Mighty Bargain Hunter

Secondhand kids’ clothes could become harder to find

I found an interesting article via The Simple Dollar: this piece from the Los Angeles Times regarding the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008.

The really short version of the main point of this post:  Sellers of clothing for children aged 12 and under will have to submit these articles for testing for lead and phthalates (plasticizers often used to soften PVC) beginning February 10th of this year.

These tests are expensive, and businesses that sell clothing, particularly secondhand clothing, will likely be burdened with having their items blessed with this new stamp of approval.  Which means, likely, they won’t burden themselves with it, and instead will either discard these articles, or just close up shop.

I won’t attempt to comment on why this law came about, because that’s not the real point.  If this lead-phthalate thing never crossed your mind before, then you’re not alone (it didn’t cross my mind either) and I’m not really that concerned about the danger of picking up a pair of tainted socks that my child is going to outgrow in about six months anyway.  If it were a real concern, it’s a wonder how we survived at all.

You may or may not share my (lack of) concern, but either way there’s still time to educate yourself about the potential for lead and phthalates in kids’ clothes that could be purchased at your local thrift store or consignment shop, and evaluate the risk to yourself and your family should you purchase them.  If, and only if, you decide that you can accept the risk, then it might not be a bad idea to stock up. (The boldface is a reminder that you alone are responsible for what your kids wear.)

Entire kids’ clothing sections could be vanishing soon as a consequence of this law, and the kids clothing that remains will likely cost more.

Posted in Commentary, Frugal Living | 3 Comments »

What to do with those State Quarter maps?

Over Christmas I found a Hawaii quarter, which is the fiftieth quarter in the State Quarters series from the US Mint.  We got home late Thursday and amongst all of the unpacking we punched out the last circle in the map and put Hawaii in.

We looked it over for about 30 seconds, and then my wife asked, “Now what are we going to do with it?”  (It was hers; she had been collecting them since before we had met.)

What, indeed?

I’ve mentioned before that most state quarters found in pocket change aren’t really going to hold their value.  Unless they’re errors or rare varieties, or in very high mint state, they’re going to be worth their face value, which, thanks to inflation, purchases less and less as time goes on.  (The Delaware quarter has lost almost 25% of its purchasing power already!)  Tens of millions of each design were minted.  The coins themselves are composed of less than three cents’ worth of base metals.  You can collect them if you want, but they’re not “collectible.”

So, back to my wife’s question: What do we do with them?  Right now we have $12.50 in quarters with a map, collecting dust, and depreciating.  It’s not really suitable for framing.  It’s taking up space and incrementally cluttering our lives.  We could:

• Buy a couple of pizzas with the quarters. The pizza place would probably appreciate the quarters for their cash drawer.
• Take the quarters out and start again. Our daughter is almost four, so she’s probably a tad young, but it won’t be very long (maybe a couple of years) before she can start learning her states.  It’s a good opportunity to learn some history.
• Pass the map on to someone who can use it as such. Decluttering can be a good thing.  We can’t save everything.  We can’t even save most of everything.
• Sell the map. Why not?

The most pragmatic thing to do with the map full of quarters is to not save it.  The fun was in the collecting, and now it’s over.  It’s time to spend the quarters.  If we really want then back again, it won’t take long to find them.

Posted in Coins | 8 Comments »

Last roundup of 2008

Happy New Year everyone! Here are a few links to round out this year:

• Money Smart Life collected a number of posts from other bloggers in a “best money posts of 2008” list. (My post on easily-confused money terms is at the top not necessarily because it was best but because I was up late at night when the call for posts came up. )
• Dave Barry has his year in review with some of the clearest statements on the economy that you’ll read. It’s a treat.
• The Simple Dollar posts his best of 2008.
• Clever Dude carnivalizes himself.
• Smart Spending has three frugal resolutions for 2009.
• Get Rich Slowly has his year in review.
• Being Frugal reviews her year; so did Free From Broke here.
• No Credit Needed reviews his year in finance and in health.

For these final days of 2008 Mighty Bargain Hunter had posts in several Carnivals:

• Fraud Files Blog included by give-the-gift-of-cash post in this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance.
• Ask Mr. Credit Card included my derailed-retirement-plans post in this week’s Carnival of Debt Reduction.
• The Well Runs Dry chose my decade-of-frugality post as an Editor’s Pick for this week’s Festival of Frugality.
• Cash Money Life included my free gift cards post in this week’s Carnival of Money Hacks.

Keep on top of your finances; this coming year will be rougher. May God bless you richly in 2009 and thanks for reading in 2008!

Posted in Roundups | 1 Comment »

Review of Schiff’s The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets

A marketing company was kind enough to send me a review copy of Peter D. Schiff’s The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets.  Mr. Schiff is the president of Euro Pacific Capital, Inc., and has earned the nickname “Dr. Doom” for his bearish take on the US markets and the US economy in general.

I’ve been known to be more than a tad bearish in my chatting with friends about where the economy is heading, but some of his predictions are even more so.  He speaks at length about inflation and gives some of the history on how we arrived at a fiat currency, and talks about the perils of where we’re headed with it. 

He then continues with discussion on where to take statistics, facts, and figures with a grain of salt by explaining what he perceives to be conflicts of interest from the entities generating said statistics, facts, and figures.  Whether you want to go so far as to think “conspiracy theory” is up to you, but I don’t think it’s surprising that statistics can be made to say pretty much whatever you want them to say.  I don’t really buy his M3 argument, but I’m in the minority there.

As the title implies, though, he does give a few suggestions for shifting things around in an effort to profit from what’s to happen.  Most of them are some variant of “get the heck out of Dodge.”  Get out of dollars.  Get into real stuff like commodities.  Get into foreign dividend-paying stocks in stable regions.  And, just maybe, get out of the country.  He elaborates on this, of course.  He explains his “top-down” approach to international investing, recommends some sources for doing commodities investing and international equities investing.  The top-down approach is also helpful should one think it necessary to emigrate.

The book is largely geared toward folks with a fair bit of wealth that they are free to invest as they please.  For each main investing area he suggests types of investments that might be appropriate for someone with a lot of money or someone with less than a lot of money.   They’re all fairly broad strokes but with enough detail to get pointed in the right direction with a little bit of study.  (I wasn’t familiar with every type of investment he mentioned.)

The one chapter that everyone can benefit from, though, is Chapter 11: A Decade of Frugality.  I talked about this in another post and its advice is consistent with the rest of the book.  Things will be tough in this country for quite a while, and frugality will make it bearable.

Overall, I was glad that I read The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets.  I have a lot of new investing terms to learn about, and new ways of thinking about where the economy is headed.  It’s also a good starting point for investigating what kinds of investments to make in the coming years.

Posted in Book Reviews, Economy | 1 Comment »