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It's been hot and humid here and apparently the garden loves it!
I planted three cucumber plants and they are going wild. I canned 6 quarts of dill pickles yesterday from the garden. We've been eating cucumber and onion salad for a few weeks now. Some of my onions are getting very large. My garlic is almost ready to harvest as well. Our lettuce has produced quite a bit...it's leaf lettuce. And finally, we've gotten a few cherry tomatoes. I've missed the distinct flavor of homegrown...
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Dad and I enjoyed another nice lunch at Mercato's the other day. I like taking him there because there are no steps and it's relatively uncrowded if we go a little later. And the food is pretty good.
I finally got a chance to get my hair cut. It was getting rather long.
I am feeling super obligated to help my plant group do something this morning that involves probably an hour or two of outdoor work. Even though it's at 9:30 am, the heat is still oppressive. So I don't think...
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I can't remember if I've mentioned this already or not, but I am painfully aware that I am still in what is arguably the most dangerous financial phase of my life.  Yes, early retirement sounds so rosy and great, until you actually do it, and the cost really starts to bite in.  Until I am "of age" and am eligible for SS, retirement accounts, and medicare/medicaid for example, I am basically floating by using nothing but my own money, one month at a time.
The good news...
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July 3
$31 Dinner Take Out (x2)
MH wasn't feeling great Friday and of course he would have eventually figured it out, but his smart watch ended up telling him his skin was a little hot, late at night or when he woke up the next morning.  So he took his temperature and he had a fever, a reaction from the shingles vaccine.
There's a local burger place we have never tried and MH was in a "Whatever, nothing sounds good" mood.  I treated myself to a milk shake and it was...
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We bought a house.  We close and move in next week.  We are super excited.  We had been looking since January and it finally popped.
This is the view from the front deck.  What can I say?  It's everything we were dreaming about.  My DH said he knew he'd made it if we ever happened to buy a house with a view.  Well we did and I told him he made it.  Incredible.  The ride has been wild.  26 years and now this.  We are 2 blocks...
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I thought I was going to entirely give up re: hectic week.  Nothing new or unusual, but it's a big birthday month, plus a few outings thrown into the mix.  It doesn't take much to throw off our minimalist preferences (usually reflected by a lot more downtime and a not crowded calendar).
Anyway, Wednesday is always more of a breather, and I suppose I will have a lot of downtime while I am caring for my mom later this week.  So I will soldier on.  
July...
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It's probably ambitious during a busy month, but I figured I'd dive into 'spending tracking'.  Just as a way to jump back into blogging.
Unlike in the past, will be focusing on my own spending (versus other household spending).  & maybe weekly, or 'every few day' updates.  & I mean, I can share grocery (household spending) but that is depressing right now.  😁 With a 5-person household.  MM(22) devoured all of our food for a couple of weeks,...
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I made it through another scary storm last night, the kind where an emergency alert suddenly lights up your phone and tells you to get to the basement NOW. At the peak of the storm, I watched the top halves of some very big trees on my property violently swaying to and fro. That's when I went to the basement. Yet this morning, I noticed that an empty plastic nursery pot lying on its side on my back patio had not rolled away. 
The "feels like" temps in the 100s with high humidity...
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Why such grim thoughts on a holiday day?  Mostly because I have a bit more time on a long weekend and working on my estate plan is one of my goals for this year.  
Also, I lost two clients in the past month, and a third client was appointed the Executor of his sister-in-law's estate, so I have been responding to questions from him.
This third client is actually the one who led me to EstateExec, an online service with a one-time cost of $199 which allows you to...
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I had my first adjusted mortgage payment yesterday. With the decrease to my escrow I will be able to add $18.51 in principal every two weeks. Every little bit helps! I also do biweekly payments with is supposed to reduce repayment time by years.
I have about $153k in equity in my home with a $195k balance to pay. I have a few retirement ages in mind: 57 (minimum age), 60 (this is 30 years service), and 62 (earliest I can take SS). Many of my co-workers wait until 65 (eligibility...
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I don't usually pay much attention to numbers other than an annual review.  But I figured I'd check in re: Emergency/Murphy year from hell.
First 6 months 2025:  In the black every month (earned more than spent), except for June when I had a $4,500 college bill.
First 6 months 2026: In the red February through May.  I have no idea how I ended up in the black in June.  We had several big expenditures, including more home repairs. 
Second half of 2026:...
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Beware, I'm starting this as a bit of a rant...we have noticed that some of the young people in our lives are not good about thanking us for birthday/Christmas/graduation gifts. I'm not expecting a huge thank you note, but a text or phone call or email would be appreciated. I'm not talking about a small gift like a candle; I'm talking about a large amount of money. The checks were cashed, but we did not hear from them at all. 
Fast forward to this May and June...a friend's...
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Investments $2,294,097
Savings $7,164
Home Equity $153,000
June 2026 Net Worth $2,454,261
May 2026 Net Worth $2,444,093
Monthly Loss/Gain $10,168
I'm going to simplify my net worth postings by just doing one line item for investments, instead of breaking them down.
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Not a very exciting month. Our retirement assets decreased in value a little bit, probably about $7K across the board. This was mostly offset by our regular mortgage and window payments and by paying own our HELOC by a few grand, so overall our net worth decreased by about $1900. I should be able to pay down the HELOC some more, at least temporarily, but I'm waiting to see how next month's cash flow looks like before I do it. Had I known we were going to lose net worth, I probably...
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This is more of my just thinking things through - without the financial info
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Spent a week with my mother this month - first time with her since our cross country trip.  A big reason I went is the town-wide yard sale weekend.  I have been selling there the last four/five years (I've lost count).  It's much easier selling there as so many buyers come to the town each year.  I've been taking excess items there, and this...
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A few years ago I started a little Facebook group called "Frugal Family." The purpose of it was to share websites on saving money with a few of my coworkers instead of sending links in emails. There were only about 12 or 13 of us on the site which was fine. When Covid hit, a few other people asked to be a part of the site. Then Facebook decided to make all groups public and the little site started to gain more, some were scammers of course. So, I had to make it a private group...
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I had started writing up a post, and as usual it ended up going way too long.  Thus I have split it in two.  Here is part 1, my current financial status.
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My investments have pretty much gone up and down through the year, not much change from year's start to be honest.  As I "guardrail" my mother's investments, ummm.... they have done very well.   She got a 'lil lucky as she had some nice investments in the...
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Because I'm still too young (haha) for receiving Social Security, I just haven't really looked into it in detail.  However, just for fun, I decided to go check out SSA's website and see what my eligibility looks like.
While at the website, I noticed there was a tiny little text link that revealed my entire life's annual income!  Wow, I didn't know that was available.  Why is the link so small?  That's a big deal to me!
Looking back at my life, in terms of...
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Right now, I'm trying to solve a technical problem.  Every time I turn my room fan off and on, my internet momentarily goes out.  Yes, you read that right.  Please feel free to read that again if you wish, I can wait.
Insane, right?  I feel like the Christmas light guy in the parody, 12 Pains of Christmas.  "One light goes out, they all go out!"  Haha, what a funny song.  Anyway, it's starting to kind of drive me batty, and it's making me painfully...
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I started getting the itch to do some local travel again since my last trip to Vermont in May. This is, after all, the time to be doing it, not in January! I did a fair amount of research into a trip to the Berkshires in Massachusetts and was pretty close to booking, but I decided it made sense, based on what I wanted to do, to stay in 2 different places rather than one. Then it turns out that 1 of the B&Bs I liked had a 2 night minimum, which was fine, so 4 nights total. But...
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