ANOTHER WEEK AND AT LEAST WHAT HAS TO BE DONE IS ......DONE!

 Goodness – another week again – seems like I just posted yesterday!!

Have you found that time moves differently since Covid started? I find this. I think I did something a couple of weeks ago and when checking on something about it in my computer organizer – I see that it has been a month and a half!! Things I do by rote, suddenly I forget to do. File on my computer drive are not in the order they should be.

I am trying hard right now to get everything back to where it belongs and how it should be. One problem is that husband was miserable staying home all the time and is now trying to make up for it – I pray for rain so we will stay in the house and I will get things done. Even as I writing and posting this (at 1:30 am) I have just moved the first load of laundry to the dryer and put the second load in to wash.

REALLY need to clean the house. Husband had started vacuuming the floors out of boredom – but no longer does. (I prefer to “Swiffer” them, sound of a vacuum has scared me since I was a child.

Four things I have extremely cautious to do on time – clients tax returns, pay our bills, the laundry, and cook meals/wash the dishes.

Does anyone else use the toe of their “fuzzy” slippers (while wearing them) to gather dust bunnies together and then pick them up and throw them out with their hand?

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

I try to keep doing the little things which HAVE to be done to help me keep going. We are fed. We have clean clothing and towels/bed linens. We have our medications and take them as we should.

What do you ALWAYS do as it so important to be done?

DO YOU MULTI TASK - I AM DOING SO RIGHT NOW!

 I haven't written a post since the start of the month?  I am shocked.  I actually have last week's post writing (and posting of it) checked off in my calendar!  

And nothing special to write this week either.  Hmmm -

Multitasking – that's it!  I do a lot of multitasking to get things done.  As I am writing this the first load of laundry for the week is in the washer.  I am in the kitchen and can sort of hear the washer – plus I set an alarm in my older cell phone to remind to go down in 50 minutes and switch loads.  

I will then transfer this load – all of our clothes from the past week (with two sets of exceptions) to the dryer and toss in the towels and laundry bags to wash.  Reset alarm for another 50 minutes and put the clothes in the laundry basket with husband's shirts laid across the top of the load so they don't get wrinkled.  The towels then go into the dryer.  

If we have used most (or all) of our Covid masks (we are still wearing them when we go out as we are both high risk and many people here still do so) I will throw them into the washer for another load.  I put the masks in smaller sized net bags that zipper closed to protect them in the washer.  I own 3 bags and will spread the masks as evenly as possible in the bags.   The alarm is reset for another 50 minutes.  If not the alarm will not be reset as I don't take the last load out until tomorrow.  

If the masks are in the washer, when I go down again I will put the towels in the larger laundry bag from the dryer and leave it on top of the washer.  The masks will go into the dryer set on half an hour and will be taken out the next day.  I take the masks out of the net bags for drying, but zip the bags closed again and put them in the dryer with the masks.  

Some weeks I have a different third load than the masks.  When I have a load of sweatshirts that I wear to keep warm – in winter as it is cold and in hot weather because husband has the air conditioner on and I get too cold.  These would go in the washer after the towels as an extra load every few weeks when I have used up most of them.  Or I could be washing the sheets and pillowcases from our bed as a third (or even fourth load).  Once in awhile I could also be washing the blankets from the bed as an additional load.  

While all of the laundry is being done I write and post to all of you.  I also visit an online needlework group.  Sometimes I do some clothing repair/sock darning.  

And while I do almost everything in the house – the TV is on for me to “watch” - well, mostly listen to and look up at every now.  

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

Plan to use your time as well as possible.  If you have something that you can “set and forget” such as laundry – use the same time to do something which takes more attention. 

