Doug said in his piece that bankers are seeing an alarming trend “with a small number of borrowers” who can pay the bills, but see no reason to, given the attention that is going to economic bailouts.

He related this fictional, but representative, chatter from the “customer”:

“Why should people who are in distress be the only ones to benefit? Those of us who just want to maintain a certain lifestyle should receive consideration as well. What if I just pay you what I want for now? I might start making full payments later.”

Well, here’s a reality check for those who think the financially distressed are getting too good of a deal: Not every family in distress is benefiting from all those bailout deals in the first place. There are rules and restrictions in effect for those programs.

Almost every money-saving program, discount service and economic bailout that I have posted during the past three years has a qualification of some sort: be it an application deadline, age or residency requirement, a membership, paperwork requirement, first-come/first-served, date range or amount cap on benefits, show up on appointed date and time, etc.

So if you can afford to live comfortably without the time and effort that families on a budget have to invest in the pursuit of stretching their funds, well, then, enjoy your life.

But then, I don’t think people like that read blogs like mine in the first place.

(Update: I think I confused readers with how I introduced the quote, so I fixed it. That was how Doug wrote the conversation from the fictional customer.)

So feel free to consider this tip as coming from a biased source.

But it’s also fact.

If you get only the Sunday edition of your local or regional newspaper, and newspaper circulation numbers across the country prove that many people do that, then you are missing the sales fliers that the advertisers deliberately schedule for other days.

Did you see the Toys R Us ad that was in the Friday newspaper? I didn’t blog about it because I didn’t have time – we had a family gathering last night. But the sale was only good last night and until 1 p.m. today.

Some of the Monroe, Mich., drugstore and grocery fliers also are distributed in my newspaper on Saturdays and Mondays – rather than in the big stack on Sundays.

The advertisers request their ads run on specific days for a variety of reasons. The newspapers accommodate the schedules as best as possible for their market. (Some newspapers have recently dropped publication days or delivery days, some newspapers don’t have their own Sunday editions, and my newspaper has long observed four holidays during the year when there is no print edition).

Now we are coming up on the Christmas shopping season and you’ll want to be able to reference those sales fliers as you make your holiday purchases decisions.

What can you do about that?

Get a home delivery subscription to a 7-day (or whatever is a full week for your local newspaper) as soon as possible. And then every day, you want to take a quick glance at the newspaper headlines and sales flier packets, even if you have to wait until later to read the content in detail.

Like I said, take this tip with a grain of salt if you want. A large part of any newspaper employee’s paycheck is based on paid subscription / newsstand circulation numbers — and the print advertising purchases that are based on those statistics. I don’t get extra money for page views on this blog.

Yes, you can look up the store sites on the web, and I do from time to time. But it takes a horrendous amount of time to look up every store you might shop at.

Yes, you can sign up for e-mail alerts, and I do have a few coming to my mailbox. But honestly, I’m looking for e-mails from my friends and family when I have the email on. (Delete, delete, delete. …)

And while I do post sales and deals on this blog, that is not my primary purpose for existing. In fact, I held off doing that for several months because I wanted my readers to be thinking about other ways to stretch their money. I was also annoyed at seeing how many web site forum members and bloggers post retail sales without saying which city or region that promotion is good for, or who “leak” unverified information.

But it’s a pretty quick task to pull apart a local newspaper’s ad sections and see what the sales of the day are in your community.

And when you have that newspaper arriving to your home on a daily basis, maybe you’ll notice the money-saving tips and public service announcements that reporters and columnists have been listing all along in the news, feature and community / neighbor sections.

Where do you think I get the local PSAs from that I post on this blog?

I really am a decent cook and nobody would starve at my house. I am very good friends with my slow cooker, table top griddle, breadmaker, cookie sheets, cake pans and electric skillet.

But there are many people who are far more clever cooks than I am.

Sometimes dinner at my house is Hamburger Helper with a hot veggie. Sometimes it’s hot dogs or cheeseburgers and fries with salad. Sometimes its spaghetti with ground sausage or ground beef as the meat and extra spices added to the commercial sauce. Sometimes it’s a can of soup with grilled cheese or peanut butter sandwich. Sometimes it’s slow-cooker chili with homemade corn bread. Sometimes it’s a steak or a barbecue chicken breast with homebaked bread and potato or a rice mix. Sometimes it’s a pork roast with homemade applesauce. Sometimes it’s chicken tacos with made-from-scratch seasoning.

