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Every Day

A Busy Day Yesterday

I had an appointment at 11:00am. On the way, I stopped at the P.O. to mail something that I had to send certified. After the appointment, I went to Trader Joe’s. We have had one in the area about 45 minutes from me. It was not worth it to me to drive that far to go there. Now we have a new one which is only 20 minutes away and was about half a mile down the road from my appointment. I used to shop at Trader Joe’s when we lived in AZ. I missed it. The store was packed but I was able to get a few things that I needed or wanted.

They had beautiful mini peppers($3.49) which were a need. We ate all of our peppers last month in stir fry. Hubby loves cinnamon raisin bread ($4.99) and I love their ciabata rolls( $1.99) because they are so soft.

I had not seen wild caught salmon this cheap and I had none left. This piece which will make me about 3 meals was $9.37. The BabyBels were $3.69 and are a great snack for me.

Lastly, Hubby loves chocolate chunk cookies so I got a bag of the chunks($3.99) to make them homemade for him. I also got him some dark chocolate covered raisins($6.99) and some dark chocolate mint creams($4.49) which are Valentine’s gifts. I had to hide the raisins quickly before I took my picture. If Hubby saw them, he would be into them. My total for all was $ 40.00. I was taxed at 8.75% on the dark chocolates because the tax in this town is high. This is what happens when we barely shopped last month. You want some goodies!

On the way home, I stopped at Niagara Produce and got 3 more dozen eggs because they were on sale again for $.99 a dozen. We eat a lot of eggs here. I used up 13 eggs on Sunday for my family.

I had planned on going to Walmart and Aldi’s but I was beat so I came home. Hubby had told me that if I was hungry when I was out to just stop and get some food. When I got home at 1:30pm, I realized that I had not eaten all day. So I made a turkey sandwich and that was a lot cheaper than eating out.

After lunch, I gathered all of my receipts to log them into our expenses in our budget and to scan them into Fetch. Then I just watched a few You Tube videos while I rested my back. My arthritis in my back is not good in this cold weather.

For dinner, Hubby wanted Chinese food from our favorite take out place. When I went to place the order, I realized they are not open on Monday. So we had soup instead. Tonight we will get Chinese food.

Monday nights I chat with my sister who lives almost on the PA border. She and my nephew were in a bad car accident on Saturday because my nephew lost control hitting some ice on a bridge. Fortunately, neither one of them was hurt. There was no other car involved. But their car is totaled. So they will be car shopping today. New cars are so expensive but they don’t trust used cars. I had every intention of posting this last night but I was just too tired at 8pm when I got off the phone and went directly to bed.

After much research, I finally figured out how to fix the photos this morning. So as you can see they are back. Thanks for your patience. It was so frustrating for me.

I will be going out today to Top’s( senior discount 6% off day). I only need a few things. The Fanta is on a great sale so I will be stocking on that. I also need to get a few things at Walmart that are cheaper than Top’s. I will be skipping Aldi’s because all I was going to do was get some dark chocolate and I got it at Trader Joe’s.

Brunch today will be eggs and cinnamon toast.

Have you gotten any great sale items this week?

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Every Day

Notice

I know I made a post yesterday because I checked it after I posted it. For some reason, it disappeared. UGH! I am not going to to try to recreate it.

I will be back later today with another one. I have an appointment and many errands to run first.

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Every Day

Cutting Costs

My son and grandson came for breakfast this morning. I momentarily thought about taking all of us out for breakfast at Kalamata’s but I decided I did not want to spend $80.-$90. with tip. So I cooked eggs, pancakes, French toast, and sausage from our stockpile this morning. I can get a lot of sale items for the cost of that meal out.

When Hubby fixed our sink, I did not have the strength to help him tighten one part. It is no longer leaking but we needed the piece tightened. My son helped his Dad do it today.

Also I have not been able to download pictures so that I can put them on the blog. He tried to fix it today and we thought it was. But I went on to test it after he went home and it is not fixed. From researching I believe that I need to uninstall one drive and then reinstall it. I will work on that tomorrow.

I took my 3 minute Navy shower this morning. The water was cold coming out of the ground and it took forever to warm up.

After I got dressed, I grabbed the laundry basket and put a load in the washer. I am washing with cold water and minimal detergent. I hung it to dry after my son and West left.

We played a dice game after breakfast.

