Postage increase: Stamps reach 49 cents

Postage increase brings the cost of a first class stamp to 49 cents – 3 cents more than before. The last postage increase was a year ago, when the cost of sending a letter rose by a penny to 46 cents.

|
Madelyn Hastings/The Muskegon Chronicle/AP/File
Max Anderson delivers mail to residents near downtown Muskegon, Mich, last week. A postage increase raised the price of a first class stamp to 49 cents (AP Photo/The Muskegon Chronicle, Madelyn Hastings)

It's going to cost you a few pennies more to mail a letter.

The cost of a first-class postage stamp is now 49 cents — 3 cents more than before.

Regulators approved the price hike in December, and it went into effect on Sunday.

Many people won't feel the increase right away: Forever stamps are good for first-class postage at whatever the future rate.

The last increase for stamps was a year ago, when the cost of sending a letter rose by a penny to 46 cents.

The Postal Service lost $5 billion last year and has been trying to get Congress to let it end Saturday delivery and reduce payments on retiree health benefits.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Postage increase: Stamps reach 49 cents
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Latest-News-Wires/2014/0128/Postage-increase-Stamps-reach-49-cents
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe