How ironic that YOU 
of all people are advising @Old-Days-Rick how to behave
Iāll be extremely blunt . . .
I donāt believe EITHER of you are in a position to advise people how to behave
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I give to local organizations such as a local womenās shelter that I am fairly confident uses the money appropriately.
The last church I was a member of turned me off when the good pastor built a new expensive house that he said was almost his dream home. All of this to a congregation that includes alot of people living in trailers paying lot rent they cant afford. How much should we give pastor? More, MORE, MORE!
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Sounds like a good way to go broke. If I fix a car and the part costs me $50, Iām charging the customer $85.
Youāre still a good ways from pharmaceutical territory 
I turned off the āfacetious fontā on my computerā¦ 
So, for everyone elseā¦
The post office does sell stamps on line and this Christmas eve, there are 108 different stamps availableā¦ They include International Postage Stamps, Priority Postage Stamps, Forever Postage Stamps, and their Additional Postage Stamps of various valuesā¦
I am registered with the post office for Informed Delivery and they send me an email every morning with a photo of all the mail expected for delivery that dayā¦
And every quarter, the post office send us a nice booklet of all the new stamps coming out with large illustrations of the stamps and the story behind the stamp.
We use three different post offices, depending on where we are shopping and the three post offices seldom have even a smothering of the new Forever stamps just releasedā¦ They say there just is no call for them to carry much as most customers are simply happy with the Flag Forever Stamps and a few selections of the seasonās specials.
Link to the stamps available on lineā¦
https://store.usps.com/store/stamps
By the way, most folks know that your local Post Office offers some Free Priority mailing boxes at the post office. But did you know they have a very large selection available on line in many different sizes and you can order them in lots of 10 or 25 boxes and the shipping is FREE to your front doorā¦ You can also order other mailing supplies that might come with a cost, but the boxes are FREEā¦
https://store.usps.com/store/shipping-supplies
Now, Iāve got to sign off as Santa will soon be here and I need to get the cookies and Milk out.
I hope you all have a Great Holliday!
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Our pastor downsized to help cover college costs. Modest home walking distance from the church. Used to have a parsonage but that was sold to the pastor in 1975. Did just do a 2.1millipn upgrade and remodel.for hvac, elevator. Electrical upgrades, and solar power with ev chargers. Sold some property they had a fair market offer in and raised the rest. Grants are helping with the solar. 1950s concrete building isnāt easy to put hvac and a elevator in
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I attend a church where we have had a real increase in membership. As new people join, we find out their skills and interests and get them involved right away. I had been chair of the building committee. I donāt have a lot of mechanical skills. I learned to do electrical repairs and plumbing repairs at the same time so that the fire caused by my electrical work was extinguished by the flood caused by my plumbing work. I gladly gave up this job when we gained new members with real skills in these areas. I was really happy to be replaced on the governing board with new members with fresh ideas.
Too often, in many organizations, there is an āold guardā that stay in positions of authority too long and believe they are only the people capable of running the organization.
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Weāre fortunate to have members whoāve learned how to do various projects working on their own homes and a portfolio of rental properties they had for a time but sold it all for a 2nd home near family in Arizona. Both can lay laminate floor to perfection for materials only. Lighting and carpentry as well have another that knows plumbing and saved considerable money. Weāre glad to be rid of the boiler heat. Couple volunteers had stress relief tearing it out. Freed up the space for an elevator, big enough for one chair and helper.
The building came in 3 phases. 1950, 1955, and. 1983 for the chapel with heat pump so usually that space had hear and ac even during the heat dome. SANCTUARY renovated this year and in 1986,finished in 55
Same here except I am not signed up for the quarterly stamp brochure. Some stamps are just too tempting to buy then will go in a drawer, not to be used. Like the Pete Seeger and Janis Joplin stamps where the sheet of stamps look like a 45 RPM record. Been quite a while since I have bought any stamps.
We hadnāt used stamps in like 10+ years, until the wifey was going through her disability process and we had to mail stuff in, now it is all done and we have left over stamps we may never use againā¦ lol
Yep, I might write a check once every two years, can barely remember how to sign my nameš
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We havenāt even had a check book in over 10+ yearsā¦ 
We still write numerous checks a month, electric, gas, water, sewer, cable, etcā¦ over the years, transferring (military reassignment) from one location to another meant we have had to setup accounts in 9 different states and we have been burnt several times with automatic payments and spent months trying (and not all cases winning) to get the over payment returned after we closed the accounts.
Now businesses, like our Toyota and Honda dealers, are charging 5% on top of the bill if you pay with a credit card. So, they get paid with a check. They no longer employ a full time cashier and it usually takes a couple of office workers to figure out how to work the cash register and print a receiptā¦ 
Our Credit Union has a Visa Spend Card that operates like a Charge/Debit card. But it operates more like a gift card in that you load it with the funds and if there is fraud with this card, the most that is lost is what we have loaded on it. Hundreds of dollars and not thousands of dollarsā¦
We have several of these cards, one we use for incidental internet purchases, and we have given several of these cards to our college attending grandkids so they always have some spending money. And if a real emergency comes up, their cards can be reloaded in minutes over the internetā¦
Almost everything I do is by EFT ACH payment now. Itās an electronic check. So the fees are really low if they have one.
Our town, all utilities, fuel oil/propane deliveries, state registrations etc are all electronic checks.
The few exceptions were for school activities where they wanted a paper check. They finally had someone volunteer their Venmo account to help because most people donāt have paper checks anymore.
I will not set up automatic withdrawal due to the difficulties Iāve had in the past cancelling those. I had one I thought would go away when I had my CC replaced with a new number. Nope, the CC company forwarded the charges to the new number. When I called to complain, they said it was done as a service to their customers 
Thatās when I realized who their true customers were 
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Golden Rule?? No place I have ever worked would survive on a 10% profit. If they could survive, they would never grow, just stagnate. Which is just prolonging the death. We need a minimum of 35% GM on any product we produce in order to share profits with the employees and invest in the business. Typically 50% is considered healthy for a manufacturing company. Ten percent would be suicide.
Maybe a 10% growth is expectable, but it takes way more than a 10% profit to make a 10% growth, 2 different thingsā¦
Remember that a shop or any business has massive overhead, rent/lease most of the time, electric, water/sewer, employee taxes, tools, workers etc etc etc etc and that doesnāt include any and all hourly and or salary employees under roof, then you got all the corp people to deal withā¦ And that is just the tip of the icebergā¦
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And we wonder why inflation is so rampant all the time, and why the world is in the shape it is these days?
Iām no āstreet-corner Bible thumperā, but in my life I have done at least two straight read-throughs of it, and still consult it from time to time when dealing with issues. 10-15 percent sounds like a reasonable mark-up.
The repeat business youād get, plus word-of-mouth referrals, and that 10-15 percent profit would add up so fast you wouldnāt know what to do with all that money! Probably hire more help to handle the overflow of business.
40-50 percent mark-up: Lots of internal grumbling, reluctantly paying the bill, and those customers might not come back so often, and learn to do it themselves, even if your work and customer service were both the best in town.
See the difference?
@ChrisTheTireWhisperer you clearly do NOT know what youāre talking about
Youāve REPEATEDLY been told this by multiple people on this forum
Yet you continue attempting to lecture us
And you wonder why your comments are unappreciated
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For that exact reason, the dealerās service department is the only place where I use my debit card. Apparently, they donāt impose a fee for that type of payment.
Sounds reasonable.
How do your local gas stations handle credit vs debit card fill-ups?
A Shell near me in CT started charging the same per gallon for debit as they do for credit, after ownership changed 3 years ago.