Dinner tonight was turkey club sandwiches. Hubby loves them and I had all the fixings. I cooked the bacon up early this afternoon.

Early this morning I vacuumed the house all except the great room carpeting. Hubby did that last night for me. When I was done, my back was hurting so I took some Advil and rested it for a bit while the pills starting working.

Tonight, I will check the ad for Top’s that starts tommorow. Anything on sale that I might buy, I will check the price against Walmart’s. I looked at the Aldi’s ad and there was nothing that interested me. I am hoping that Top’s has Zero Sugar Fanta on sale. I like to stay stocked on it for West and Hubby. They both love it. I refuse to pay $ 8.64 for a 12 pack at Walmart. I won’t shop Top’s until Tuesday because that is Senior 6% off discount day.

My plan for groceries is to buy the great sales and ignore everything else. So very little money will leave our pockets in February. I will continue to eat as much as possible in our stockpile. I always check my freezer, pantry, and fridge to see what meals I can make with what I have in stock.

This will be a non consuming year as much as possible. We will use up what we have that we already spent money on.

So what did you do to save money today?

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Every Day

A Little Of This And A Little Of That

It has been a snowy week. I hope all of you who experienced this storm are safe and warm. Snow is relatively easy to deal with but my heart goes out to the people that got freezing rain and have lost their power. I hope it gets restored quickly.

We had another leak under our sink in the kitchen. Hubby found and repaired it quickly. I am so glad that we didn’t have to wait for a plumber to come out. Hubby can repair just about everything. It cost us under $ 14.25 to fix it. A plumber would have cost over $100.

We had quick meals the last few days. I made homemade cheese and pepperoni pizza. We froze the leftovers for another day. Last night, I grabbed two partial packages of food from the freezer that I wanted to use up. They were chicken and vegetable potstickers and chicken nuggets. I boiled the potstickers on my gas stove. The nuggets got air fried in the little countertop oven. They were all done in about 8 minutes. There are some chicken nuggets leftover that I will reheat to go with eggs for brunch later today. We have been eating a lot of eggs for brunches. We love starting the day with protein. I think I will hard boil some eggs in my pressure cooker later today. They make a quick breakfast and an easy snack. Over the weekend, I made an apple crisp using canned apple pie filling and I made the topping from scratch: four, oats, sugar, and cinnamon.

I had purchased Hubby 2 long sleeved T-shirts last month from Walmart last month. He loves them for sleeping. So he asked me yesterday to buy him two more. The total for both was $19.65. I used a $10.39 debit card from the Walmart class action suit and a $10.00 Walmart giftcard earned from Micosoft to pay for it.

I will not be going anywhere today and tomorrow. It is just too cold. Hubby does have an appointment today. He offered to take me to lunch afterward. I told him I am not up to going out in this cold. I will get some things done here while he is out. Then I will make us turkey sandwiches when he gets home.

This month quickly became a very spendy month. Besides our property taxes that we paid which I talked about in another post, Hubby needed a new hearing aid which cost us $3150. that we had to pay upfront. Our health plan will reimburse us for about 1/2 of that cost.

Besides our monthly bills, we also paid for our lawn fertilization for this upcoming season. That was almost $500. and that was after a 3% discount for paying early.

The only groceries we purchased this month was the ground beef which was on sale for $3.99 a lb. and 3 dozen eggs that were $.99 each for a total of $ 29.10. So I think we did well!

I am tracking every penny of our income and expenses monthly to see where we can plug some holes. That is why I am excited about even saving that $19.65 on those shirts. Every penny counts!

We now have a very unexpected bill that came up for almost $ 3,000. We will have to take that money from our emergency fund next week to pay for something that is very necessary. Thank God we have a very well funded emergency fund. However, I will be cutting every penny to replace that money back into our emergency fund. I am very uncomfortable when I have to take money out of there.

So you will see many posts about how I will cut to get that money quickly saved up. This year has not started out well except for the pantry challenge.

Are you trying to cut costs? Tell us about it.

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Every Day

Shocking Increase In Our Utility Bill, Etc.

We got our electric and natural gas bill yesterday. I was shocked when I saw the total. It was $ 374.75 for 628 KWH of electricity and 6 therms of natural gas. The daily average used per day was 19KWH and the average temperature was 27F. This bill was for 33 days.

