By Colleen Rothe

Many of us wash our hair every day. That’s supposed to be good, right?

Wrong.

Many of the “best selling” shampoos have some of the harshest detergents in them that are actually very hard on our hair. Don’t assume that the shampoo manufacturers really have your best interest at heart. They are out to make a buck.

Do you even know what is in your shampoo? Do you know what all those three-name chemicals are?

Time to get schooled:

After water, the next major ingredient in most shampoos is the stuff that “cleans” our hair, the detergent. The rest of the ingredients are typically dyes, fragrances, moisturizers and an extract or two. But these are washed away by the detergent when you rinse the shampoo out of your hair—which it says to do. Read the directions for use with me: Wet hair, lather into hair, rinse, and repeat.

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By Gene Ayres, Your Consumer Curmudgeon

Here's news: sunshine is good for you, in case you missed John Denver. It's the best way to get vitamin D, which is a wonder drug, supporting everything from cardiovascular health to low cholesterol levels, good muscle strength, optimal blood pressure, a healthy immune system, healthy kidney function. It even promotes healthy teeth. It also keeps your bones strong and healthy.

People who spend more time outdoors without getting sunburned, actually decrease their risk of developing melanoma. Studies have shown that safe sunlight exposure can protect us against sixteen different types of cancer, including breast, colon, endometrial, esophageal, ovarian, bladder, gallbladder, gastric, pancreatic, prostate, rectal, and renal cancers, as well as non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. But there are limits, and that's where sunscreens come in. Too many sunburns, baby, and that ain't good. One problem with too much sun is the risk of getting melanoma may increase in relationship to sunburn frequency and severity. Limiting sun exposure, wearing protective clothing, and using a 100% all-natural, non-chemical sunscreen can reduce the risks of skin cancer and other harmful effects of the sun.

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By Gene Ayres,
Your Consumer Curmudgeon

We heard the propaganda for years: the best possible investment you can make is your home. Never mind that mortgages are skewed so that 90% of your payments for the first 20 years or so are for interest. Never mind that the term “affordable” was re-defined for the convenience of lenders and realtors only, as has been happening for the past two decades, so as to mean “every penny we can possibly squeeze out of you; whether or not you can feed your children or pay for college is your problem.”

For 99% of American history, housing was affordable, in the sense that land was cheap (or for American settlers in the West, or anyone with a gun willing to shoot a few Indians, it was free) and those with our famous “pioneer spirit” could use their two hands and build something habitable out of available materials.

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By Colleen Rothe

The next month will bring a little fat to the wallets of folks who are on Medicare. Starting June 15, the federal government began mailing out one-time, $250 rebate checks to beneficiaries who have hit the drug plan’s coverage gap, affectionately known ads the “doughnut hole.”

This payment is part of the new healthcare reform law and there is no mountain of federal paperwork to fill out in order to receive the rebate. The federal government said that checks will be mailed roughly every six weeks until the end of the year. The rebate is tax free.

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By Colleen Rothe

If you recently bought a house or are looking to purchase a house, the trend right now is for your real estate agent or the seller to purchase a home warranty for the first year. It’s a nice little bonus, especially if you, like me, purchase a house that has some things that are within the limit of their lifespan, say, a water heater, furnace, or even the roof.

But what many homeowners still find out is that a warranty comes with a deductible and a list likely longer than your mortgage document of things that the warranty does NOT cover.

Let me give you a bit of back story. When we purchased our home (motivated by the new home buyer’s credit, but that’s another posting), we weren’t nervous about the aging kitchen appliances, water heater or furnace. Our real estate agent, a real stand-up guy, threw in a home warranty.

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By Gene Ayres, Your Consumer Curmudgeon

At times, with all that is wrong with our world, not least of all from the consumer perspective, it's nice to stumble across something positive now and then. So this week, setting aside my curmudgeonly predilections, here is some good news:

Cucumbers are cool!

In fact, for most of my life I have regarded cucumbers with about as much enthusiasm as taking out the trash. Maybe mother says it's necessary to eat it, when it's lying there on the plate like a wilted decoration, or cluttering up an otherwise edible salad. But I never liked it very much, tasteless as it seemed to be.

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By Gene Ayres, Your Consumer Curmudgeon

A lot of this is not new, but the very fact that all of us need further reminding prompts me to post more suggestions for going green, before it's gone.

Here in Seattle there was a concerted attempt last year to ban plastic shopping bags. It's like convincing Louisiana wildcatters to find another line of work: this did not go down well, and the effort was dropped. In our household, we've made a compromise of sorts: we bring home food in plastic bags (we actually have canvas bags but always forget them!) but then we recycle them. My wife has even taken to bringing plastic bags back to the supermarkets to use again, which invariably throws the cashier into a tailspin of dismay and confusion. You want me to do what? Just put it in this clean old bag, rather than those six new ones, my wife tries to explain, in her halting English. Oh well.

The new mantra “buy local” is rapidly becoming an old refrain. No doubt it rings somewhat hollow in Omaha and places where “buying local” means choosing from 27 varieties of corn. But you have to do what you can, and here in the Northwest, there's no excuse because local produce includes everything from salmon to succotash, and most of it is far better than what comes trucking in from Peoria (no offense to Peoria).

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By Colleen Rothe

There are some good deals to be had during this New Depression. One thing that’s been priced out of most people’s tolerable price range is computer memory. Not so much any more. But when the economy turns up, the price will go up again.