CLEARING OUT THE SPICE CABINET AND MOM'S HOUSE IS NOW CLEARED OUT

Well, mom's house is cleared out according to my sister.  The furniture people did not take much of the furniture as the pieces were “too large”.  Okay, I understand the living room sofa was custom made for the room and is a bit large – it is two or three pieces and goes along two walls, and turns in the corner.  (Let's see, my parents gave me y 6th grade graduation gift -a small portable typewriter – while we were getting the sofa so it is over 50 years old.)  I am not sure, but I would have removed the boards from the dining room table and set them either on it or next to it as with the boards it holds at least a dozen people comfortably and may have looked intimidatingly large with them in – and the boards were in to display stuff for the tag sales.   My dresser was a long one, but the other dresser that was my sister's and her desk were small.  The first fellow took the 3 night stands in the house and the chairs to the kitchen table, but the kitchen table was left and seats 4-5 people so it was not huge.  The dresser in the other small bedroom was smaller than mine, but larger than the small one that my other sister had and my mom's desk in her bedroom was a regular student desk so not large.  Gee, I wonder if they realized (my sister might not have known) that the long server in the dining in front of the window is 3 pieces – two cabinets and the center is a matching section that is empty with fabric on the doors – the radiator was there and this way the heat came through the fabric or the doors could be opened to let more heat into the room – someone might have liked either or both of the actual cabinets- 2 drawers and 2 shelves below – then again they would need to either take half of the large counter top or get new tops for them.  My dad had a lovely old, large desk – also rejected as too large – okay, if it hadn't been I would have taken it, but all I have room for is my old child's desk from when I was in second grade.  (Yes, I am that short – able to use my desk from second grade – still hit my knee on the same spot on the leg of the desk.) 

It bothers me that it does not bother me to have the house emptied and sold.  Will the actual sale make me breakdown wailing?  Has anyone else been through this and not gotten at least a bit upset?

We took my mom to the doctor with the office from h*ll last Friday so he could tell us what we knew from reading the report that was faxed to us instead of to her other doctor.  So all is well with that.  The doctor is very nice – no problem with him, just his office which is not run by him, but by the hospital group he is associate with.  While talking with him I mentioned a little about the problems (4 pm appointment, take in at 5:30,saw doctor at 6 pm) we have had.  Mostly asked if there is way to speak to him by phone as the phone number on the card goes to an office in a different state for making appointments.  He gave us a different number  - but only for questions, not emergencies as only answered during their open hours.  I also managed to, politely, mention that when we came in for the scan the office was closed, lights out, and no one in the building knew about the scan tech being there – he was surprised and said that someone should have been at the reception desk for his office and he would check on this. 

When first married we lived in an apartment.  Husband saw in one of my “ladies magazines”  a project to make a spice cabinet.  He took it and changed it and we made it.  It stands on the floor is about the depth of a cabinet across (used to sit next to the end of the cabinet in the apartment, now next to a small wall about the same depth next to our cabinet (behind the wall is the heat duct for the bathroom above the kitchen).  The original had shelves in the door with holes for test tubes to put spices in.  The one he made us has one shelf on each door with same – and knife blocks below them for our cooking knifes.  We actually put smaller of same in the holes instead of test tubes.  Against the back of the cabinet are thin shelves (cabinet is about 6 inches deep and the shelves are 3 inches deep.  The shelves hold spice bottles and such very well.  The cabinet is just short of 3 feet tall. 

I have the spices arranged so that the ones I use often are in a grabable spot.  But since husband has been cooking for the past 2-3 weeks as I was “covered in germs” - yes, he is that afraid of catching a cold – I had to look into the cabinet to tell him where spices he needed were located.  When I did so my eye fell on a bottle of something called Mrs. Dash.  I have no memory of buying it (well, I don't actually remember buying much of what is in the cabinet) or what the heck we used it for and made a mental note to clear out the cabinet as much as possible  and in my dreams of how much space I would have, dreamed of lining up cans of soup on the shelves where they could easily be seen.

Last weekend (we had reached the point where I was told that I would be “allowed” to start cooking again) and I decided to go through the cabinet.  Mrs. Dash, dill from when I made sour pickles, popcorn flavored saltt, spices that I don't remember using, and a variety of other items – OUT!  I checked a few spices to see what they were used for  - OUT!  Old Bay Seasoning (used on seafood, especially shrimp in the Baltimore, MD area and husband used to use it – not out, he thought maybe we might have shrimp and he would put it on same again or maybe even chicken  - I know it will be too spicy for him, I barely could eat it back then, but I kept it. 