Last year’s bill for the same period was for 5 therms of natural gas and 615KWH for 32 days and the bill was $295.51. The average daily use per day and the average temperature were the same as my new bill. But they pushed the new bill out one day. I have to wonder if we were close to going to 6 therms and that is why. They have never pushed it out a day like that before. Weird!

Anyhow for almost the same # of ccf’s which they convert into therms and just 13 more KWH, my bill went up$ 78.29 for pretty much the same period as last year. I have been getting monthly increases of $50.+ but this increase was shocking.

For those who don’t know, the reason supply and demand charges are up is because all of these billionaires are building these data centers to enrich themselves. They use an extraordinary amount of power and a huge amount of local water wherever they build. We are paying much higher bills because of that demand. They should be paying their own way but no we are paying a good chunk of their utility bills in ours. The more people use A1, the more centers they will build.

If you live near where they have built a data center, I am sure your water bills have increased too. I am also seeing that the water pressure in those areas had gone way down also.

The City of Niagara Falls has received documents from a Canadian Developer (why are we not using US companies) who wants to change the zoning to build a data center there. It has not been fully approved yet and there should be public hearings. People need to turn out and stop this. They are enticing the city saying look at the tax revenue and jobs it will bring. And of course NYS is in favor because our Governor Hochul has never seen a tax she didn’t want. But will it create jobs? I don’t think it will be that many. These data centers are for A1 and A1 is causing millions of people to lose their jobs across this country. Wake up people!

I believe it is time to fight these data centers. They are causing our utility bills to increase. Our fragile grid infrastructure can’t handle all of these data centers. So guess who will end up losing the power? It won’t be the data centers. Here is a list of data centers and planned data centers in NY. Notice there is another one planned for Niagara, NY.

https://cleanview.co/public/data-centers/new-york

We don’t need our county flooded with these. I will fight any that come anywhere near us. I have let my county legislators know that I am against these and why. So take some time to research what data centers are going in in your state. Take a stand!

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Every Day

A Little Of This And A Little Of That

It has been brutally cold and snowy here. Hubby and I went out to pick up his prescriptions yesterday. The wind chill was -23. The temperature was 7.

We had wanted to go on Monday but it snowed. So Tuesday it was. The chill made me realize why I like grocery delivery.

I went with him because I decided to get something at Top’s. So I only made it 20 days without buying anything. However, I was not going to pass up 80/20 ground beef on sale for $3.99 a lb. with a super coupon. It was a large 6.55 lb. package and I paid $26.13. I have not seen that price in a long time. Hubby has been wanting to make chili and we did not have enough ground beef so he will this weekend.

I came home and used the food saver to portion it into a little over a pound packages. Two of those will make a big pot of chili and the rest will each make two meals for us. I had also wanted to go to Niagara Produce for a great sale there but it was just too darn cold and we just wanted to get home to the warmth in our home.

However it will be warmer today, so I will go for dozens of extra large eggs that are on sale for $.99 a dozen. We haven’t had that price in years.

Saturday, I made the little hotdogs wrapped in crescent dough. They made an easy dinner while we watched football. We did not win so our season is over. I am more upset over the owner firing our coach than losing the game. I don’t think there is another coach out there as good as him.

Sunday I made turkey soup. We ate it for two days and then I froze 3/4’s of a gallon in 2 portion containers. When I thawed this turkey to cook it, I thought I only had 3 left in the freezer. However, I updated my inventory of my chest freezer last weekend and realized I have 4 left. So they will all get roasted before winter or spring is over and portioned to use in place of chicken.

Yesterday, I made Philly steak sandwiches on Italian bread. I made caramelized onions to go on top and then melted provolone cheese on all. They were so good. Hubby says he wants these again. I hadn’t made them in years.

Tonight we are going to have homemade pizza loaded with mushrooms for me and pepperoni for Hubby. The leftovers will get frozen and used for a future meal.

All of our brunches have been eggs, avocado, and sausages.

Lastly, West turned 16 this week. He had not been born when we moved from Arizona to here. Those years have gone fast. I believe he got his driver’s permit yesterday. In NYS, you can’t schedule an appointment for your driver’s test until 6 months after you get your permit. So he should be driving this summer.

After I make breakfast and throw a load of wash in, I will head to NP. Have you gotten any good deals this week? Please share with us.

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Every Day

How I Cut My Meat Expenses

Everyone knows how expensive meat has gotten. Protein is important to your health. It should have been on top of the Food Pyramid for years. This is about how I keep my meat purchases lower.

