Kids Eat Free All Day

I was reading in this week's BusinessWeek that Americans average over 200 meals at restaurants in any given year. That is how much big business eating out has become although these numbers include breakfast, lunch, dinner, and thanks to drive-thrus, in-between meals.

During the day, adults will mostly frequent the casual diners which usually have a cheap lunch time menu, while those with kids are forced by their little ones into fast food restaurants as kids prefer these to the casual diners.

With the economic slowdown, a lot of restaurants are now bearing the brunt of the consumer cutbacks. Case in point is McDonald's which has seen an increase in traffic during the daytime segments.

Rather than sit back and watch fast food restaurants eat their lunch, the casual diners are hitting back hard. In at least 3 casual diners, I have seen them advertise free kids meals during the day. The offers are not valid at night as most families usually dine out with their kids in the evening.

As enticing as this offers may be for the parents, if most kids had their way they would pick a fast food kids meal over a casual diner kids meal. I'm not sure why but a lot of kids swear by McDonald's instead of restaurants such as Applebee's or Olive Garden, which also have kids menus to cater for the little ones.

The End Of A Shopping Error

In 2006, just as the US real estate market was peaking, a local commercial developer announced an ambitious plan to put up a $3 billion investment consisting residential, retail and commercial components in my locality. The plan was approved by the city hall and in May of the following year, the company held a ground breaking ceremony that involved the reconfiguration of the roads in readiness for the development.

Fast forward 2 years later and nothing has been done, except for the roads around the planned development. And on both sides of the land is a strip mall and a shopping that are a testament of how things have changed since then.

On the strip mall, there was once a Linen 'n' Things and a Circuit City megastore, among others that have since filed for bankruptcy and later gone out of business. The only sign of prosperity is discounter, Wal-Mart, which expanded it's retail store into a super center.

And in the mall, things could never have been worse. On my last visit, I counted at least 40 stores that had closed down out of a total of 160 stores. The number could have been worse had it not for the fact that there are a host of new tenants who have opened shop in the mall.Only that they are not the usual high end retail stores that have been the feature of the shopping mall. These new shops are usually discount stores moving in to fill in the void as the shopping mall has loosened the letting terms and probably lowered the rent too.

As for the planned $3 billion development, I doubt if it is going to take off in the foreseeable as future as there is a high vacancy of retail space, and office space too.

A Time To Sell, And To Reflect Too

I suspect I am going to be kicking myself a few months from now when I look back to this week. I've decided to offload some of the equities that I have been holding

First to go is Walgreen's. I bought this one 2 years ago and it has been painful holding onto it during the just ended crisis. Thankfully, the swine flu has propelled it back to just over my buying price. I had intended on selling it 2 weeks ago but then the market pulled back. Now that the market is up, I'm going to take this opportunity to recover my investment. Though Walgreen's is experiencing a surge in customers brought in by the flu, the overall U.S. economy is still very week.

I am also tempted to sell Gold which is up 60%. Only that every time I set an exit price, there is usually a pullback in Gold prices. This time though, we've broken through resistance on heavy volume and it looks like there is still some upside for precious metals.

Back to the U.S. economy, job losses are still mounting. Albeit more slowly, with the number of part time workers on the rise. However, I've seen a lot of retail establishments advertising positions, which could mean a pick-up in consumer activity as we head into the busiest season of the year. As far as presents go, there is a lot of buzz about cheap presents which makes me certain that the coast is not clear.

The last house for sale on our street is now under contract. The sale more have a lot to do with the lack of properties for sale in my locality. Very few people are willing to move in this economy, unless they are forced to relocate. This might be the reason President Obama signed into law a new bill offering homeowners who have lived in their homes for more than 5 years, a $6,500 tax credit if they move to a new house.

On the job front things have never been so shaky. More than half of the 1,000 colleagues at my place of work have been given the boot. We are now going to occupy a few floors in one building from occupying a campus of buildings. As much as I believe that I am lucky to have a job, I am not sure how much longer I will survive in an environment that has seen 4 massive layoffs in the last 6 years. I got caught once, only to survive the chop but going by the emotions at work this is not something I could ever get accustomed to. What's more, I expect a few after-shocks that will purge a few more headcounts.

Well, I have lived to fight another day. Aluta continua.

A Friend In Need.........

There is this friend of mine who I have known for a better part of my life. Through the years we have kept touch and we have become confidants as we matured. We have both seen each other during ups and downs.

Sometime in the 90’s, he hit a dark patch in his life. At that time, almost everyone ran away from him and I was one of the few people who stood by him. Even then, our friendship was tested and I let him by not giving him all the help he wanted. For years, this has always been on the back of my mind as I felt I did not help him enough. As is with life, he overcame his struggles and we have remained very good friends to the point that I was the best man at his wedding.

When I look back at our friendship, I sometimes feel that I should have done more for him when he needed my help, although he has never brought up the past against me and he has always been there for me. All these make me more indebted to him and complicates our friendship.

Every now and then, my friend as the habit of calling me to request for a few thousand dollars at a time. After which he usually gives me a blank check for any monies that he owes me when we meet in person. Normally I don’t lend out money, especially to friends because I found out the hard way that friends and family rarely pay back.

However, I have turned down his last 2 requests because I did not agree with how the money was to be used. In the first instance, it was to pay for a mutual friend’s holiday and in the second instance I was visiting Kenya and someone asked him for money to support a local charity.

In Kenya, we also have some good friends who have always been generous to us whenever we are visiting Kenya. From sending a car to picking and dropping us at the airport, to providing a vehicle for use in Kenya, to buying a lot of presents for our kids and twice they have gifted us with an all expenses paid safari when we visited Kenya.

This brings me to my point. Earlier this week I was going through my bank statement and I realized that I had some extra money. It then it crossed my mind to use it as down payment to buy my wife a new car or may be take the family on vacation. The following morning my missus calls me when I’m at work and tells me that she received a call for assistance from our later friends in Kenya. They have a sibling who they are supporting through college here and they wanted us to pay part of the tuition for this semester. I ask her if they will repay the money or what, and she replies that they only asked her if she could pay the tuition to which she agreed because she thought I would not refuse.

Like in the case of my first friend, these are the kind of requests that make me wonder what to do. I want to say no but in both cases the requests are not only from wealthy individuals but multi-millionaires several times over in US dollars. These are people who can raise a million dollars without batting an eyelid.

If I didn’t have the money, it would be easy to tell them so but in this case I would be lying. I have never asked either for a penny even when I have been in need of money and I know they can help me out. It is possible that I may be repaid the money but I certainly don’t want to ask for it because I believe there is a good reason for the request.

As for my missus getting a new car or going to the Caribbean’s for a vacation, it is not going to happen soon because I asked my wife to send the check to the student.