex in 1991.
And it was only because the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) was passed in 1974 (two years before I graduated), that I was able to get my own credit cards without having a male co-signer. Before then it was technically legal for banking institutions to deny mortgages or loans to women without a male co-signer.
It’s still rather astonishing that this was 50 years ago, but was so commonplace (to deny women credit) before that.
5 Likes
You’re probably right about the parents not being financially literate, either. I’m forgetting how old I am.
When I was 18 I got a job at a local department store (with a 20% discount). Mom and dad had me apply for the store’s credit. They then purchased new carpeting for the house, using my card\discount, and then paid it off. So when I was ready for my own credit, I had a history. (Alas, mom and dad no longer paid the bill at that point 
4 Likes
I didn’t know that! I graduated around the same time.
1 Like
Right? It seems so matter-of-fact for us NOW. In fact, it did for me even in 1976, as I really wasn’t aware that just 3 years earlier, I wouldn’t have been able to get my own credit card without my father co-signing.
5 Likes
I’m so old, I couldn’t apply for credit cards until I was 21 (Which come to think of it, might not have been a bad idea from what I see college kids doing now). I didn’t apply for my own credit card until I’d finished law school ( I was authorized on my parent’s cards, and paid back what I was supposed to. ) _ I wrote checks. My first card was a MasterCard. I made sure I never made a late payment; I knew the drill. Later on, my Dad added me to an auto lease and a mortgage he was paying, so that the payments would go on my credit record. I didn’t have to cover his debt 
thank goodness.
8 Likes
