Lamar Thames

Now that the  Great Recession is officially over (according to newspaper headlines and television reports, at least), I just want to know one thing: WHERE IS MY JOB?

I understand it will take some time for the unemployed to return to work. I just hope it is sooner rather than for a lot of people. I honestly don’t think I will be able to return to the workforce anytime soon, however. There is the age thing, a lack of qualifications and, well, just the time it will take for the job market to rebound to anything resembling a healthy economy.

Thankfully, I was able to draw unemployment (which may be extended another 13 weeks), so the blow might not have affected my wife and I as much as it did others.

Like I have said before, and news reports are confirming, there are some silver linings to the dark side of the recession. Such as, laid-off construction workers are adapting to different lines of work, prices are coming down (grocers and restaurants are offering considerable discounts) and the nation’s per-person savings rate has more than doubled in the past year.

Recently, I have had to make some improvements around our home, like a new roof and cutting down two trees that threaten to destroy that new roof. (I know, I should have had the trees removed first, but that is hindsight now, isn’t it?)

While interviewing the roofers, I discovered that several of them were formerly in the new-home construction business until that line of work all but disappeared. Using their ingenuity (obviously learned in America’s public schools), they surveyed the marketplace and adapted to the new environment where more homeowners were repairing their houses rather than moving into newer ones. And the same went for several of the tree services.

During this downturn, I have also discovered that prices of both services have been reduced from several years ago, at least for some of the service providers who realized it is better to earn some profit from their labors by lowering prices than keeping their prices at the old rates.

This just reinforces a lesson I have learned the hard way. If I had it to do over again, within the past couple of decades I would have tried to learn other skills to ensure my continued ability to keep working. Rather than blithely assuming that my place in journalism was secure forever.

Consumers are finding out that grocery stores and restaurants are also reducing prices. Buy-one, get-one-free bargains (or BOGO) are flooding the shelves and affording us real bargains. And the new consumer ethic of making sure you get what you pay for is paying off as well. Just because an item is marked down doesn’t mean you have to buy it. I see consumers making conscious decisions about that at the BOGO aisles all the time.

As a novice grocery shopper, I have made a few mistakes, which my wife has politely pointed out. I now know that we don’t need 15 boxes of the same brand of cereal at once. For one thing, we don’t have enough pantry space, and for another, some of the boxes would become stale before we ate it all.

Even though there are great bargains out there, you still have to be a wise consumer to profit from them.

I had planned all last week to take my wife out to eat at Outback Steakhouse on a Tuesday night to take advantage of their recent BOGO advertisements. The only problem was, so did every other person in town. When we pulled into the Outback parking lot at 5:15, there wasn’t a empty parking space to be found. My wife went into the restaurant to inquire as to how long the wait was; she was told it would be three hours. We did what a lot of others who wanted steak that night did and went to Longhorns nearby.

As far as personal savings, I want to pass along a tip I have mentioned before but you might not remember. My wife and I switched our checking account from Bank of America several years ago when I saw a newspaper advertisement (remember those?) saying that Atlantic Coast Bank was offering 5 percent on checking accounts. Not savings accounts, mind you, but checking accounts. We promptly switched banks and have profited handsomely from it.

Also, more than a year ago, we accepted a no-fee, cash-back credit card offer from American Express. After a year of paying the monthly bill on time and making most other purchases with the card, we profited $650, without spending a dime. I’m looking for another deal like that so if you hear of one, let me know.

OK, that is enough for today. If you know of cost-saving practices that consumers can benefit from, please let me (and by extension, my readers) know about them by offering comments to this article. Thanks.