Cost of Stamps Goes Up Today

The cost of a first-class stamp is going up to 49 cents today (January 27th) from the current 46-cent price.The last stamp increase was a year ago, when it went up one penny.

The US Postal Service continues to be in the red for a lot of money, losing $5 billion last  year, and is trying to get Congress to let it end Saturday delivery and reduce payments into its future retirees' health care fund that lawmakers are requiring it to make. The Postal Service is an independent agency that's not funded by taxpayers, but is still subject to congressional oversight.

So if you don't have those 'Forever' stamps, you're now paying even more to pay your bills. A lot of us use online bill pay, and with e-mail, the days of letter writing are all but done, but there are still some things that you HAVE to mail and some things that HAVE to come to you that way as well. We all understand that the cost of doing business is going up, but losses in the billions of dollars each year seems like their might be a bigger flaw than a 3-cent stamp increase can fix.