Kept the basics – salt, pepper, lo salt salt.  Ground cinnamon (which I think I have used for some holiday dish I made) and sugar cinnamon (well, it tastes nice on pancakes or French toast) I kept – cinnamon sticks – out.  Nutmeg - used at Thanksgiving – kept.  Cream of tartar – useful for stuff – kept.  Minced onion, minced  garlic and basil -used for tomato “gravy' (sauce).  Bay leaves – used in a beef stew I used to make and plan to make again.  Allspice, ginger, thyme, tarragon, rosemary, marjoram, parsley, oregano – all kept, despite not knowing what we will use them for.  Kept a small jar of sesame seeds – not sure why, just seemed like something to keep.

Also we store in this cabinet wooden toothpicks – used mostly for crafts, but also for food related purposes. 

When I was done I had a half a kitchen garbage bag of bottles – but somehow I hardly picked up room in the cabinet – certainly not enough for the lines of soup cans I had thought I would I store there.  So, what to use the space for?  Well, we take at doctor's “suggestion” a number of OTC vitamins.  The small bottles of them (refilled from larger bottles kept in the kitchen pantry closet) sat on top of the cabinet – along with a candle lamp (looks nice and used in black outs), table salt and pepper shakers, napkin holder with paper napkins, a shop tape measure (meaning not a sewing one), 3 day of the week pill boxes (two his, one mine) and some “dropped there because it is convenient “ paper clips and other similar sized items.  It was actually rather crowded and some things would fall off the top when one walked past.  I put the OTC vitamins in the cabinet on the top shelf.  Now our day of the week boxes on top are no longer sitting between the napkin holder and front of the cabinet – subject to getting knocked off.

So in the end the work did not result in a lot of usable space, but it is better than before and the doors to it do close better than they have in awhile.  As I go along I will think about some of what I kept and if it can go also.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

Doing a small task might be what it is needed to get one started  - or started again – on working on clearing out things no longer needed.  If you find something small and think “well, dealing with that won't do much” if you do it, it might get you started on doing more – since the spice cabinet, I cleared off most of the stuff piled on my dresser.   It was primarily reenacting stuff left after our December event- small items put away where they belong and the clothes I wore (that reek of smoke) are in the basement laundry sorter – to be washed and stored away.  We have 3 plastic boxes in which we keep things such as OTC meds, sickness thermometer and such.  These items are kept in these boxes as the boxes fit in the bag we take when we travel in our RV with all of this – and our prescription meds fit in one of the boxes also.  By keeping the OTC and such in these boxes we don't need one set for home and one set for travel.  In the summer the boxes end up on my dresser (the bag they go in goes under our bedroom TV) and in the cold weather, when we are less apt to travel I put them in the upper shelf of plastic storage piece next to my dresser (in hot weather the spare blanket goes in this space).  So now they are where they belong for the winter and the bag is where it belongs.  I found more socks that were on top of the dresser for darning and now they have joined their need to be darned friends. 

So try one small task that you need to do and see where it leads.  (Now sorting through and storing what I brought from the family house – that is another story – what does one do with the proofs of the yearbook of which one was editor?)

RV, VAN AND OLD PAPERS

Another week, another post.  Mom had 2 surgeries within a week and is now back in her apartment at the assisted living facility.  We will taking her Friday back to the doctor who changed her pacemaker for a checkup and I have to make an appointment for same with the doctor who did her cancer surgery as well as with the one involved with her leg scan as it still has not has been discussed with her.  We did squeeze in appointments with our doctor for us last week – dealing with mom, we had forgotten to make same until the doctor refused to renew our prescriptions because we were so late in doing so. 

