I only go to the mailbox about every 10 days, unless I have an Amazon delivery. Rarely, do I find anything but junk mail. The USPS is a taxpayer ripoff.

The United States Postal Service is amazing! Each day literally billions of pieces of distinct mailings are made, of different sizes, shapes and weights. Within days, those billions of pieces of mail are delivered, almost all of them in a timely fashion.The USPS does this for pennies. That is truly amazing! For those of you who berate the USPS, why don't you compare the prices of stamps (mailings) in other western countries. By the way, in my line of work, I have always gotten many payments by mail. When I don't get the payment, the sender claims its in the mail. But, the reality of the situation is that the payment was not made. The USPS does an incredible job and instead of always demeaning them, perhaps we should turn some of our good spirit on them and thank them for their service. They deserve it!

So in 16 years, the price to mail a first-class envelope of 1 oz or less has gone up 19 cents and is about to go up again, making it a 22-cent increase over the past 16 years.

MEANWHILE, the cost to send a letter 1 oz or less via UPS is $10.15, as long as you don't mind getting it until this coming Thursday.

A letter via FedEx will set you back over $11.

I kinda prefer the 63-cent option. Your mileage may vary.

Nationwide, they deliver over a billion prescriptions per year. That provides value for many people.

Just a reminder! Forever stamps go up from $0.60 to $0.63 on Sunday. That is a 5% increase!

....and if you buy them from Safe Ship in Magnolia Plaza, they will be 10 cents more for each stamp......they are, after all, in business to make money...just letting you know.

Stamp cost, one of life’s big worries.

Off topic a bit, but to address the convenience fee issue: The longtime and very helpful poster, billethekid mentioned a month or so ago that you can skip that convenience fee by paying through your bank online. They cut and mail the check or transfer it electronically if it's reciprocal to them.

Some of you may recall that the post office used to issue a new rate stamp when they were increasing the first class rate. But they had to wait for Congress to approve the rate so they didn't know what the new rate would be. Thus they prepared a stamp that did not have a cents listed. The first of these was simply called the A rate. They issued these several times with rate increases, B-rate, C-rate... the last one shown below was the H- rate issued in 1998.
In 2000 they issued the first "First class rate" stamp that had a fixed value Eventually they went with forever stamps beginning in 2007.

They had to decide on the change in 2000 because they did not want to issue an I-rate stamp.
True. Supposedly