But I have obviously acquired a taste for home cooking, or at least, assemble-at-home cooking.

Last week I knew ahead of time that my husband and I would be on the go more frequently than usual for a few days. In an attempt to keep dinner fast on the rushed days, I bought a stack of 10 assorted frozen dinners. I picked entrees that I thought we’d like, but I wouldn’t normally prepare on my own.

Seven of those dinners have been eaten, three are still in the freezer.

To borrow a popular phrase of displeasure from Twitter: #fail.

My husband’s frozen dinner tonight had exactly four small chicken nuggets surrounding his French fries. Only FOUR small chicken nuggets? That’s a kid’s meal, not an adult meal.

One of the dinners I personally looked forward to was a chicken Mexican rice dish. That just sounded good with a pile of taco chips. But while I could taste the chicken when I ate that dinner, I couldn’t see any chicken – or at least, not as visibly as it was shown on the box.

Another chicken patty item I ate on another night was obviously created from mushed-up chicken scraps rather than a chicken piece. Ick!

Oh, sure, the pile of frozen dinners was a heck of a lot cheaper than a series of drive-thru dinners.

But I’m so glad I have better options available.

I was on a mission to buy a new pair of shoes. And instead, I was getting a credit card pitch.

The shoes I bought a couple of months ago fit just fine, but my feet cannot take the standing and walking in them that is part of my routine business day.

One of my sisters, who works at a fast-food restaurant, suggested I get a pair of black walking shoes. That’s what she wears to work. I thought that was a brilliant idea and am willing to give it a try. My sister said to expect to pay about $35, which is what I paid for my last pair of dress shoes. She also told me to go to (unnamed) store because that’s where she goes to find her work shoes and she’s pleased with the selections.

I went to (unnamed) store and found a pair of brand name black walking shoes on sale for $30.

By the way, no sales clerk offered to help me find the shoes. I could also only find one sit down bench in the department. At one point, I was trying on a different size, leaning over in the aisle because the bench was in such an inconvenient location. An employee walked past as I was leaning over, and said “excuse me,” but no, she didn’t help me with the merchandise.

Whatever. I’m used to shopping at self-serve stores.

So I took my shoes to the checkout.

And in the script that so many stores insist their cashiers use, the clerk greets me with “Will this be on your (unnamed store) card?”

Whatever. I said no, and proceeded to get my bank card out of the wallet.

My experience is, at this point, the clerks at most stores proceed to ring up the purchase or converse about something else while scanning the item. But, no. She asked “Do you want a store card? You can get a discount.”

“I don’t shop often enough at this store to make it worth my trouble.”

This was a true statement in regards to that store.

But I also am not interested in discussing my finances or frugal lifestyle in a checkout lane. I have only one department store card and it was a deliberate decision based on which store I shopped at most frequently.

The clerk continued to insist I could save whatever amount of money on those pair of shoes if I signed up for a store card. Did she think I couldn’t read? There were signs all over the checkout area with “sign up today!” promotional material.

I was very irritated with the sales pitch, and got a little snippy:

“I don’t shop often enough at this store to make it worth my trouble.”

Now, here is my experience waiting on customers: When customers come to my desk at the newspaper office to place an obituary or a fundraiser notice, I don’t give them sales pitches for the home-delivery subscriptions or classified ads.

I take care of what they came to my desk for.

If the customer brings up a sales question such as “How much will it cost for an ad?” I’ll refer them to the correct person or department.

I don’t even make pitches for my newspaper customers to read this blog unless the conversation goes in an appropriate direction.

So how do you get the word out to customers if you want sales pitches to be made?

It is perfectly appropriate to put sales information on your web site and at a sign at the entrance of the store. You can also set up a newspaper insert, outdoor billboards, e-mail signature lines, corporate sponsorship of an event, a TV or radio spot, direct mail or any combination of those tactics.

But when I’m buying shoes, and make it clear that I not interested in a credit card, do not try to sell me a credit card.

Do you think I’m motivated to shop again at that store any time soon?

It’s been years since I covered government issues, and my experience with that at The Monroe Evening News was limited to the communities of Bedford Township, Whiteford Township, Luna Pier and Erie Township.