Friday we drove to Pennsylvania and picked up our RV – the batteries are working and the entire electrical system was checked and was fine.  Husband is concerned about driving such a distance alone (as I probably mentioned when we had to drive it there) and also concerned about driving alone in the dark – the combination of the two, even more so.  We kept calculating when to go and what to do coming home.  We figured out that we had two choices – both involved trying to get the dealer as early as possible, having lunch at Wendys very quickly and starting home.  In one version we would immediately drive home, this way we would miss Philadelphia rush hour and hoping to avoid rush hour from NYC headed towards our home. The other version involved again leaving immediately after lunch to avoid the Philadelphia rush hour and driving to near the Golden Corral in New Jersey that I am sure I have mentioned before.  We would then go to some stores in that area to spend some time, then have dinner at the Golden Corral and then head home. With this version we should avoid the rush hour from NYC to home, but would be driving in the dark home from Golden Corral.  We figured we would decide after we picked the RV and while eating lunch.  The golden morning time to leave home and head off Long Island for us seems to be 8:30 am – we are following at the end of rush hour and are before the construction work on two of the major roads starts.  We we were out at 8:20 -since we were driving only our van, we did not have to waste time backing the RV out of the driveway (a process that involves walkie talkies and me standing in the middle of a 4 lane road road that has traffic that all speeds – which is why it a problem to begin with.)  We had figured we would get to the dealer between noon and 1 pm.  We got there just after 11 am.  We picked up the RV - “schmoozed” a bit, gassed up the RV and the van for the trip back, spent about 15 minutes having lunch and started home – confident that we would miss the rush hour traffic at both cities.  We did fine in PA – no traffic, NJ not bad almost no traffic.  One very quick stop at a rest area for me to use the facilities – so fast, I left my cell phone in the RV and husband waited out there so we did not have to shut everything did – I ran literally both ways and we were off again.  Then we hit Staten Island  (NYC) and there was traffic, but it was not bad – 15 minute part of the trip maybe was 25 minutes.  We then crossed the bridge to Long Island.  The limited access roadway we have to taken home was BAD.  How bad?  The signs on the bridge said not to exit to it, to exit to a local street that allows later connection to the roadway – which we take anyway.  It took us 2.5 hours to the dealer – it took us 5 hours home – and that was with arriving in NYC at 3 pm.  Another day of our lives – gone.

But the RV is home and working properly again – so all is well – right?  Driving home husband found that the brakes were squealing so today they were at our mechanic again.  He said they were okay to use – a problem sometime down the road as there is rust. 

Wait a second, have to run to the basement to switch laundry loads and check the heat in the PackTite.

Back.  Normally I have a load of clothes, a load of towels, and a load of bed linens each week with a load of jeans every few weeks.  With all this going on, I have not changed the bedding in a couple of weeks – no time to do so and saves a wash load (yes, I think ewwww also, but it will done soon).  This week I have a load clothes, a load of sweatshirts and nightgown – I bought 3 new ones and have worn a few of them and they don't fit in the general clothes load, a load of towels, and a load of jeans.  I also have a load of white reenactment clothing (much “small clothes” - undergarments, all of which are white) from our last couple of events and a second load of the rest of our outfits – next time we will need them is December and I want them clean so I don't have to run at the minute to wash them – some of the pieces need ironing also.  Just put the general clothes load into the dryer and the sweatshirt load into the washer. 


At the same time I have been going through the bags of stuff from the family home.  Being a crazy person who had bed bugs. I fill (lightly) our PackTite heater with some of the stuff and heat at it night – mixed with whatever fabric or paper items we have in addition to be heated.  Then the next afternoon I go through the stuff from the house after putting away the stuff from our house that was added in.  Today I went through the papers from our wedding – 40 years ago.  All of the response cards & envelopes – shredded, set up invitation with all the papers which were included and put it in the shoebox that I have as a “memory box” of the stuff I am finding and want to keep from all this, shredded the other invitations, tossed out the other response cards (no names, etc. on them), I kept the blank envelopes for the invitations – can always use larger envelopes, have set aside the unused response envelopes they do have my parents and name and address, but I will see if labels will cover same and decide if we are keeping them or they are being shred, shredded the receipt for the wedding (what a waste of $8,000 – I was right, we should have just gotten married & not bothered with a wedding), and shredded the seating charts and other papers.  I kept the box that it was all in.  Good box.  Apparently there is much more than my stuff in what my sister set aside for me – work papers of my dad's and other financial stuff.  I have a found a certificate given to my other sister when she graduated from high school (she is 55 now).  I scanned it, emailed it to her and asked if she wanted the certificate or what.  I found old bank statements and similar of mom's and even some of dad's (he died in the mid 1990's).  I found a dividend check for $4.50 that was never cashed – I will see if it can cheaply somehow be replaced – but 1994 was a long time ago.  More to do tomorrow after the current load is heated – this load also has some yarn husband bought for weaving project to sell and a new sweatshirt that I bought  - both today. 