First and I know that you have heard it before. Eat the proper portions of meat. That is 4-5 ounces each. No one needs any more than that.

Buy ONLY when it is on rock bottom loss leader. You have to track those prices so that you know when things are a great sale. I keep a price book written in pencil so that when prices change which they do often, I can erase and put my new prices points in. Everyone’s prices are different so you have to do this yourself. We have some of the highest prices here in NY. Your prices may be higher or lower. So you can’t go by what someone else is paying unless that someone is in your grocery shopping area.

Beef has gotten so expensive that I really have to wait for what I feel is a great loss leader. I will not pay exorbitant prices. We will just go without. I will not pay $7.-$10. per pound for ground beef. If I can’t find it for $3.99 a pound for regular or $ 5.87 for organic, we just don’t buy it. If I find roasts or even cheaper steaks on sale at a rock bottom price, I will purchase them. Then I cut them up and grind them into ground beef. The price I paid years ago for the grinder attachment for my Kitchen Aid mixer was worth every penny! Substitute other meats for ground beef. My Hubby hates ground turkey so I don’t buy that but I will buy loss leader sausage. I use it in casseroles and pasta dishes. I save what ground beef I do have to make chili or meatloaf. I do buy Bubba burgers only on a loss leader for our hamburgers because we love them. I am low on ground beef so I will be keeping my eye out for a good sale in February.

Find other places to get your beef besides grocery stores. We have many butcher shops within our driving area. This one in particular will be where I shop when my meat is almost gone. Their prices rarely can be beat in my area:

We also have https://www.niagaraproduce.com/weekly-specials and https://gfsstore.com/en-us/ . Research your area and you may find many places that carry better quality meat at great prices. I know many of you have Grocery Outlet. Unfortunately the one we had 2 hours from us has closed. They had the best prices on Bubba Burgers.

Many of these are a distance away but the prices when I buy in bulk are worth the extra gasoline. Yes, buy in bulk. We are empty nesters and we still buy in bulk. Single people can buy in bulk. If you have a stand alone freezer, this is a must. But even when we lived in a rented apartment and in our first home where we did not, we were able to fit more than one package in our fridge freezer especially if I flattened the meat into a Ziploc bag so the ground meat stacked well. You can cut up those huge chicken breasts into chunks and flatten the packages out and stack them. Get rid of that styrofoam packaging.. It takes up space. I have one stand alone chest freezer and 2 freezer drawers in our refrigerator. I don’t need any more space than these.

When chicken or pork goes on loss leader, buy enough packages to get you through until you feel there will be another great sale in your area. I know it is a guessing game but you get a feel for your sales after you have been shopping for a while. I know that I can get chicken breasts for $1.99 or under a pound a few times a year. I can get a whole pork loin for the same price. When I see these prices, I will buy at least 10 or 20 pounds at a time if I have the freezer space at that moment. Also do not let limits stop you, you can always ask the cashier if you can do two orders. They almost always say yes. If not, put your one order in the car and go back in the store for another. Or if you are going by that store every day, stop in just for the limited loss leader. If you have a membership for B.J.’s, Costco, or Sam’s Club, pick up their loss leader roasted chickens for $4.99 each. I can’t buy fresh and roast it for that price. I usually pick up one or two especially if I am down that way for a doctor’s appt. I just walk in and, get them, pay, and walk out even when I need nothing else.

When turkeys or hams are on sale during the holidays, stock up. I ended up buying 5 turkeys this year at under $1.00 a pound. We made one for Thanksgiving and we are roasting another one today. That is the cheapest meat you can buy. I usually buy more than one ham but this year our hams were $1.49 a pound so I only purchased one. Perhaps they will have a better deal for Easter.

I never buy deli meat unless I have company and I have none that I cut up in the freezer. That is a rare occurrence. The deli prices for a pound of sliced meat are ridiculous. Here most are $10. to $16. a pound. That is more than most pounds of meat cost today. Heck, I just purchased two whole tenderloins from Australia in December that were grass fed and grass finished for $12.99 a pound. I would rather have one of those on a sandwich than buy deli meat. Not worth it to me for them to do the work either. We will slice up turkey, roast beef, corned beef and ham on our meat slicer and freeze it in portions. That is what we use for an occasional sandwich. You would be better off to just make a chicken, turkey, or ham salad sandwich than spending that kind of money per pound if you don’t have a meat slicer.

