High-Yield Bank CD
Washington Mutual has brought back their 5% APY 12-month CD for another week, which had previously dipped to 4.5% APY. If this fits your needs, don’t miss it this time around.
Chest Freezers
Apparently, I was not alone in doing cost/benefit analysis on an extra chest freezer, as this AP article shows:
Once relegated to the dank corners of the basement, freezers are being embraced again by shoppers who are stashing bulk-sized purchases of meats, fruits and vegetables there as they work to combat rising food prices. Across the country, shoppers bought more than 1.1 million freezers during the first six months of the year — up more than 7 percent from the same period last year, according to research firm NPD Group.
That rings up to nearly $400 million in freezer sales — a staggering figure compared to the rest of the home appliance sector, where industry data shows shipments are down nearly 8 percent. And, experts said, it’s a trend that’s expected to continue at least through much of next year as penny-pinching shoppers buy in bulk to take advantage of deals or bundle grocery shopping trips to conserve gas. […]
About half of all U.S. households already have a chest or upright freezer, separate from the refrigerator-freezer combo that’s a kitchen stalwart, according to industry statistics. [Source]
I also had no idea 50% of households already had an extra freezer. We still haven’t bought one yet ourselves; I’ve been in kind of an anti-stuff mode recently.
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I was a little annoyed to learn that costco replaced it’s $200 chest freezer with a new 7 cu. ft. that works out to be the as least energy efficient as possible whereas the previous one scored most efficient.
So what did you end up going with for your freezer? I’m still in the market for a ~7 cu. ft. one. @ $200 and very energy efficient.
Are they really only 200 bucks?! I thought they would be a lot more for some reason…
You know you are getting old when you are starting to think about buying a Freezer!
I don’t think that 50% figure is accurate. I’m going to assume the ownership rate in the US is hovering around 68% and that renters don’t own chest freezers. That would mean nearly 3/4 of all homeowners own a chest freezer!
My wife and I rent and we are getting one. My parents have one and my in laws have at least two.
@Wes – Yes, 7 cu. ft freezers are around $200. They are small. You could probably fit 4 large turkeys in them if you are lucky. More importantly for us, they fit a variety of frozen Costco meats and veggies that normally can’t fit in our small 17 cu. ft fridge. They are also very skinny, making them easy to go down rickety basement stairs!
No wonder greenhouse gas emissions are getting so big. Despite improvements in energy efficiency of refrigerators, many people now have 2 refrigerators. Here’s an easy way to reduce your contribution to global warming- stick with 1 fridge!
We even store bread in our freezer. Once the bread is defrosted naturally, it tastes like new. As you know, bread always goes bad quickly, so that’s an option to save trips to the market.