It looks like this is the time to hoard up some food, if you havesomeplace to store it anda few extra bucks. CBS MarketWatch reports that deflationary pressures have pushed prices about as low as they’re likely to go. Everything from soup & nuts to automobiles is marked down.
Earlier this week I found some very nice seven-bone chuck roasts at the Safeway: $1.47 a pound, a buck less than hamburger. I bought two and had them ground into burger (I’m not nuts about stewed beef; and I can feed hamburger to the dog as well as to myself).
If you have some money or some credit, now is the time to buy a car or a house. I sure can’t afford that and don’t know anyone who can…but somewhere there must be a retired banker or two who could manage it.
Seriously: As the piper comes around asking to be paid for all the rescues the taxpayer is subsidizing and for all the money the government is minting to engineer those subsidies, we’re likely to see some serious inflation. If prices go up and none of us can get work, we’re all going to be in deep trouble. Helle’s Belles: if prices go way up—or, to put it another way, if the value of the dollar goes bust—it won’t make much difference if we are working, because our wages won’t buy us a heck of a lot more than unemployment benefits will.
This weekend I think I’ll see if I can find a small freezer that will go through the door to the spare bedroom I’ve devoted to storage. It wouldn’t take a lot of extra freezer space to hold at least a couple months of food for me and the Corgi. Then as food comes on sale, I’m going to start buying, wrapping, and storing.
It looks like I’m going to need a new washer one of these days—have you seen the prices on the frontloaders at Costco? They even have one of those top-loading high-efficiency washers with no agitator at an almost affordable price (good-bye wadded up sheets and ripped shirts!).
The problem with buying a big-ticket item before one really needs it is that in these uncertain times it feels like a real bad idea to part with whatever cash you’ve managed to sock away in savings. And you can be darned sure racking up debt to take advantage of rock-bottom prices is a bad idea. But…if things get as bad as they could get, a freezer would pay for itself. So would some “futures” in rice, beans, and canned goods.