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August 10, 2010, at 6:00 am If you're new to BFS, please subscribe to my RSS feed. It shows me a vote of support and keeps me motivated to keep your attention. If you have any questions or comments for me, please contact me and I'll get back to you asap. Thanks for visiting! Please also feel free to check out my guest posts at Engineer Your Finances, Financial Mistakes of Young Families, and at Punch Debt in the Face, Job Hunting Mistakes I REALLY Hope You Don’t Make. 
Here’s an astounding take on the national debt from Yahoo Finance, 13 Ways to Spend $1 Trillion. Apparently the government spent $1 trillion more (yep, that is $1,000,000,000,000) than it made in the first 9 months of the fiscal year of 2010. Let’s see what Yahoo Finance said $1 trillion can buy:
- 40,816,326 New Cars
- 5,574,136 Typical American Homes
- 140 Billion Hours of Labor
- A Year’s Salary for 14.7 Million Teachers
- The Annual Salaries of All 535 Members of Congress for the Next 10,742 Years
- The Star Power of LeBron James for the Next 50,000 Years
- 1.33 Trillion Chocolate Bars
- 1,333 Celebrity Divorce Settlements
- A Guaranteed $6.3 Billion Payout for a 65-Year-Old Man Every Month for the Rest of His Life
- A One-Year CD Yielding $15.5 Billion in Interest
- Annual Base Pay for 59.5 Million U.S. Army Privates
- Replace Annual Incomes for 19.2 Million American Families
- Pay the Estate Taxes for 2,222 Billionaires
Obviously, if you divide 1 trillion dollars by whatever a thing costs, you will get some big number results. The number is insane, but the sickening aspect of it to me isn’t the $1 trillion spent in 9 months or the actual total debt of $13 trillion, it’s the fact that at some point it will be handled in one way or another. How much will our taxes increase? How many programs will have to be cancelled? What will our economy be like during the turning point? I am personally frustrated at feeling helpless. I just can’t comprehend why the generations ahead of me seemed to have gone out of their way to make our future incredibly difficult.
I try to battle that helplessness with personal financial stability. Our bills are paid. We save for our own future. Our mad money is even budgeted for so we don’t feel guilty about not saving every dime. Those steps don’t make the fear for my future dissipate, but it does help. I try not to worry about things I cannot change, but articles like this make that difficult to do.
What do you think? Are you having a hard time wrapping your head around it too? What are your guesses for our future?
August 9, 2010, at 6:00 am
Please also feel free to check out my guest posts at Engineer Your Finances, Financial Mistakes of Young Families, and at Punch Debt in the Face, Job Hunting Mistakes I REALLY Hope You Don’t Make.
I was meandering through Kroger a couple of weeks ago with a little time to kill and I just stopped next to the grapefruit. It took me a few moments to realize that the sweet, tangy smell reminded me of my grandpa. I smiled and put a couple in a bag and started rolling again.
A few minutes later I was reaching out for the cottage cheese and it struck me that the only reason I still eat this stuff is that my Mom and I used to eat it together on weekend mornings with fruit and toast. I don’t even love the stuff, but I always seem to have some in the fridge.
This got me thinking. How much food do I buy based on nostalgia alone?
- Apple sauce and cinnamon bagles were my mother’s answer to my rampant sweet cravings – I still think they kick butt.
- Bananas have been my personal crack ever since I started sports in elementary school – my mom encouraged it since I always seemed to need potassium.
- Microwaveable Brownies, Coca-Cola, Edwards pecan pie slices, and Frosted Mini-Wheats were how my step-dad and I bonded in the beginning. We both eat much healthier now, but those were good times, lol.
- Oreos remind me of the first times I showed both my little sisters how to eat them “properly”.
- Cinnamon and sugar graham crackers and canned mandarin oranges were the snacks of choice for me and grandma.
- Raisin Bran was the only cereal me and grandpa could agree on.
- Blueberries and blackberries are just full of memories – I must have picked gallons and gallons over the years with my mom, sisters, uncles, aunts, and grandparents.
- Peaches remind me of the trip my mom took us on to pick our own, the treks we made in Argentina to get the freshest, tastiest ones possible, and the trip with my in-laws where we stopped on the way home for the best peaches in Texas.
- Double-decker sandwiches make me smile since they were my mom’s way of making pre-teen me feel older even though everybody still treated me like a child.
- Soda and shot glasses bring back memories of kid-friendly drinking games with me and my uncles.
- Big Red gum and Twizzlers were the favorite treats of one of my favorite uncles and I still feel like a sneaky little kid when I grab them from the checkout counters at the last possible moment…
When I really think about it, very few foods have made it into my cart without some association with a loved one…even the main dishes are chosen based on what hubby and I love to eat together. I would never had thought that my subconscious had so much control!
How many of your food purchases are dictated by nostalgia? You may be surprised…
August 8, 2010, at 6:00 am
BFS is a member of the Yakezie Alexa Ranking Challenge! My ranking last week was 80,340. Now it is 76,196! We’re soooooooo close once again!
The original goal was to be in the top 200,000 by July 4, 2010 and you helped me blow that out of the water in 2 months…a whole month early! Then we were shooting for 100,000 by July 4th and we hit that goal too!!!
Now I’ve started a new goal of 75,000 by the end of August. Thanks to another great week, that is just a day or two away!!! As a true Texan may say, YEE-HAW!!!
I would like to sincerely thank all of my readers and the members of the Yakezie Challenge. Obviously, this would have been impossible without all of you. Thank you all so much!
