Aaron Ewer

The past week I have been watching the cost of gas creep lower and lower. Thank God we have a little relief from the cost of transportation!

I hate to say it out loud and put a hex on the situation, but we have seen the price of gas drop from over $4.09 per gallon last month down in the “Land of Excess” where I work, to $3.19 per gallon at the little BP station down the road from my house. There is a price difference of over 12 cents per gallon between the stations at the highway exit by my house to the cheaper stations about 2 miles from the highway in the neighborhood shopping areas. It pays to check with Gas Buddy online before heading out for a fill up.

I would love to see the price get down below $3.00 again. That would make a huge difference in my household budget. Too late to resurrect the vacation plans we had to cancel, but at least we can get back and forth to work with a little less pain to the wallet again.

The “Legally Speaking” show has a variety of legal specialties represented on the show, so callers have a good chance of reaching someone who can answer just about any kind of question. One of the lawyers on the radio show specializes in personal injury cases and he handled a call the other night while I was listening that brought up some issues that I hadn’t considered but he must hear it all the time. What happens after a car wreck and you can’t work and have to pay your bills?

Obviously the common advice is to have set aside savings to carry you through emergencies like this. But I know a lot of people, if not most people, just don’t have the money to put enough away to handle a serious emergency. If the accident is not your fault, then most people are going to want to get a lawyer and sue the other people and their insurance company. But that can take over a year to get to court. So what do you do in the meantime?

What the lawyer suggested was getting in touch with a company that provides funding based on their opinion of whether you have a good enough case to win in court. It;s not that hard to look at the other court cases out there and see what kind of settlements they have awarded and compare the facts of your case to the ones that have already been successful. So if this lawsuit finance company thinks you have a good case, they advance you the money you need to pay your house payment or rent, keep the lights one, etc.

The worst summer in my life was the one I fought cancer. I was diagnosed in June and was told that I needed immediate intensive treatments to have even a chance of surviving the rest of the year. It seemed like everything stopped, frozen while I endured an awful regime of daily trips to the hospital for radiation treatments. The entire summer evaporated into days and nights of huge humming medical machinery and lots of puking, sweating and fainting. I lost over 40 pounds and almost died from that, but I beat the cancer. I owe my life to a group of most excellent doctors, medical technicians and nurses, and also to my parents for stepping up and helping me with my daily life and obligations over those horrible, debilitating months.

If you have an opportunity to help someone facing a serious or terminal illness, even the smallest gesture of care and concern will mean a lot to them. Don’t be afraid to step up and offer an ear, a shoulder, a back or a ride - anything you can do to help them get through the day will mean so much.

Now that gas has hit $3.89 per gallon, a lot of the guys in the warehouse are having a tough time covering that extra expense and making ends meet. I feel for them, as it just cost me $92.00 to fill up the Tahoe yesterday, and that won’t get me back and forth to work all week.

A lot of people have trouble keeping money in their pocket for the whole pay period, as we get paid every other Friday and sometimes there is a lot of week left with no money. One of the things the guys are doing is getting Payday Loan so they can have money in their pocket until payday when they pay the loan back.

I heard the guys talking about it in the breakroom when I went over this morning for a planning meeting with the warehouse manager. Alden was explaining how he went online and found a website to apply for a Cash Advance and that he had the approval really fast. They didn’t run a credit check and they processed his application immediately. At least now he won’t be paying the bank extra fees for bounced checks. And if the customer orders pick up a little I hope to get them a little extra money in their paychecks, too.

In my search for new electronic gadgets, I came across a great site full of bargains for the new gadget hunters like me. The site is called Dealtime and it is for tech-savvy shoppers who want to save money but get the good stuff, like Dell computers. The search function lets you hunt by brand, by price range, and by category.

When I searched the site for a new laptop it came up with over 11,000 items. The brands listed include Dell, Sony, HP, Toshiba, and others that you will recognize but why should I list them all here when you can go to the site and see for yourself?

Dealtime has categories that include DVDs, video games, appliances, jewelry and lots more. All of the popular gaming systems are featured, with hundreds of games at discount prices. There are product reviews if you need more information and I really liked the like about new releases called “Product News.” If you can’t find a bargain here, then you aren’t looking!