Only one state lawmaker even knows who I am enough to say “Hi, Paula!” when we cross paths at community events. I’ve met Gov. Jennifer Granholm and a handful of other state officials, but they have no reason to remember me. Some of them probably thought I was a secretary when they stopped by the newsroom to ask for another reporter or editor.

So my opinion on the state budget mess has absolutely no leverage with anyone who can do anything about it.

I know that a lot of groups also are campaigning and appealing for this or that program, service or agency and all that chatter is becoming just a bunch of static as the lawmakers huddle for their negotiations.

But my wish list is: Save the Michigan Promise Grant for the college students.

My family doesn’t benefit from that money. The rules were rewritten with the class of 2007. My daughter, under the previous incarnation of the program, would have been given $1,000 toward her college expenses out-of-state as compared to the $2,500 that went to in-state schools. Under Michigan Promise Grant rules starting with the class of 2007, my daughter got NOTHING by attending college in Indiana. In fact the rules were changed only six months before her graduation date – at which point many students in her class had finished college tours and applications and were waiting for acceptance letters.

So I’m already ticked off about a broken promise to my daughter. She was one of the students who was told in middle school as this program got phased in that she would get money for college if she met all the requirements. And the class of 2006 did have a partial grant for out-of-state schooling.

But you’ve heard me rant about that situation before.

So why do I want to save the Michigan Promise Grant?

Answer: Where do you expect Michigan families to make up that money?

I’ve read some chatter that these were middle class students who would have gone to college anyway, and otherwise had the means to pay for their education.

But those who follow that line of thinking are not paying attention to that financial realities that today’s college families have to deal with.

Reality check: The recession eroded the financial investments that families would have used to pay for college out of their own funds. The recession also messed with the investment funds that the colleges and foundations use to come up with cash for their individual student awards.

Reality check: Today’s students are not in a situation where they can “work their way through college.” Specifically: Paid summer jobs / career internships that used to be a source of income have morphed to unpaid internships and in many cases have now become a “pay to play” situation. My daughter avoided paying an agency thousands of dollars to give her a guaranteed placement as a professional intern this past summer. However, it is a fact that this scenario exists and it is difficult to find a placement out of those networks. My daughter ended up with an unpaid internship found on her own efforts, and her grandparents paid her college tuition so she could earn three credit hours as is recommended in those cases. So she still had “pay to play.”

Reality check: The scholarships that are designated for academic, community service and financial need are flooded with applications. Back in the 1980s, when I went to college, someone with my daughter’s credentials should have been able to earn and bundle up enough partial scholarships to have college practically paid for. But we have followed up on every available scholarship lead on behalf of my daughter, and still have to sign for some student loans because the scholarships are so competitive now.

Where would I find the money to fund Michigan Promise Grant?

I would be in favor of any of these ideas:

• Sales tax on pop. (And we do drink pop).
• Bottle returns expanded to bottled water, tea and other beverages because the unclaimed deposits do go somewhere. (And I generally detest this bottle return law).
• Sales tax on live entertainment (This would most certainly include the NASCAR tickets my family buys every year).

Maybe there are other ideas that would work.

But here’s my caveat: Any increased tax or special tax that would be designated for Michigan Promise Grant has to be earmarked for that fund.

Otherwise, we’ll end up in the situation we’ve got now – with a bunch of newly franchised voters mad as hell at broken promises from their state government.

That is why, when I launched this blog, I decided to give it a very local focus. The title, Monroe on a Budget, spun off from “living in Monroe, Mich., on a budget.”

If an idea, tip, discount or resource will work for those of us who live in The Monroe Evening News local readership area in Monroe County, Mich., I write about it and provide key details such as deadlines, addresses, web sites and phone numbers.

If an idea, tip, discount or resource will NOT work for my local readers, I won’t post about it. I really have annoyed some publicity people and web site hosts by refusing to follow up on their story pitches on the basis that their information or service would not be of use to my local audience.

As the recession started settling in nationwide, I did notice a shift toward more relevant information in financial reporting and advertising campaigns. There has been a lot more effort during the past year to get practical, timely and useful tips and advice to those who are thrifty, frugal, unemployed, own homes that are worth less than the mortage due, or otherwise struggling financially.

