It would have been much better if you had set perameters when your granddaughter was born, but it's not too late now. I think your daughter is taking advantage of you and you are allowing her to, because you fear losing your granddaughter. I can see that, but I can also see that this is just the tip of the iceburg, and she will take advantage as long as you allow her to. You don't have to have an all out war. Begin with little steps-- When she assumes you are going to babysit tell her you have other plans. Tell her you can no longer afford to meet her. Let her get up earlier and deliver your granddaughter to your door. If she goes for daycare she will soon find out that it is not cheap. I don't know what they charge where you live but here they charge $40 a day, that comes to $200 for a 5 day week. There are not often no spaces left and if there are they only have set times they are open. She will have to find a sitter for the times they just want to go out and babysitter fees are not very cheap either. I think she will soon come to the conclusion she has a sweet deal.

It surprisingly went down near us the past day or two. But we all know how the "supply/demand" affects prices. If we "demand" less, the price will go down... Though I'm NOT by any means trying to down play the crisis it puts many of us in when these prices get so out of control, it IS all good for the environent... It's my hope that this is a condition/habit that we all try to maintain in good times, as well as bad. We should NEVER, for the good of us all, ever be this dependent on foreign supplies (oil).

Cars will last a lot longer than most people will take the time and effort to make them last. It appears that many people have a lot more money to buy new things than they have time to take care of things, or at least they pretend that's the case. As gas prices have spiked up again lately, there is a lot of interest in smaller and more fuel efficient cars, which in itself is a good thing. But if a person trades in a 20 mpg vehicle for a 30 mpg vehicle, and if they drive 15,000 miles a year, that's a savings of 250 gallons of gas a year. Certainly that's worth considering IF you need a new car anyway, but even at $3 a gallon, 250 gallons a year is only $750. The sales tax alone on the new car is likely to take all of the first year's savings, and even much of the second year savings if you live somewhere with a high sales tax. Then there's the interest you pay, higher insurance, etc. The bottom line is, the best way to save the most money is to keep the car you have for a long time and drive it in as efficient a manner as possible. It's amazing how many people are literally "car poor." If you trade yours in for a new one every two or three years, you're always paying interest on loans and always absorbing big depreciation losses. Consider a $20,000 car that's purchased new and kept for three years, and traded in for $9,000 (in many cases that's an optimistic figure): Sales Tax @6%: $1,200 Depreciation: $11,000 Interest: $2,500 Total Cost for Three Years: $14,700, or just under $5,000 a year. Many people go through this with not one but two cars, raising the yearly cost just to have these vehicles parked in the driveway to $10,000. And that's before they pay the first insurance premium, perform the first maintenance service, or buy the first gallon of gas. Even if you go from two new cars to one new and one old one that's paid for, that's $5,000 a year in savings. So if you have an older car that's paid off, there's just no earthly way to save any money by trading it for a new one, even if the new one gets double or even triple the gas mileage of the old one.

I haven't shopped in dollar stores for a few years now. Simply because it is imported items of a low value, which reflects in the price. Some items are counterfit to look like brand names (even if they aren't brands WE recognize). Others may have quality issues - such as toothpaste that contains antifreeze. Some of the decorative items are cast offs from factories (where workers are paid pennies per day and there are no standards for safety for worker nor consumer) or the makers are paid almost nothing as piece work. Again, there is no way to know what materials are being used and how the items are being made. I don't want to support the exploitation of a cheap workforce that is being abused, simply to get a little vase with a crooked hand painted design for a dollar. Local companies cannot compete with these cheap products so they undermine our economy. They also underscore the idea that it is cheapness and quantity and not QUALITY workmanship that should be a priority. We are a disposable society. Go ahead and throw it out, you can get a new one at the dollar store. With rising prices and sinking wages I know that there are many who feel they cannot afford NOT to shop in the dollar store, and I commiserate. But for me, it was a choice I made for myself, my family, and my community. And I am sticking with it ROFL.