I wanted to buy some toys for my kids and with my frugal mindset, the prices for the toys at Wal-Mart just seemed ridiculous. It’s mainly the name brand licensed toys like Disney and Sesame Street. I don’t want to pay five dollars for some little die cast car just because it is from the Disney movie “Cars” for example. I knew I could find much better deals online. At ebay I can find a huge variety of toys, cheaper prices, in like new condition, and stuff you can’t ever find at stores. Plus I’m mad at Wal-Mart for having a whopping 2 lanes open when I went there and two very long lines of angry customers who spent the loooong wait in line griping about how Wal-Mart is too cheap to open up a few more lanes, so I would rather spend my money where I don’t have to wait in line forever.

So I was browsing around ebay looking for toys to buy and I found some really good deals, but when I looked at the shipping price I went, “Whoa!”. There was an auction for a lot of care bear toys and the price for the toys themselves was good, but when I saw the shipping cost was $30, I kept on looking. Adding in the shipping cost, it’s no longer a bargain.

If you are a collector looking for a specific item, that’s something else, but if you are looking for a bargain to get the most bang out of your buck then you really have to pay attention to shipping costs.

I did find some good deals on toys with fair shipping costs, but I had to skip over a few auctions that had really high shipping costs. Sometimes the size and/or weight of items makes shipping expensive and then there are a few people who try to make a little profit from shipping costs but adding several dollars to the actual shipping cost.

In all of the financial news articles, recession is a common topic lately. It seems that unfortunately, we’re nose diving into a recession.

Inflation has rapidly increased, the costs of living have increased, and there’s plenty of news of layoffs and unemployment.

Those financial guys are predicting a recession and say a recession is likely. That’s just depressing. But America has had recessions before and survived. The economy will have ups and downs.

The Feds are trying to ward off a recession by lowering interest rates and there are talks of tax rebates. But there’s no guarantee that those things would stop a recession.

With the inflation and layoffs, a lot of people will be looking for ways to cut back expenses and get more for their money. Even if we do go into a full fledged recession, it’s not the end of the world and we will come out of it eventually and things will pick up again.