So Baseball boy and I went out to The Mall of America again today, this time with Baseball boy’s parents.

The parents wanted to see the Mall of America, and Baseball boy and I were interested in getting new cell phones. We are all on one family plan, (there are 5 of us on the plan). And usually once every few years we trade in our old phones for new phones, and get a killer deal because we are re-newing the cell phone contract. I think 2 yrs ago it was 5 phones for $250.00.

Anyways, now there are no deals going on for renewing the contract. One phone gets $100 off, and each other phone is $50 off. So the phones we were looking at was $250 each- it would have been around $700 for new phones, not including the contract! There was no real incentive to us to renew our plan.

So we are all going to look online, buy our phones separately at whatever deal we find. I'm thinking eBay. The parents are going to ask some other carriers what they can offer us in the meantime.

There were no other deals either going on. We went all over the city, looking for one thing or another, and there were no sales, no discounts for big purchases.

In this economy, why are businesses not begging for our business? I guess to make money, businesses have taken away their discounts and deals...it just annoys me.

Consumer spending is way down, businesses are concerned, so what do they do? The just eliminate their sales to make money!

I am planning a wedding, no deals to be found anywhere there, no deals in cell phone -land, no deals on clothing (we looked for Baseball boy today but all brands he likes are regular price), and the cost of resteraunts have gone up. These are LUXURY ITEMS! I guess America has become so 'want' based that the luxury items (weddings, phones, clothing, and resteraunts) have become staples and these industries are not affected.