But once in awhile, I’m sad to see,  … those attempts are off the mark.

USA Weekend’s SaveSmart column today has a piece on 3 Ways to Cope With High Card Balances. USA Weekend is distributed with the Detroit Free Press and many other papers across the county. Most of the information in the article is very timely, referring to recent credit card practices and laws.

But then I got to the last paragraph:

Boost your income
You’ll likely need to make more money to make more than the minimum payment. To do that, take on a part-time job, or hold a tag sale or sell gently used items online or via your newspaper’s classifieds. Working a few extra hours or selling your old clothes, household goods and jewelry can help you pay off your debts that much faster.

Reality check: To whom do you expect to sell your stuff to, and do those people even have money to spend?

Michigan’s unemployment rate was 15 percent for June, July and August 2009, and the Ohio unemployment rate isn’t that good either.

• I have one friend who has been unemployed for a year, and the only interviews she got lately were out of state.
• I have another friend whose husband lost his job late this spring. She had been working part-time anyway, but can’t pick up any more hours at her workplace.
• I have another friend who did find a job in her career field, but it was five months after she lost her previous job.

If there were part-time jobs or extra hours available for someone with credit issues to easily pick up in order to pay down debt … why is the unemployment rate so high in Michigan, and why do I personally know people who have been struggling to find work?

You may also remember that my husband works in the automotive industry and he was on layoff for several weeks this summer. At least he had a job to go back to, once production started again. But, as many of you also know, there is a big difference between paycheck income and unemployment income.

Now about the tag sale / yard sale idea. Yes I shop at garage sales. I’ve posted several pictures this spring and summer about my “finds.” But the stuff I’m finding and buying is CHEAP.

Examples:

• I spent $10 on a bread machine.
• $3 on a cake pan.
• $1 for a bag of silk flowers.
• $1 for a box of woodcraft supplies.
• $2.50 on a handcrafted doll dress.
• $1 for a Beanie Baby.

Maybe I’ve spent a total $50 on garage sale purchases this year. Would that amount have paid anyone’s credit card bill?

Selling items online is not guaranteed income, either. The last time I put anything on eBay was more than two years ago. I listed three kitchenware items through an eBay vendor. One item sold – just enough to pay for the listing fees. I also posted in August 2008 about collapsing online prices for collector Barbie dolls.

And National Public Radio had a piece this spring about pawn shops being overwhelmed with merchandise.

A garage sale, classified ad, pawn shop transaction or online sale will solve a clutter problem. The sale can also help you downsize to smaller living quarters if you are in that situation. But in this market, how will selling stuff second-hand solve someone’s cash flow problem?

In fact, one of my friends who was hosting a sale said it seemed like she was getting more interest from people who wanted free stuff – than were willing to pay for it.

What do I suggest instead?

My tips, including the Downsized Budget series, focus on how to cut your everyday household expenses. In this recession, you have little control over how much money you earn. You do, however, have some control over what you spend it on.

Most of the money-saving steps that really do work for middle class and working class families will take time, money or both before you see results. It can be an annoying process to work through. There’s no quick fix for a downsized income.

But frugal living tactics are a much more practical way of coping with this recession … than expecting someone else to have the cash flow to hire you for a part-time job or buy your second-stuff.

Answer: no.

I mean, really. That’s just multimedia for multimedia’s sake.

Even though most Michigan K-12 students do not start school until after Labor Day, there are students in other parts of the country who start classes as soon as next week. The reasons for those schedules include having the semester end before Christmas, or to finish the school year by Memorial Day.

Most of the participants were moms whose children were in grade school. There were some teachers. There were some parents like me who have college students. Others were bloggers, media people, public relations people and professionals who work with parents.

Part of the discussion talked about first day of school rituals. I understood what they were talking about, although I had nothing much to contribute.

I never joined the crowds of mothers who line up their children at the school entrance or the front door or at the bus stop on the first day of school to take pictures. But I know it happens. It is so popular in Monroe that a couple of years ago, we had a first-day-of-school story in The Monroe Evening News about that ritual.

Was I a “bad” mother for never having memorialized the first day of school? No. I still have plenty of scrapbook pages and photos about my daughter’s growing up years.

Some of the mothers started talking about how to make packed lunches interesting. But I had sent my daughter to school with lunch money from first through 12th grade.

