Though Alan Greenspan has yet to warn of "froth" in the pricey denim market, several analysts have been cautioning about a jeans glut since the beginning of the summer.

Wondering why those jeans actually cost $300? The NY Times magazine explains it all in, Jeans Engineering:

The process of making denim look 2, 5 or even 20 years old is touted by some jeans makers in long-winded tags that seem designed to ''educate'' the consumer -- like a pair of Paper Denim & Cloth jeans explaining that ''individually applied hand abrasion and scraping,'' among other things, were inflicted on the denim for an ''average processing time'' of 6.4 hours. Harrell has studied his own worn-out jeans and the ones worn by mechanics he deals with while drag-racing to guide the production of holes, fading and even the occasional ''organic'' greasy smear. This process, he says, pushes production costs to $95 a pair.

Needless to say, after reading this I didn't feel bad about the recent grease stains my $200 jeans sustained by lugging my Neon's car battery up and down 2 flights of stairs for three weeks. Well... Maybe I should have just bought a $50 pair of Gap jeans and then their value would have increased after the stain addition. The astutue reader would now point out that my jeans retail more than the wholesale value of my car...

Note to Mom: My jeans didn't actual cost $200 and the grease stains are barely visible so please don't email me about this post :).
10:42:27 PM   []

You Made the Meatloaf. You Just Didn't Make It at Home

For the last four months, Ms. Victa, 24, has been visiting Dinners Ready, a company based in Mukilteo, Wash., that offers customers the chance to assemble 6 to 12 meals in less than two hours at one of its kitchens.

The article talks about all the different meal prep companies offer ready dinners for about $3/meal. A far cry cheaper than the $5-10 I spend on take out dinners. With winter just around the corner and the desire to start cutting costs I'd like to give this a try. Does anyone have any recommendations for companies in the Seattle-Redmond area? Preferably ones where I can pay to have them make the dinners for me :).

It's Just More Fun Being a Growth Stock.

When Steven A. Ballmer, the company's chief executive, polled a group of his fellow Microsoft executives recently about whether they were buying the company's shares, he said, nobody raised a hand.

For what it's worth, I'm now holding and acquiring Microsoft shares.

Good News, Bad News: Your Loan's Approved

Critics also worry that offering extra-risky financial products that permit financially vulnerable buyers to get ever bigger mortgages is particularly perilous now, when many experts say the housing bubble may be near a breaking point.

Every couple weeks I spend time on RedFin checking out condos. I then go to Bankrate.com and figure that if I want to pay as much for my mortgage as I do in rent then I can afford only a $165,000 place. I then go back to RedFin find that there are only a few places in that price range; none nearly as nice as the apartment I am writing. Then I read articles in Money like Cuckoo for Condos which looks at the price-to-rent ratios and Seattle is fifth on the list behind such other over priced markets like San Fran, NYC, San Diego, and Phoenix. Hopefully the bubble will burst soon. At least Greenspan thinks it might.
5:18:03 PM   []