Moneypoll

Gas prices are hitting everyone hard, but as Christine MacLaughlin writes in a blog post for the Houston Chronicle, they can hit single parents even harder.

She puts it so simply and well: "All over the nation, as the gas prices creep up, we're all taking a pay cut." She's right. Salary raises are not keeping pace with the rise in prices at the gas pump and the grocery store. Gas prices jumped 10.5 percent last month, The New York Times reports, compared with an increase of 4.7 percent in April. And food prices rose 0.3 percent last month, which doesn't seem like a lot but they are up bigtime over last year.
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The White House says we're not in a recession. Tell that to the average American who is spending significantly more on gas and groceries this year than last, or the parent who has been laid off from her job just as the kids are closing in on college. More than half of all Americans say they are spending less on groceries to pay for gas, and are spending less on discretionary items, too, like eating out and going to the movies.

So why can White House spokespeople say we're not in a recession while well-known economists argue over whether we are or are not? The definition of a recession is not clear cut, in part because no two recessions have the same economic data footprint. As this Time magazine article notes, a recession means different things to different segments of the economy. A drop in sales to retailers (but how much of a drop?) To labor groups, an increase in unemployment (but how much of an increase?)
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Jennifer Romolini is all over the news that lipstick is back in vogue with a recession threatening. Well, I've got some less fashion-forward yet interesting economic news: Coupons are making a comeback it seems, too.

And while it's tough to know how many people are grabbing scissors and clipping paper coupons, online coupon sites are seeing a rise in activity. As BusinessWeek Online reports, the number of page views and time spent on web sites that offer money-off coupons for all kinds of stores and products is up in recent months. Pages views were up 38 percent to 281 million in March from a year earlier, according to comScore, the Internet marketing research firm that measures such things.

But before you sharpen your scissors and start clipping and clicking away to find coupons, we have to ask the obvious question: Do coupons really save enough money to make it worth the effort and time spent finding, clipping and using them?
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