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?