I will be buying at least three corned beefs in March if the price is right. We love our reuben sandwiches a few times a year.

Breakfast sausages, bacon, and, ground sausage, and Italian sausages I also buy on loss leader. We always have about 10 pounds of bacon in the freezer. We eat a lot of eggs with meat for most brunches and especially for our Sunday breakfasts with our son and grandson. Eggs are a great source of protein and are cheaper than meat. Peanut butter is another great source. So you don’t have to eat meat all the time for that protein.

The one meat that I have not been able to find recently is lamb. We love lamb and Hubby is craving the leg of lamb recipe that I make. I have not seen a sale in probably 9 months or so nor have I even seen a leg of lamb. I am hoping they will have them for Easter on a loss leader sale. If they do, I will buy two or three.

Well, I think I have rambled enough. I hope this helps someone!

BTW, it has been snowing here all night and is still snowing. We are expecting at least 10 inches of snow. Needless to say I am not going anywhere today. It is a beautiful wonderland out here today though!

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Every Day

Eating Through Our Food

First let me say, it is not easy to stay out of the grocery store for a month. I am so used to looking at the ads and just buying the loss leaders. But I am 14 days in and we are doing it! It helps to throw the ads out without reading them. By the end of the month, that will be $600. saved to use for meat stock ups in the future. So I feel good about it. However, I do not think that we will continue this in February since it is frozen food month among other sales. So just giving you a heads up.

We have been trying to use up our produce first. We have been eating a lot of salads. Last night I made 2 different stir fries that will feed us again tonight. I do this because Hubby is adverse to most vegetables and mushrooms. I love them all. I cooked Hubby’s with chicken, onions, and red and orange peppers, and stir fry sauce. Mine had mushrooms, edamame, broccoli, red peppers and onions with the same sauce. We served it on Jasmine rice. I hate Jasmine rice but we are trying to use it up and I will not buy it again.

Any produce that will go bad soon is being used up first. I do food saver (take the air out) a lot of my produce in mason jars so that it lasts longer than it normally would. So things like lettuce, peppers, tomatoes, broccoli, grapes, etc. go bad first and get used first. Sweet potatoes, russet potatoes, cabbage, onions, celery, mandarins, carrots, and apples last longer and get used last. Onions, carrots, and potatoes can be frozen. I cut up potatoes and parboil them and then freeze them. I dice or slice onions and carrots and freeze those before they go bad. The potatoes can then be used in soups, fried, or mashed. They make for quick meals. I use the carrots and onions in many recipes. I have frozen celery but I quickly realized it would disintegrate in soups so I quit doing that. I just chop it up fresh.

When the fresh stuff is gone, we will use the frozen veggies, then the canned ones.

We try to eat the meat or fish in our freezer first. We do eat it almost every night. I sprinkle in some canned meat every once in a while. I can a lot of beef, pork, turkey, and chicken. We also like canned chicken from the grocery store so we have a bit in storage. The chicken I can gets used in casseroles, soups or just by itself on our plates. It all depends on how much time I have that day.

Eggs get used almost every day. We love eggs, some kind of meat, and avocado for brunch. I am out of fresh avocadoes right now but I do have some in chunks in the freezer that I am using up. I serve bagels with cream cheese or just yogurt once in a while as an alternative. We do have some oatmeal which we put diced apples or blueberries in. I also do hard boiled eggs in my instant pot every week for snacks.

I used to drink about 4-5 cups a day of coffee but now I only drink 2. Hubby has given up coffee. So it will take me longer to go through our stockpile.

Ground meat and fish do not last as long in the freezer as do steaks and roasts so that gets used up regularly. I have very little fish right now. I am looking for a good source of wild caught salmon when my freezer gets down. I love salmon and make it for me when I make haddock for Hubby. Sometimes, I bake it to go with my eggs for brunch. I think I have found a great source: https://wildforsalmon.com/ . Has anyone here ordered from them? If so I would love to hear about it.

I also want you to know that I am trying to get photos back working but I just don’t seem to be able to do it. So I have to wait until my son comes out again which won’t be for at least 2-3 weeks to see if he can fix it for me. Meanwhile I will still try each day.

How are you using your food up? What is your plan?

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Every Day

So Sorry!