Was I a “bad” mother for having bought the school lunch? No. Specifically to my blog topic, do I ruin my “frugal” credentials for buying the school lunch? No. I did pack my daughter’s lunches during preschool years. I learned from experience that I could not prepare the equivalent of a school lunch for the same cost or lower of a school lunch on a regular basis. Since my daughter did not eat much of anything for breakfast in those days, I wanted her to have a good lunch. Solution = the kid got lunch money.

Throughout the evening, there were great discussions about homework, school supply lists, favorite art projects …

About the time I needed to be logging off to go to bed, the moms started talking about how they welcome their children home from school.

Woah! This was way beyond my experience. I felt I was listening to super mommies. I had gone back to my full-time work as a newspaper reporter when my daughter was six weeks old. Because of my work schedule, I rarely would be home when she got home from school. For years, she went to after-school day care. There was even a time when she went to my husband’s workplace and did her homework in his office during his last hour at work.

My daughter did, for awhile, call me at work after school on a regular basis to talk about her day. I finally put a stop to that. I welcome calls at work from my family regarding emergency situations or to get messages about a change in plans. But any chatter that could wait for dinner really needs to wait for dinner, so I can finish my assignments and get home on time.

Now here is the point: I didn’t do everything “super mommy” when it came to my daughter’s school years. And yet, anyone who meets her is impressed with what a fabulous young woman she has grown up to be.

One can find a lot of comparisons between the super mommy expectations and the super frugalista expectations.

If you read other frugal and financial bloggers and traditional media writers, it will be very easy to get the impression that unless you come home from the grocery store with 80 percent discounts every day, grow your own garden and can or freeze hundreds of jars of vegetables, use homemade laundry soap and line dry all your clothes, and find every piece of attire for your family second hand … that you can’t possibly be a frugal family.

Well, I don’t meet up to all the super frugalista expectations either.

And yet, I’ve done enough budget-cutting, money-saving routines throughout my life that when The Monroe Evening News reporters were invited to start blogs … the best pitch I could come up with was “living on a budget”. Management liked the idea so much that the budget blog was up and running in two hours.

I do post as many money-saving ideas as I can find on Monroe on a Budget so that other families can pick up and try out whatever tricks might work for them.

But you don’t have to follow up on every tip, link and idea I put on this blog to be considered a “frugal person.”

Instead, I found some empty shelves.

• Plastic index card boxes – gone.
• Pencil tip erasers – gone.
• Composition books – still available, but I really didn’t have a use for them. So I decided not to get any.

That sale started today. I was at the store 4 hours after it opened for business.

This is not the first time I’ve seen empty shelves – and CVS is not the only store where I have seen it happen.

Lesson: You can’t count on freebies or really good sales. Reason: everyone else is jumping on the same deals. If you get them, great; but there’s no guarantee those items will be in stock when you get to the store.

When you see empty shelves, shake off the temptation to “well, I’m here, I may as well buy …”

If you don’t see a price you like on a product, do not buy it. Go to another store if you are in dire need of a sold-out product “right now,” ask for a rain check (I’ve done that on occasion) or wait for another sale.

And yes, when I checked out, I did tell the clerk the shelves were out of the plastic index card boxes.

It doesn’t matter what you do for a living or how old you are. There are simply certain occasions when certain attire is expected, and one should be prepared for that. Therefore, the “one good suit” rule.

After all, do you think I wear my dress black pants, trouser socks, black dress shoes and black short-sleeved sweater with the Monroe Publishing Company logo to the NASCAR races at Michigan International Speedway?

Of course not. When we have our annual tailgate party with friends at MIS, I’m wearing shorts, sneakers, a spaghetti tank top, a baseball-style jersey with a NASCAR logo and a MIS ball cap.

But when I’m doing public appearances as the Monroe on a Budget blogger and / or Monroe Evening News reporter at a civic club meeting or at a business expos, yes indeed I’m wearing my company logo shirt and dress pants. It’s company policy when the employees are doing public appearances to wear either “business attire” or company logo shirts.

My Sunday School students, earlier this spring, fussed about wearing church clothes to church. “Why can’t we just ‘come as we are?’” one asked. I explained that church attire is a local decision by each congregation. But I added the expectation for parishes where casual attire is the custom is that those jeans and T-shirts will not be dirty, ripped or torn; and that the shorts will not be too short.

