It is indeed. But youâll be prepared for some other opportunity. 
As will I. 
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And we will both prevent having our tuchus chewed off by you know who.
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Just restocked on boxes and bags. OMG. The boxes Iâve been buying for years are thinner. The bags are also thinner. Not what they used to be just months ago. They are keeping prices down by lowering the quality.
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Shrinkflation.
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Do you remember the candy called Dots? ⌠well now they are really just dots âŚ
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3%
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And a story today on Payment Dive about PayPal and seeing smaller transactions. And Visa says everything is OK. Itâs a mixed bag for sure.
" Consumers are spending less with each transaction amid economic volatility, executives of the digital payments company said during an earnings webcast with analysts Tuesday.
And this â âPayment transactions per active account, on a trailing 12-month basis, fell 6% to 57.6, though active accounts overall rose 1% to 438 million.â
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Itâs difficult for me to trust big companies claiming that everything is fine, given the targeted retaliation that has been occurring to those telling the truths and exposing foreseeable pain points.
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I rarely use PayPal to pay and that has nothing to do with the economy. My 50+ year old children are also rarely using PayPal.
Venmo is IMO a cannibal taking revenue from PayPal transactions. Google Pay has made big inroads in being an easy payment method for many apps. The path of least resistance when I order from Jersey Mikeâs, for example is Google Pay.
Usually, when I use PayPal it is for small purchases that I pay for using money in my bank account with Ebay profits. Because they are small purchases, I am willing to give up the security that credit card transactions offer.
PayPal provides a valuable data point, but PayPal is so passe and IMO another cash cow.
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Yes. Because PayPal is comparing to themselves in this instance, not any other processor or company.
Iâm still âonlyâ in my late 40s, and I frigginâ love the âpay with PayPalâ option at online checkouts. I donât want to reenter all my details; reentering is for chumps lol.
Although if we want to use single-case, anecdotal information as any kind of global economic indicator, my own personal PayPal usage has declined simply because it was how I would check out for my curbside pick up yarn orders at JoAnn, RIP.
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I had never realized the number of people who were diehard JoAnn fans and the number of people who look down on JoAnn shoppers.
One of those divides in the population which became more visible for those of us who do not shop for fabric and crafts supplies in traditional channels.
My last fabric purchase was early 20th century crazy quilt squares, never assembled into a quilt, at a flea market, for cash.
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Some companies have pointed to rising operational costs spanning from President Donald Trumpâs barrage of new tariffs and shifts in consumer spending. Others cite corporate restructuring more broadly â or, as seen with big names like Amazon, are redirecting money to artificial intelligence.
Federal employees have encountered additional doses of uncertainty, impacting worker sentiment around the job market overall.
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I was just talking to a former JoAnn employee, she wasnât working there when they closed but had opinions on their demise. Other than mismanagement of post pandemic buying, corporate did nothing about store thefts.
Their policy was to do NOTHING about theft, donât confront the thieves in action, not going out the door, not in the parking lot, not to the police. The only thing employees could do is hang around the person, engaging in idle conversation, hoping theyâd get a hint. She said sheâd come to work to find all the knitting needles gone.
I hope the Michaels store staff are on alert, because the thieves are just going to move their successful game to another location.
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And in spite of that, the FED cut interest rates today.
My younger daughter told me of her sadness, Her boss who she was quite fond of was just recruited out of her job at the company by another company who made her an offer she could not refuse.
She left in spite of the fact that if she stayed to the end of the year, she would have received a larger profit sharing bonus on the existing job than she receive in any previous year.
An anecdote.
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Of course she did.
When I was a corporate consultant, the bulk of the novel information I presented top management was the information I gathered from the workers in the company. Sometimes, they had never heard it before and sometimes they were well aware of it and wanted an outside opinion on whether to believe their own people.
This theft issue is different, since it borders on the political.
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Layoffs are the most effective cure for inflation.
Hence, in spite of was my comment.
Were inflation currently the more important issue, the rate cut would not have happened. The FED made a judgement and it was inflation was less important. I agree that it isnât important at this time.
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On a different, but somewhat related note, my son with the State Department is currently serving in a âhardship postâ while his wife and twin daughters are living stateside, has not been paid for a month.
Since his spending habits are drastically different than mine (and the housing for both he and his wife and kids is paid for by the government) he can probably survive a 12 or 18 month long shutdown.
The rest of us, not so muchâŚ
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I always reenter my info. I want to avoid saving anything anywhere if I can avoid it.
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Ditto
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