Sunday, June 30, 2013

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Jeans?



The true price of those blue jeans

Those jeans of yours were made in Bangladesh and traveled a long way before being marked up by 300% or more.

Call it the calculations of the traveling pants. Those jeans you're wearing made a long journey from where they were manufactured in Bangladesh before they made it into the shop you bought them in. And the price you're paying? Let's just say it's a pretty hefty mark-up.

Reuters delved into the manufacturing process and came up with some alarming numbers.

When a factory in Bangladesh receives an order for a pair of jeans, materials and labor together cost about US $8.42. Once the jeans are made, packaged, trucked to the port of Chittagong from Dhaka, 153 miles away, and shipped to the USA (a trip that takes about 30 days), the cost has jumped to about $12.29. That includes U.S. Import dues and the cost of repackaging and trucking to retail stores throughout the U.S.

What do you pay? An average of $38.87, according to Reuters. That's more than 400% over the initial cost of manufacturing, or about two weeks wages for the workers who made them.

Watch the video for more details.

http://finances.msn.com/saving-money-ideas/19559d03-b6f9-4939-bf0e-1a771d6e3e32

Luckily with today's heat, I'll be wearing a dress

Monday, June 10, 2013

May Day, May Day....

May was a tough month. I lost my new dog to Kidney Failure. I had her for six months and 1 day. Was happy for the one more day.


I tried to fill the void with shopping...clothes and shoes not made in the U.S.A. I bought scotch...None of which helped.

I failed to share a single post in May. I can attribute that partly to what was going on personally, that and the scotch; but also, I was faced with having to admit that I completely abandoned my goal of only buying U.S.A.  I was reminded that that's what life is all about. Each failure presents an opportunity to learn and grow, and you always have the choice to get back on track. You get knocked down; you get up again…I then remembered that this journey was to be about the successes and failures.  

"Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently."


Special Thanks to Henry Ford, Jon White & Chumbawamba