A small business owner and a working mother concerned with health insurance costs, two working parents satisfied with their jobs, a pair of women concerned about retirement savings.

This is a sampling of Muskogee area residents and how today’s erratic economy affects them.

Their stories — as well as the observations of area real estate agents, bankers and financial experts — indicate a mixed picture of Muskogee’s economy.

There’s less of the doom and gloom here than reported from other parts of the country. But not everything is rosy either.

Here is a snapshot of area residents living under a changing economy.

• • •

Print Mart owner Bill Tibbles has a barometer of sorts to tell how well the economy’s going — the number of cards, brochures, invoices and other business-related material he prints at his shop.

“A lot of times, when the economy is good, people are going to start a business, and they need cards, they need invoice forms,” said Tibbles, who has owned Print Mart, 232 East Side Blvd. for 18 years. “When there is a downturn, there is a lot of caution and fear and not nearly as many people starting new businesses or ordering business cards.”

He said that in the past three or four months, he has not done many new-business related orders.

Tibbles said he has seen ups and down since opening his shop in 1990.

“The printing business is constantly changing,” he said. “In the old days, we had the old presses. Now, everything is digital and that has revolutionized printing. We can do more short orders: One copy, 10 copies, 100 copies or 1,000 copies, we can do it, almost on demand.”

Tibbles said that with competition from corporate printers such as Kinko’s or Office Depot, “We have to work smarter.”

“They have so much networking a little old print shop like me doesn’t have,” he said. “You have to find your niche.”

He also faces competition from people who do their own printing on home computers.

“Eventually, many come back to the print shop because of better quality,” he said.

To Tibbles, providing health insurance for his employees also means providing health insurance for his family. His only employees are his wife and grown daughter.

“Since I’m the owner, I have to pay the Medicare taxes for all my employees,” he said. “Local taxes, state taxes and federal taxes affect my business. The less money I have, the less I can invest in equipment or benefits or even in personnel.”

Tibbles said it has been harder to pay for health insurance when “we start having premiums at $1,000 a month.”

“But this day and time, you have to have it,” he said. “You go to the hospital one day and you can rack up a large bill.”

Yet, he said he’s not sure which presidential candidate’s proposal is better for him.

“If McCain is going to start taxing medical benefits, that’s less money I’m going to have for investing or employees,” he said. “Obama hopes to give everyone a tax credit. But who’s going to pay for the credit?”

Tibbles said the recent $700 billion bailout has left him with lots of questions.

“I can’t tell if it’s affecting me,” he said. “What will happen in 30 or 60 days? Six months? When you pour $700 billion in the economy, is that going to trigger inflation?”

High prices for gas and materials also have affected business, Tibbles said.

“I see rising prices for the commodity paper I use, whether it’s bond or offset,” he said.

“We’re having to adjust prices because of insurance and fuel,” he said. “I can only absorb so much before I pass that on to my customers. It’s a balancing act for small businesses to cover your costs.”

Even at 62, Tibbles doesn’t think much about retirement. That doesn’t happen much in family businesses.

“You build value in a business, then you can sell it or pass it on to your children,” he said.

• • •

Cary Casteel said he’s not at all bothered by the long hours he spends at his job.

“The average day runs 10 to 12 hours and I put in a lot of 18-, 20-hour days,” he said. “It’s definitely not a 9-to-5 job.”

Casteel, 38, said he not only is happy with his job taking care of natural gas compressors, he also feels secure.

“It’s absolutely great,” he said, declining to say what major gas company he works for. “The natural gas business is great. It has not slowed down at all.”

Business also has not slowed down for Casteel’s wife, Reva Casteel, who operates the SmartStyle beauty salon inside Wal-Mart, 1000 W. Shawnee Bypass.

“Hair grows, everyone needs a hair cut,” Reva Casteel, 37, said.

However, she said she had been told to expect business to slow down because of the economy.

“I was told that when he economy gets bad, people put off getting their hair cut as often,” she said. “If I was being affected by it, hair would not be a priority.”

