5 Things We AREN'T Doing in the Near Future

My list of 'things are so crazy in the US these days that we can't even think of doing the following things'...

1. Moving.  We would like a single-story house but I never want a mortgage again so we will need to save cash, plus sell our current house, in order to buy a new house.  This won't be happening for a while...
2. Traveling.  My walking club is having a convention in a couple of months but between the cost of a basic hotel ($300+ per night !?!), plus flights, plus car rental, etc, I think we will just stay home and save several thousand dollars :(
3. Changing jobs.  I actually love my job and have no intention of leaving, but I have several friends, highly qualified and very skilled friends, who can't find a job to save their lives!  The job market these days is very scary.
4. Watching the news/doomscrolling/etc.  The news is nothing but awful awful awful.  Since there is nothing I can do about every terrible thing that is happening, I will just watch more positive and happy things instead of stressing out about things I can't change.
5. Eating junk food.  Since my birthday is in 50 days from now, I have challenged myself to not eat any junk food for 50 days.  We will see how this goes...

10 Consumer-ish Things

Instead of ranting about the news and politics (since this doesn't do any good and only serves to jack up my blood pressure!), I will talk about consumer-related things today...

1. Eggs are back in the stores (see photo above).  Our local stores were out of eggs for the past week or so, I guess due to bird flu, but now they are back--for $4.49 a dozen on sale.  eeekkk
2. And for my Filipino friends, bagoong and a couple other cooking items were suddenly banned a couple months ago which sent Filipino cooks into a tizzy (including hubby, but we got creative and learned how to make products similar to these banned items so that was interesting).  Anyway, today we found bagoong in our local Asian grocery store.  It is now being made by a US company but the price shot up from $5.99 a jar to $12.99 a jar so hubby said he would just continue to make his own!
3. There will be two free entrance days to the National Parks this month.
4. Hubby is having a harder time stepping over the edge of the bathtub to take showers now so we got two estimates to remove his bathtub and make it a step-in shower.  Both came in around $11,000.  I told the guy I thought this project would cost around $7,000 but he said the price hadn't been that low since before covid!  We will decide if we will go this route or just buy a single-story house that already has step-in showers.
5. We got our car insurance bill this week and it steadily increases with each renewal.  Apparently this is a thing nationwide although drivers in my city are particularly awful.  Fortunately our car insurance is only a fraction of this guy's.
6. Right on time, I got an email from H & R Block last week to sign in and start my taxes (I file online with them every year) so we will pay less than $40 to file our taxes this year.  Now I just need to wait for all of the tax-related documents to get sent to us (and hope I don't end up paying this year!).
7. According to this reddit post, gas prices in my city may start to drop.  That would be a welcome change!
8. Today hubby and I went to the Goodwill and got six pairs of pants and six shirts for a grand total of $12!  Every Monday is dollar day at our local Goodwill so all grey-tagged items today were only a dollar (and you need to get there early because it looks like the swap meet people fill huge baskets full of any item with a sale-colored tag and sort them out later).
9. We have been really good with not eating out since January 1st, I hope we can keep this up!
10. We have also been doing a cash-only, low-spend month and so far, so good.  I am hoping my credit card bill will be precisely $0 at the end of the month!

A Bunch of Money Stuff

It's been a busy, and financially trying, couple of weeks...

• Right before the kids and grandkids came to visit we looked at the tires on our car and decided they were looking a little old.  Although they were only five years old (as old as the car) that's kind of like eight years old in Vegas years because it is so dry and hot here that rubber and plastics age really fast.  So we got new tires for the car ($500, not a bad price) at Discount Tire (we love this tire shop as they do good service at reasonable rates and also put air in the tires and do tire rotations for free any time we ask!).
• When I drove everyone to the airport on their way out of town I noticed the car was pulling to the right a lot so I ran by the tire store and they diagnosed a nail in one of the tires :(  Fortunately they patched it for free but it's a bummer this happened to brand new tires!
• Then a few days later we went to take the car out of the garage and the garage door wouldn't open.  After a quick inspection we found that the garage door spring had broken in half.  So we got this fixed (after watching some YouTube videos to see if we could DIY it, the consensus was that messing with garage springs could kill you so we called a professional--$275).  The guy said it wasn't unusual for this to happen as--again, due to it being very hot and dry--garage springs don't last very long here either.  Ugh
• Next, a few days ago, hubby was driving on the freeway, a rock hit the windshield and left a small hole, which quickly turned into a very long crack.  It can't be repaired so we have a guy coming to change out the windshield next week for $275.
• We've done a couple shopping trips to Costco and Sam's Club and it seems like everything has increased in price!  And while it may only be 50 cents or a dollar increase on each product, that really adds up when you buy dozens of products which have all increased in price.  Add to this random trips to other stores where even basic items like hair gel are sold out and shopping has turned into a very frustrating activity!
• Our house has developed a bunch of tiny, niggling problems that are, while not emergencies, they are nonetheless annoying so I ran by Home Depot today and bought everything needed to fix these issues--a light switch with a short, a leaking kitchen faucet, caulking coming off sinks, toilet water valves that don't close all the way--and tomorrow hubby and I will have a field day of fixing things around the house.
• Finally, on a happy note, I got an advertisement from Costco that says they now offer insurance so I called and found that going with their home and car insurance plans would save us about $250 a year so we switched!  Needless to say, I am always on the lookout for ways to save extra money!
  

Spending More, Spending Less

So far we have been quarantined to home, with a couple of trips out for groceries, for about 23 days!

From my calculations, we are spending more on:

• Utilities (I think; we haven't got our utility bills yet but we are using a lot more water theses days as well as gas for cooking and baking).
• Bulk buying (rice, for example).
• Prescriptions (I ordered one of hubby's prescriptions online today and it cost $29 for a three month order, the cost is usually $0).

And spending less on:

• Clothing and household stuff from the Goodwill (I miss going to the Goodwill where I get all of my clothes!).
• Gas (we filled up the car's gas tank about March 15th and we are still on full!).
• Restaurant food (so far hubby has had exactly one hamburger he picked up at Jack in the Box drive thru last week; we are starting to miss our buffet lunches).
• Groceries (we usually stop by the grocery store, 99 Cent store, Walmart, etc. every few days; now we are only going to a couple of stores every week to ten days).
• Entertainment (no bowling, no poker, no other entertainment like the occasional bingo game or movie...staying at home means zero entertainment costs).
• Shopping (I have been thinking about getting a new pair of walking shoes but since I don't know when our walking club walks will resume, I've put this off.  I am also looking for a new tablet but since we are only at home, my laptop works just fine).
• Food (we have gone nearly zero-waste when it comes to food.  Nothing gets thrown out, leftovers are eaten the next day or frozen for a future meal, and nothing is left to rot in the back of the fridge because we don't get around to using it).
• Make up and grooming (I haven't really put on makeup in weeks, hubby cut my hair and he has left his hair to grow out until the salons reopen).
• Travel and events (we had planned to travel a bit this spring and there were several parties and events that we were supposed to attend which were all cancelled so money spent on all of these things was $0).

Apparently being a recluse is a vary cost-saving activity, on the other hand, we can't wait to get back to our usual routine!