A couple of years ago, I did a behind-the-scenes feature piece for The Monroe Evening News on the Miss Monroe County Scholarship Pageant program. (See The Road to the Crown and Private Interview Tough on Contestants). The college-age pageant girls in Monroe, Mich., are told to wear dress-up clothes to the contestants’ interview and business meetings and to the rehearsals for the stage production.

The reason: pageant officials want the future queen to be comfortable wearing dress-up attire such as a business suit and a “Sunday best” dress by the time she is crowned and her public appearance schedule starts.

Now, you may hear someone fuss, “I don’t have that kind of clothes. I don’t wear that kind of clothes. Why can’t I wear what I have?”

I understand the upheaval on your budget when you have to acquire a week’s worth of new workplace attire fast:

• My college daughter has been frantically building up her wardrobe during the past couple of weeks into casual business attire as she prepares for a professional internship. She had some pieces to start with and a few hand-me-downs came her way. But on Friday, she and I were at JCPenney in Toledo to find more office-appropriate dress tops.
• I came out of a casual business atmosphere into a business dress atmosphere when I left my newspaper job in Port Clinton, Ohio, to my current job at The Monroe Evening News. My sweatshirt-material cardigan, black jeans, and hiking boots that fit right in with Port Clinton sensibilities could not be worn to work in Monroe, Mich. Those pieces became weekend attire.
• My husband suddenly found himself in a factory job market in mid-2004 after about 10 years of working in a business casual environment. Yes, he did have to buy a pair of steel toed boots on less than two days’ notice for a new job assignment. And those boots aren’t cheap.

Now, to go back to my NASCAR clothes. That’s not an outfit I wear to work, nor is it usually seen on the weekends when I am more likely to wear jeans and grab a plain T-shirt to work around the house, or a Cleveland Indians T-shirt when I’m visiting my family in Ohio.

I knew it would be an outfit I’d wear once or twice a year. Therefore, I deliberately avoided clothing with a specific driver or team so the logo wear would not quickly become “dated.” I’ve been wearing those pieces on race day for several years in a row.

Translate my NASCAR race day outfit to dressup attire …

I have one “Sunday best” dress right now that I wore to Easter Sunday, a funeral in February, and my friend’s wedding reception this weekend. Yes, that dress is a step up from my pants and dressy top for work.

My husband, who still works in a factory, has one business suit. We’ve noticed fewer men wearing such attire these days to funerals and weddings. However, as I told him, people will notice that he went to the trouble of “old school” manners. When business casual is obviously appropriate, he also has a couple of shirts and dress pants that suit that purpose.

In the long run, men have an easier time than women dressing up because their business and formal attire doesn’t become dated as fast as the women’s equivalent. One good suit could last several years for a man, while a woman will likely want to find a new Sunday best dress every year or two.

Our college daughter isn’t taking as much of a financial hit as she could be on acquiring office clothes this summer because she already had some dressy shirts, dressy pants and even two business suits in her closet.

And how much do new clothes in a different style cost anyway?

You’ll find that, in most cases, a different choice in attire doesn’t cost much, if any, more that what you’re already wearing. Watch the sales fliers and you’ll find good prices on that stuff, just as you’re finding good prices on the things you “wear every day.”

Examples from this weekend’s sales:

• JCPenney flier in today’s Detroit Free Press has men’s dress shirts at $14.99 to $19.99 each; and men’s solid polos (think business casual) for $9.99 each, on sale this weekend (Sunday May 24 through Tuesday May 26). Compare that to the Adidas T-shirts that are on sale this weekend for $12.99.
• Macy’s flier in today’s Detroit Free Press, Memorial Day sale today May 24 and Monday May 25, has a misses pleated sweater appropriate for office attire at $19.99. Compare that to a “peasant top” one would wear to a summer picnic at $14.99.
• Kohl’s flier in today’s Monroe Evening News, sale is today Sunday May 24 through Monday May 25: boys collared shirts suitable for school uniforms or Sunday best range from $7.20 to $21.60 sale price. Compare than to the character tees for boys that range from $7.20 to $27.60.

Don’t forget those thrift shops. You can easily find women’s black dress pants and dressy kids’ attire at the second-hand clothing shops in Monroe, Mich.