Still, she keeps busy.

“On Saturday, we had four or five pages of customers, with 30 customers per page,” she said. The salon serves customers as they come in. “We lose quite a bit of customers who can’t wait. But everyone comes in and signs in, and we go to work.”

Being located inside a busy department store helps. The constant beeps of Wal-Mart’s long line of cash registers and customer chatter could be heard in the background as Reva Casteel spoke on the phone. She said the salon, which is part of the Regis Corporation, has about seven employees. Casteel said she has 18 years experience with various hair salons, including JCPenney and Snip’n’Clip. She began working at the SmartStyle in Checotah last March and moved to the Muskogee store about a month ago.

Casteel said that while her employees get health insurance and retirement through the corporation, she is on her husband’s policies.

Cary Casteel said he has a diversified 401(k) retirement portfolio and is not concerned with his retirement or future. He said he expects a good future for his three children, who attend Oktaha Public Schools.

Still, Reva Casteel said her family is “very fortunate” compared to other people she knows.

“I take none of it for granted,” she said. “He could get hurt and lose his job tomorrow.”

• • •

Two women visiting the Okay Senior Center one afternoon earlier this month said retirement fund problems have not hurt their day-to-day lives, but they remain concerned about their investments.

“I’m still getting the same income from my investments even though the value of the investments is way down below what it used to be,” said Shirley McCowan, 67, who lives off her husband’s pension from a steel company and on Social Security. “My husband died three years ago, and we invested in mutual funds.”

She said her funds are still paying, but she cannot buy out of them.

“If I was to sell it, I would get half of what I have now,” she said. “That means I can’t go buy a car. If I have a leak in my roof, I can’t replace the roof, while I could have done it last year.”

McCowan said she was a stay-at-home mother, so she gets no pension on her own. She said she admires the patriotism shown by John McCain. Still, she’s not sure if McCain or Obama will help the economy.

“No matter who gets in, taxes are going to go up,” she said. “If they put out another stimulus package, the money will have to come from somewhere.”

Retired Wagoner County Election Board worker Arleta Dennis, 74, said she has a decent income from her retirement and from that of her husband, Don Dennis. She said her husband had to take early retirement when Muskogee’s Corning Glass plant closed 1987.

“And Don still does business. He became a heating and air conditioning contractor,” she said. “He’s busy every day with it.”

Arleta Dennis also was director of the Pregnancy Resource Center, but gets no pension from it.

She said their main losses have come in their stock market investments.

“Two years ago, we lost a third of what we had originally built up, and now we lost another third,” she said. “We were kind of counting on that as a cushion.”

She said she feels fortunate compared to her brother in Arizona.

“He had put everything in the stock market; he says he lost everything,” she said. “But our retirement income has stayed the same. If you ask today how our standard of living is, it is doing as well today as it has been, other than what we lost in the stock market.”

• • •

Carla Cunningham, who works at Oklahoma School for the Blind, said she has yet to look at the latest state retirement fund statement she received.

“Hopefully, it will be positive,” she said. “The stock market, at this point, I’m not affected by it, but I’m sure it will trickle down.”

At 47, Cunningham still has several years left before retirement.

As the mother of two sixth-graders at Grant Foreman Elementary, plus a grown son, Cunningham said she has more immediate concerns.

“I’ll by paying out of pocket almost double for health insurance next year,” she said.

And that’s even on the state health insurance plan, she said.

“One bad accident, and you need insurance. But I know I’ll have to pay the price,” Cunningham said.

Cunningham said she is not getting a pay raise.

She said that, even with gas prices going down, she still is feeling a pinch. She said she tries to save what she can.

With Christmas coming up, Cunningham said she’s glad her two sons are outgrowing their demand for lots of toys.

“They’re getting a little older now,” she said. “If they get two or three good little gifts, that will suffice.”



August unemployment

• Muskogee County: 4.6 percent.

• Oklahoma: 3.8 percent.

• United States: 6.1 percent.

Source: Oklahoma Employment Security Commission