Because consumers like you and I stopped buying stuff (mostly because we lost our jobs and had no money to spend), this has created an oversupply of chips by the major producers. Chips are the major components in the memory devices that make your computer zoom-zoom.

Some computer manufacturing CEOs are boo-hooing that they have to practically give it away. I’m not inclined to hand them a tissue, but rather will use the opportunity to grab up some cheap computer memory right now, since it’s running at about a 75 percent savings from its previously high cost. So if you’re seeing your computer chug with the demands of today’s software and games, it is likely cheaper to buy more memory (RAM) then to buy a new computer.

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By Colleen Rothe

It’s moving season. We talked about how to do the move for cheap. But now you’re probably finding out that what worked well in your last home is too small, big, bulky, clunky, and dumpy-looking in your new digs.

But none of us have thousands of dollars to buy new furniture and other furnishings for our homes. We’re still trying to save and pay off debt from before the New Depression hit.

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By Gene Ayres,
Your Consumer Curmudgeon

Having gone to depths heretofore unknown and back with my recent posts, this week I have decreed that it be time for a change towards brightness and light. As in lightweight. As in diet, in celebration of the time of all new beginnings: spring having (finally, for some of us) sprung.

Coming, as I do, from a background in which health food and holistic living was a matter of course (and believe it or not, I did not grow up on a commune, as many might suspect), I am very fit for my age. But all of us have long-term and ongoing health issues of one kind or another, towards dealing with which, as consumers, we all devote a good deal of our time, money, and energy.

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By Gene Ayres, Your Consumer Curmudgeon

Memorial Day Weekend, 2010

Happy Memorial Day, and remembrances to all who have fallen over all those lifetimes. A lot of those who fell are still with us, and some are still in a lot of pain, spiritual, physical, and otherwise, even after many years. For which reason, I dedicate this posting to my second favorite pain medication, Ibuprofen.

I am Patient One when it comes to Ibuprofen. I got a prescription back in 1980 when it was brand new on the market and available in 500 mg doses by prescription only. I had serious back pain then. I'd been in a near fatal car accident a few years before (in the back seat, I hasten to add), and had recovered just enough to be out jogging, when I literally ran into a wide overhanging plywood top on a golf cart parked on the sidewalk, that was exactly at my eye level and literally invisible. It knocked me backwards flat on my back and into next week. This was in L.A. at Marina del Rey, where I lived back then. I went to a doctor at Cedars Sinai who charged me $750 for an x-ray and a bottle of Ibuprofen.

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By Colleen Rothe

A neighbor of mine remarked about how healthy my kids eat, since she sees them frequently noshing on bananas and apples and carrot sticks. My daughter always seems to have some citrus in her hand.

But it wasn’t easy to do. Kids always seem to be averse to eating what’s good for them, especially if the kid sitting next to them at lunch has Doritos in his sack. What changed their minds? How is eating bad—junk food, too much high-fat meats and dairy—harming the environment and our bodies?

In a special report by Time magazine, Bryan Walsh recently showed how inexpensive food is creating a high environmental restoration bill for our children. He wrote:

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By Gene Ayres,
Your Consumer Curmudgeon

No one likes being interrupted from text messaging their significant other about the great billboard they just passed offering two-fers for stuff they don't need while reading their favorite websites while driving, but there you have it: that's my job, which is why shooting the messenger remains popular in our current world. But still, sometimes bringing you bad news in the form of warnings will, if nothing else, allow me to sleep at night, having told you so.

So please, dear reader, take a deep breath, and breathe in the aroma of the latest revelations from the wonderful world of consumerism, which includes everything we eat, drink, and (indirectly in terms of health and other costs) breathe, since we pay a good chunk of our hard earnings for all of above.

Last week I wrote about the exciting developments taking place, purposefully or otherwise, in the wonderful micro-universe of nanotechnology. So a perfect follow up to that will be some of the latest developments in the wonderful also-micro-world of mycotoxins.

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By Colleen Rothe

Many folks will be closing on homes they purchased to get in on the $8,000 tax incentive. June is likely to see many a moving truck on the road. But do-it-yourself moves will be just as high.

If you’re looking to pinch pennies because you have to purchase a new washing machine for your new home, or other “incidentals” that arise when changing households, here are a few tips to pinch dollars, not just pennies.

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By Gene Ayres, Your Consumer Curmudgeon

What's happening just now in the Gulf of Mexico is a microcosm, or perhaps macrocosm, of a larger issue now infecting our world, possibly at dizzying and what may soon become uncontrollable speeds. Even as Monsanto and other corporations seek to not only control, but virtually own our very food (and before long water and air) supplies, such technologies as GMO are working their way into virtually every aspect of our lives, and the life and existence of our planet itself.

Look at the Gulf: the sudden potentially volcanic eruption of unleashed oil pouring into a sea that is connected to all other seas, has the potential—dare one even say!—of destroying virtually all sea life. So in their desperate scramble to stop this erupting boil, those on whom the unhappy task of stemming this flow, of stopping this leak, of at this point simply limiting the already staggering damage that has occurred and continues as of this writing unabated and is possibly even worsening by the hour, is to turn to desperate measures while the consequences are unknowable and immeasurable. Pouring chemicals on top of chemicals in order to disperse them produces yet another toxic substance, called asphalt. So now we are lining the subsurface of the Gulf of Mexico with asphalt, instead of just oil. Is this an improvement? And those chemical dispersants, the other ones, are toxic in and of themselves to sea life. Are we destroying the village yet again in order to save it?

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