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puma guy wrote:Wow! I just wanted to give a heads up reminder to anybody that might want to buy some stamps. Can't mail wedding invitations with a bullet and emailing them is just .....well not done.

May not be much to many here, but being on a fixed income I try to save every penny I can. I can pay for three diabetic medicine prescriptions with the savings on the 300 stamps I purchased today.

Maybe I am doing the math wrong. Are you saying the three medications only total nine bucks? That doesn't sound too bad? I must have some real crappy insurance. I have to pay a ten dollar copayment for each medication. That is the generics. It jumps to sixty if I want the fancy gourmet meds.

03Lightningrocks wrote:

puma guy wrote:Wow! I just wanted to give a heads up reminder to anybody that might want to buy some stamps. Can't mail wedding invitations with a bullet and emailing them is just .....well not done.

May not be much to many here, but being on a fixed income I try to save every penny I can. I can pay for three diabetic medicine prescriptions with the savings on the 300 stamps I purchased today.

Maybe I am doing the math wrong. Are you saying the three medications only total nine bucks? That doesn't sound too bad? I must have some real crappy insurance. I have to pay a ten dollar copayment for each medication. That is the generics. It jumps to sixty if I want the fancy gourmet meds.

You're math is correct. My generic diabetes med is $3 co-pay. The wonderful world of Medicare.... but there are many that aren't covered and are costly and then there's the doughnut hole. Obama care is eliminating many more medications from coverage as well. Believe me it ain't that great. My BP med is a non generic, very expensive and thankfully s it's covered so far. Of course I have to pay a deductible before Part D starts to pay anything. My brother's generic BP med has been eliminated from coverage.

Thank you for the reminder. It's worth stocking up for people who will be mailing wedding invitations, graduation announcements, birth announcements, and associated thank you cards.

On the other hand, I also understand 03Lightningrock's point. For people who use less than 100 stamps each year, the $3 saving is probably less than gasoline for a round trip to the post office. Never mind people like me who use about 25 stamps each year, and half of those are for Christmas cards where I want the pretty stamps.

rotor wrote:Bought a 1000. About 3% discount and that beats what my money market pays. I also get cash back with my cc. They won't go to waste. Technically the po is closed right now. I wonder if Sam's club is selling them at $46 or $49 today?

Wow, that is a lot of stamps. I'll bet I haven't used more than 20 stamps in the last 3 years. A thousand stamps would be a 125 year stamp supply for me.

If it works for you, then I am glad you captured the savings.

Jumping Frog wrote:

rotor wrote:Bought a 1000. About 3% discount and that beats what my money market pays. I also get cash back with my cc. They won't go to waste. Technically the po is closed right now. I wonder if Sam's club is selling them at $46 or $49 today?

Wow, that is a lot of stamps. I'll bet I haven't used more than 20 stamps in the last 3 years. A thousand stamps would be a 125 year stamp supply for me.

If it works for you, then I am glad you captured the savings.

Electronic banking has almost completely eliminated my need to mail anything.

jmra wrote:

Jumping Frog wrote:

rotor wrote:Bought a 1000. About 3% discount and that beats what my money market pays. I also get cash back with my cc. They won't go to waste. Technically the po is closed right now. I wonder if Sam's club is selling them at $46 or $49 today?

Wow, that is a lot of stamps. I'll bet I haven't used more than 20 stamps in the last 3 years. A thousand stamps would be a 125 year stamp supply for me.

If it works for you, then I am glad you captured the savings.

Electronic banking has almost completely eliminated my need to mail anything.

Same here. I bet only a couple places still mail me a bill. I get an email notice the bill is due and I go to my online account and click a couple buttons. I bet I used at most five stamps on a personal level last year and those were all to send stuff to the NRA.

Our business mailings are where I get hit. We send out a couple hundred thousand mailers a year.

03Lightningrocks wrote: Our business mailings are where I get hit. We send out a couple hundred thousand mailers a year.

I understand that is still postage expense, but even with those mailings no-one is applying physical stamps.

I am getting further off topic, but does anyone collect stamps any more?
For awhile I did when I was a kid.
Maybe I am just getting grumpy, but it seems there where a lot cooler stamps back then.
A few years ago I bought a sheet of superhero stamps. I still have them.

Jumping Frog wrote:

03Lightningrocks wrote: Our business mailings are where I get hit. We send out a couple hundred thousand mailers a year.

I understand that is still postage expense, but even with those mailings no-one is applying physical stamps.

You are correct. Because of this, there is no way for us to avoid the increase in postage. They weigh it in and base it on the price the day we drop it at the post office.

An example of the increases. When we first started doing large mailings in 1997, we were paying an average of 10.5 cents per piece, utilizing carrier route sort. As of tomorrow, our average cost per piece will be 15.5-16 cents per piece, depending on saturation levels. I said a couple hundred thousand earlier but to be precise, we mailed out 260,000 pieces last year. We have sent as many as 400,000 pieces in one year. It may not sound like a lot per piece but it adds up quick.

My business mails just enough letters every month that it paid to buy the stamps now. We don't do enough to warrant printing our own postage or mass mailings. I pay all bills electronically if possible and at home probably don't use 50 stamps a year. I still need to use snail mail at the office but the service has gotten to be so poor and the letter carriers are all so depressed I feel sorry for them. They have a tough job.

WildBill wrote:I am getting further off topic, but does anyone collect stamps any more?
For awhile I did when I was a kid.
Maybe I am just getting grumpy, but it seems there where a lot cooler stamps back then.
A few years ago I bought a sheet of superhero stamps. I still have them.

That is so true. Funny, I bought a sheet of those super hero stamps for my SIL. He is in his mid thirties but still loves him some super heroes.

There have been a few others I have purchase for family or friends. I bought a sheet of Elvis stamps for my daughter a few years back. She is a nut cake of an Elvis fan. I have also bought her a sheet of Disney stamps. I think they had sleeping beauty on them but can't remember for sure.

There may be others, but I can't remember them. It seems like they come up with stuff a couple times a year but it is not always stuff anyone I know would collect or want.

rotor wrote:My business mails just enough letters every month that it paid to buy the stamps now. We don't do enough to warrant printing our own postage or mass mailings. I pay all bills electronically if possible and at home probably don't use 50 stamps a year. I still need to use snail mail at the office but the service has gotten to be so poor and the letter carriers are all so depressed I feel sorry for them. They have a tough job.

Yeah, I was told this morning that our bean counter went down and purchased a few hundred stamps last week. He pays most of the bills electronically but we have other things we can only send out by standard mail. Such as the occasional billing to customers. I would love to get all my customers on our email system but people are getting less likely to give their emails out. Everyone is afraid of getting spammed!