My administrator has been cleaning up my site. He found 100,000 users registered from other countries like China and Russia. He thinks a bot was running in the registrations. They are now gone. My site is limited to the U.S. and Canada only now.

He purchased a new server for his home. The one he was using was getting very old and needed replacing. We run our computers on his server so that was important to us and we appreciate all that he does for us. The website we use has been up and running since yesterday afternoon.

Unfortunately he had to run a script to clean up the bot and the registrations and he thinks it wiped out all of my subscriber accounts not just the bogus ones. You will need to sign up again. I apologize for the inconvenience but he had no good way to clean up the database and it was causing problems. There are precautions now in place so that these bogus registrations do not happen again.

Everything is up and running perfectly this morning.

I will be back with a new post tomorrow.

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Every Day

Our Recent Meals And Some Yearly Expenses

Hubby cooked a can of corned beef for his dinner the other night. He only ate 1/2 of it so he finished it for brunch one day. I made a salad to go with it and had chicken for my dinner.

I made us hash browns, eggs, and cooked that leftover filet sliced up with butter and garlic yesterday for breakfast. I am using up a container of freeze dried hash browns that was in my stockpile.

Last night Hubby ate a 1/2 of can of Jazzy Jambalaya soup. It is his favorite canned soup. I purchased a case of it a couple of years ago. So the ingredients were not GMO nor did it have artificial meat. If it does now, I will not buy it. He will probably eat the leftovers for brunch today. I usually make our soups homemade but in the spur of the moment when he is craving it, it works. I had the last piece of chicken.

I think I will take a turkey out to thaw so I can roast it on Sunday or Monday. I will use the quick thaw method. That turkey will give us a few meals and some leftovers to put in the freezer. I will make easy sides: stuffing with homemade gravy and green beans.

Hubby has asked me to again make the little hot dogs wrapped in crescent dough and baked in the oven. Since I have all of those ingredients here in my home, I will make them for him tonight. We will have some applesauce on the side.

It has not been a good week moneywise. I did pay our property taxes the other day. They were $4561. That hurt a little but not as much as it would have if we hadn’t budgeted for them.

We also got notification of our Medicare Advantage plan going up $57. a month which brings our cost up to $6159. for the year. We do have a great plan so it is worth it. And by now, I think all seniors realize their regular Medicare plan has gone up to $202.90 per person from $185. in 2025. That costs a total of $ 4869.60 for a year for 2 people. All of these totals do not take into account all of your deductibles for doctors, tests, ER visits and hospital stays.

We also have no dental or eyeglass plan so all of those expenses come out of our pockets.

The Social Security COLA went up by 2.8% for 2026. Many, many seniors will have less spendable money in their pockets because they have small social security checks so the Medicare premium will eat up the cola plus more. I get a very small Social Security check because I did not work many years during our marriage. I stayed home to raise my kids and then worked a few years to pay for private high school and college for my boys. I am not complaining. Being able to stay home and raise my own children was priceless. Seniors are living longer so their checks are affected by inflation every year. The money just pays for less and less. Also Social Security was never supposed to give you a living wage.

Most of you probably don’t care about any of this except when the Social Security and Medicare deductions hit your paychecks. But you should. I tell you this because I want you to realize it is not cheap to be a senior and retired. You need to save for those yearly premiums and deductibles. Every year they go up for seniors just as your premiums do for your family plans. We were retired 24 years last summer. Can you imagine where we would be if we had not budgeted and saved for these future expenses? We would be up ____ crick without a paddle!

And while I am teaching you, save for your retirement too. I know a lot of you have retirement vehicles that you put money into like 401K’s and IRA’s. Many may have pensions too. But unless you are maxing out your 401K’s every year, you may not have enough saved. Plus any pensions that you may have(which are totally taxable) will get eaten up by inflation over the years. And the risk is always there that the pension could go belly up! Many people over the years have lost their pensions or they have been reduced because governments and companies can’t afford to pay them anymore. So they are not really reliable! Save and protect yourselves. No one will do it for you!

Two last things, don’t borrow from your 401K’s. That is a really bad idea. Secondly, don’t take a lump sum in retirement unless you know that you are schooled enough to manage it on your own. These big companies like Merrill like their commissions more than they like making you money especially if you are a small investor. There are lower commission companies out there. Just do a google search for the best ones.

I have to run some errands that I didn’t get to the other day. So I must close now.

How is your January saving going?