In case you didn’t know, Alexa traffic rankings are determined by the numbers of hits a site gets by people with the Alexa toolbar. If you want to be part of this ranking community, you can download the Alexa toolbar here.
If you are a Yakezie member and don’t see yourself on my member list, please send me an email or leave a comment here to be added. I copied the list originally in early March and updated it in mid-June. Please let me know if you are still missing. Thanks!
August 7, 2010, at 6:00 am
Mr. BFS is graduating from grad school today!!!
Congratulations Sweety!!!
My Favorite Posts this Week
Blog Carnivals that Featured BFS
Thanks for putting your time into these carnivals! I truly appreciate being included!
Carnival hosts, please email me if BFS is in a carnival you are hosting so I can be sure to add it to the list. Thanks!
BFS Guest Posts on Other Blogs
Thanks so much for having me over for the day!
Fellow bloggers, if you would like a guest post from BFS, please shoot me an email. I usually have a couple of weeks of posts ready in advance so I could probably help out.
Other Info
- Enemy of Debt is hosting a Debt Free Game Giveaway! Check it out!
- I started reading a few new blogs this week so I’ve updated my Favorite Blogs List (in the left sidebar) to reflect my new regular reading list.
- I am a staff writer at Sweating the Big Stuff. You can see my posts every Wednesday – this week’s was 7 Reasons Why I Am Using Your $23.
Feel free to email me if you have any suggestions. I’d love to add a few more blogs to my regular reading list or at least give a shout-out for great posts or contests.
As always, thanks to all the bloggers that teach me something new every day. Thanks to all my commenters for making this blog the community I want it to be. Thanks to all my lurkers too. I hope everybody is enjoying this as much as I am!
August 6, 2010, at 10:05 pm
August 6, 2010, at 6:00 am
My friends, Desiree and Mitch, just talked me into going to a drive-in movie theater for the first time. It was great!
In case you haven’t been to a drive-in movie, it’s a different experience than in a regular theater. At our drive-in, you pay $5 and pick a screen – front or back. Each screen plays a different combo of movies.
We payed $5 per person to see “Despicable Me” and “The Sorceror’s Apprentice” on the front screen. Then we found a great spot to park and decided to either watch from the car or from outside. Our windows were foggy with the A/C on, so we set up lawn chairs in front of the car and put a little radio on the hood.
To listen to the movies, we simply tuned to the station they used for the front screen. Since everybody parked is tuned in to the same station, it does come off a little like surround sound. One of the biggest benefits was that you can’t really hear anybody else unless they decide to get really rowdy. You can also talk to your friends without disturbing anyone, so Desiree and I kept muttering little inside jokes about some unbelievable reactions of some of the actors. Honestly, if a vase you had at home starting wiggling around and shot out black ash, would you just stand there and wait to see what happens? I think not… 
For snacks, there was a concession stand. The prices were much cheaper than a regular theater and about the same as a bowling alley or burger joint. I ordered a cheeseburger with fries for $7.50 and it was really good. I also came back during intermission (the 15 minutes between the first and second movie) and grabbed a small Dipping Dots icecream pouch for $3.00 and an Icee for $2.50 since I was a little warm (it’s still in the 80′s at night around here).
When I go back, I’ll probably only buy a $2.00 large soda or something, but I wanted the full experience my first time. My whole evening cost less than $20 for two movies and a full meal with dessert.
I was impressed with the screen quality and the whole experience. I’ll definitely be going back in cooler weather with less bugs, but this was fun too. A little bug spray and an Icee can go a long way!
Have you ever been to a drive-in movie? If so, how did it go?
*Note, Mr. BFS and I saw “Despicable Me” in 3D a few days after I saw it at the drive-in and it was just as funny and pretty cool in 3D…the roller coaster scene kicked butt. It’s a very cute and funny movie, so I think this will become one of the 3 DVDs I seem to buy every year…
August 5, 2010, at 6:00 am
Don’t mind me, I’m just starting a series on my crappy car. For those of you who may not have been around during my last mental breakdown with this crummy car, let’s just say that the Chevrolet Aveo SUCKS and I would only recommend it to people that annoy me.
The newest part of this saga is small potatoes compared to a broken 02 sensor, cracked belts, and a plastic thermostat housing, but it cost just as much. It eats tires.
It ate its first set in 2008 and gobbled up this set in less than 2 years and 15,000 miles…
As I pulled into my driveway, I heard a pop and started leaning to the side. Yep, my tire blew out. My husband was kind enough to put the spare donut on for me while I went inside to scream just a little bit. Then I called Discount Tire, was assured that they’d be able to help me out if I could get there by closing time, and I headed out.
I barely made it by 6pm, but they welcomed me and even made me a pretty good deal. The cheap Barums I had bought the first time would be $322 total with the Discount Tire Road Hazard Certificates that I have to have OR they’d hook me up with the normally-priced $450 Yokohama tires for $350. Those are under warranty for 80,000 miles and drive way better. SOLD.
I am now the proud owner of tires that should last me until I get so fed up with the Aveo that I either sell it or go Office-Space on its butt.
Yep, I just love $350 expenses when I’m trying to build back up our cash reserves, but what was a girl to do? I have to have tires and my husband was already mad that I let them get as bad as they were…the metal bands were showing. Yeah, yeah, I know…I suck.
Does anybody else need to vent about an unexpected expense? Any good tips on tire buying in the future?
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DISCLAIMER I am not a professional or a financial advisor. BFS posts are informational opinions only. Please make your own financial decisions based on personal research or see a financial advisor.
Also, there are paid links on this site. There is no obligation on your part to purchase any products advertised on this website.
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