Savvy Saving Bytes

Little did I know when I was a member of the stage crew in high school, that path could have led me to Carnegie Hall where I could be making a cool $400,000 Plus as a stagehand. To be more precise, in 2011 the five full time Carnegie Hall stagehands earned an AVERAGE of $420.000 in overtime pay and benefits. The ONLY employee who made more was the executive/artistic director, Clive Gillinson, who last year took home $1,113,571.

To earn this big bacon, the stagehands moved equipment in and out of the building and prepared stages for performances. One detail I seem to remember from the many appalled reader comments on this story was the fee they charged for moving a cello onto the stage –  a mere $700 bucks. But their whopping income wasn’t enough for these stagehands. Forcing the cancellation of the season’s opening concert  on Wednesday night, its premier fund-raising event, their union, Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, went on strike,

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Welcome to the world of currency collectors who are happy to pay serious bread for unusual serial numbers printed on dollar bills.

Most people don’t notice these eight numbers on their money. I certainly never did until the Fiscal Times informed me “Fancy serial numbers can go for tens of thousands of dollars depending on the rarity of the combination,” at which point I grabbed my wallet and swiftly scanned my scruffy small bucks collection.

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This post contains an article written by a woman living in poverty explaining why she makes what  seems like terrible decisions and an adverse response from another woman also suffering financial hardship.

• Members of the working poor, both women attend college with full-course loads  in addition to their jobs
• Both are exhausted ALL the time.
• Unable to afford dental care, both know what it is to have crumbling teeth.
• Unable to afford medical care (even low cost clinics COST), both have experienced prolonged pain.
• Both women live paycheck to paycheck with zero funds for emergencies.

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Our proud library lions on 42nd and Fifth get the city’s royal Christmas treatment too with their own colossal wreaths and red bows.

When I first moved to the city I hit the public libraries around town mostly for books. In those days I often read a book a day.

 These days I sometimes watch a movie a day, thanks to the library’s liberal borrowing policy of allowing card holders to borrow as many dvd’s as they can carry. You can also reserve highly popular movies and the library will give you a call when they’re ready to be picked up.

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After paying for purchases with a credit card, I’ve always wondered precisely why stores asked me to hand over my zip code. Not that I gave it to them of course. I knew their request had to be for their own benefit – not mine. So I always gave them a fake number, one that couldn’t target me with ads and promotions further down the line. Though I still didn’t know how they could manage to finagle my 5 digit numbers into a more complete dossier.

Thanks to an article in Forbes, I now know. Direct Marketing Service Companies are able to take that zip code, combine it with your name on your credit card receipt, and  spin it through their vast consumer data bases to come up with your address, phone number, email address and spending history.

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To be more precise, people in 19 European countries, along with Australia, eat healthier foods than Americans. For anyone who has traveled in Europe, this is not a surprise. Grown for taste – not hardiness or long distance travel –  luscious fresh fruit and vegetables are enjoyed everywhere and just about every western European meal is plain old yummy.

Making it official, however, A new fact-driven report comparing America’s food system to 125 other countries, has just  been published by non-profit, advocacy group, Oxfam, based in Oxford, England. Analyzing data from World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. and the International Labor Organization, Oxfam measured  families access to fresh produce and nutritional proteins, the affordability of these nutrients compared to less healthful options and and how their diets impacted the country’s overall health. Using these measurements, Oxfam was able to rank the best and worst places to eat around the world.

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Recently launched in the UK and already used throughout Europe, new weight loss pills that inflate into stomach balloons are now in the investigational stage in the US.

Here’s how they work. A patient swallows a large pill attached to a long catheter. Inside the pill is a balloon that’s inflated once the pill arrives in the stomach. Taking up space about the size of an apple, the balloon causes the patient to feel fuller when eating. In theory the patient will then eat less. Up to three balloons can bob around in a stomach at one time. After three months of hopefully consuming less food and losing weight, the patient has the balloons removed in what is called an “endoscopy procedure.” A thin tube is threaded down the anesthetized patient’s throat to the stomach. This time around the balloons are deflated and pulled back up and out.

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What’s known for sure is that vegetarians DO have lower blood pressure than meat eaters. Numerous studies have conclusively shown this, including most recently a report in Journal of the American Medical Association: Internal Medicineby Dr. Neal Barnard of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM). He and his colleagues based their conclusions on at least 7 controlled trials and 32 observational studies.

As early as 2006, inspired by research that showed “individuals who consume a vegetarian diet have markedly lower blood pressures than do non-vegetarians,” the National Institute of Health recommended that we eat diets rich in fruits, vegetables, nuts and beans.

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Semper Augustus Tulip

Contrary to popular thought, tulips didn’t originate in the Netherlands. They arrived as gifts from the Sultan of Turkey just as the Netherlands, enriched by its hugely profitable East Indies trade, was embarking on its Golden Age. Eager to show off their wealth, merchants built estates with luxurious  gardens that showcased this dazzling new flower – the tulip. And not just any old plain Jane yellow or white tulips. No. THE tulips to grandly display were the exotic, flamboyant, two colored variety. White with dazzling flames of richest reds, pinks and purples, they were prized for both their beauty and rarity.

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Researching another topic, I was surprised to come across the super generous benefits Google pays to an employee’s family when that worker dies. Every year for the next 10 years the employee’s spouse or partner will receive half of that worker’s salary. The average yearly income at Google is $141,000. This means the deceased employee’s spouse/partner will be given an average of $700,000.

In addition, each child of that employee will be paid $1000 a month until their nineteenth birthday – or their twenty third birthday if they’re still in school. So any child going to college could receive roughly $275,000. The spouse of an average Google employee with two young children could easily be given a million dollars from the company.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised at Google’s generosity. This is after all a company that leaves others in the dust when it comes to employee maternity and paternity leave. New mothers can take 18 weeks of paid leave after giving birth.  And fathers can enjoy their new baby with six weeks of paid leave.

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