Forever Stamps

Yesterday, the Postal Service announced that they were going to be raising the price of stamps once again. No big surprise really. They seem to do it every year now. The interesting thing they said is that they will unveil what will be called "Forever Stamps." These Forever Stamps will be able to be purchased at whatever the prevailing rate is for stamps. When stamps rise to 41 cents, you can buy Forever Stamps for 41 cents. The interesting thing comes when they raise stamps again next year. Rather than having to purchase a one or two cent stamp to combine with your leftover stamps, you can continue to use whatever Forever Stamps you have until they run out without having to use extra postage. In other words, you shouldn't have to buy the one or two cent stamps anymore as long as you buy Forever Stamps. After you are out of those, you can buy more Forever Stamps at the new rate.

At first I thought this was pretty cool. I said to myself that I would just go out and buy hundreds of Forever Stamps that way I can save money when the next raise comes. But how much would I really save? Let's say the average house uses 200 stamps a year. If, when the stamps rise to 41 cents, I wanted to buy 200 stamps for every year for five years, it would cost me $410. A lot of money to spend at once. What if, instead, I don't buy them at once and stamps rise 2 cents every year for 5 years. How much would I spend over 5 years on stamps? $450. But buying 1000 stamps all at once, I would only save myself 40 bucks over 5 years. Not really enough of a savings to justify spending $410 all at once on stamps.

How about over ten years? It would cost me $820 to buy them all at once, but $1000 to buy 200 stamps every year for 10 years; assuming they go up 2 cents each year. An average savings of 18 bucks a year is not enough to make me buy $820 worth of stamps in May. But people might not see this long run prognosis. Is the postal service doing this to make some quick money and hope that people will buy more stamps than usual? Are they hoping for a quick profit? We'll never know. But it is something to think about. I wouldn't put it past them. But those are the statistics if you are interested.