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Welcome to our bi-weekly newsletter. As a Consumer United member, you are eligible for a discounted 15- or 30-year regular fixed-rate mortgage. Rates are at an all-time low with a 30-year fixed-rate mortage as low as 4.75%. Click here to start saving now. . |
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Consumers Wary As Oil Prices Drop  Although the price of oil has fallen over $100 per barrel since reaching record levels this past July and gas costs only about $1.60 per gallon, consumers aren't spending their extra cash. Fears of an increasingly unstable economic climate seem to be causing consumers to save more aggressively. Increasing unemployment rates and intensive media coverage of layoffs and foreclosures present a grim financial picture. "The average customer out there is saying, 'If I don't have to do it--if I absolutely don't have to do it--I ain't buying it,'" Ken Goldstein, an economist at The Conference Board, a New York nonprofit business group adds. Read more here.
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Food Prices Go Up While Gas Goes Down  As gasoline crossed the $4 mark this summer, grocery stores were some of the first places consumers saw prices rise. Although the price of fuel has declined considerably since then, the prices of many food items have remained relatively constant. "Prices always go up faster than they come down," John Rand, a grocery team leader at researcher and consultancy Management Ventures Inc. in Cambridge, remarks. "They raise prices in anticipation of costs. They very rarely lower them in anticipation of savings." Click here for more information. |