At least every year I go through the papers from 10 years before and get rid of almost all of them – 25 years is a long time to keep bank statements and a check.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

So progress is being made on the stuff from mom's house. I am trying to keep up on household chores – dishes washed after dinner and after night snack (only meals we eat home).  Obviously laundry being done.  Towels changed and into the laundry.  (If only I did not hate changing the bedding and folding same after it is washed even more than more than cleaning toilet bowls – I figured it out – my arms are too short to deal with sheets easily.)

Any suggestions for my family and me about dealing with all of the stuff from the house?

CLEARING OUT THE FAMILY HOME.

I have several large plastic bags with stuff that we took from my family home.

I am not calling it mom's house as my sisters and I do as it is really the family home. My family moved there when I was 5. My (now) middle sister was 6 months old and “baby” sister was 7 years in the future. While I remember the apartment that my parents and I – and middle sister briefly – lived in before the house, my sisters have no memories of any other home growing up. It was a huge house to me coming from the 3 room apartment we lived in before. When middle sister was born I was moved from sleeping on the opposite side of my parents bedroom from where they slept (I often wonder how they managed to create my sister with me sleeping in their bedroom) to a cot in the living room. Since the only TV (a large 1950s console set) was in the living room I got to watch such late night shows as “the Late Show” (old movies) and the early versions of “the Tonight Show – back when Johnny Carson was just a page at NBC, California with my parents – or they could not watch them. I have been thinking a lot about those early days of our family lately – both as my mother is 90 and with the clearing out of our house for the sale of it. I have not taken a lot of family stuff as I am in my mid 60s and have no children to inherit any of the family house – it will eventually reside with my niece or nephew any way.

Since we had the bed bugs here in our home I am always concerned about getting them again. We have a device called a Packtite. It is the size of a very large softsided suitcase with a rack and a heater in it. It is intended to place suitcases in after one has been on a trip to heat the suitcases and what is in them to kill any bed bugs that might have come home with one. Because I am a crazy person, we have it set up with a laundry basket – that we drilled in holes in the bottom of to allow for air flow – in it and we heat any soft items – paper, fabric and the like that we bring into the house – that we are concerned might have bed bugs in them. So the items from my family home - mostly papers and needlework of mine from when I was much younger – all has to be heated.

I am doing so in small batches and have finished two large bags so far. I am going through these items I took when there or my sister set aside for me. (She said she had a box for me – I expected an office files sized box- there were two of them plus other stuff in the box she left.) It is a trip down memory lane and a record of what I considered important enough to keep at one or another point in time. I have found work appointment books from my early days in accounting (could have used one of them when I was positive that I knew a building in a scene on “Blue Bloods” and went crazy to find it and then figure out how I knew it – it was where a client had his factory – the work appointment books also have clients contact info). School grades – I did as badly as I remember. Lots of occasion cards – birthdays, engagement – ours and friends, anniversaries, Valentines (old boyfriends same went straight to the paper shredder), and so on. I have been weeding through – baby age birthday cards, one copy of wedding related paper items, cards from certain people – parents, sisters, husband, a few very good friends, a special aunt &uncle, my grandparents were kept – others were shredded. I found some remembrances of things such as graduation or awards programs – kept, articles I had published in the college newspaper – kept, personal diaries – kept.

Of course I am keeping my needlework – finished or not. I did leave behind two latch hooked throw rugs that were finished except for the edging as I figured they might sell and make a couple of buck for mom, plus husband said to me as I looked at them “Where would we put them?”. I did decide after leaving them if when we went back they were still there I would take them – but we did not get back while they were still in sight.

So I am trying to figure out what to add to the mess of stuff here in husband and my home, without going overboard. I was a bit “lucky”. My toys would have been the hardest to deal with and decide who “lived” and who “died” but the house was hit by Hurricane Sandy and the basement where most of the toys were flooded and they had to be tossed out then by the crew that came in and worked on the basement. Not only were they not there for me to deal with, I had already “mourned their loss”.

There were 5 items in particular that I was looking for. My Girl Scout sash -with my few badges and my annual star pins on it. I had put together a loose leaf book with hand copied lyrics to old folk songs. My dad had given me one of his army shirts from when he was in same during World War II during the late 1960s/early 1970s when wearing army shirts was popular. There is a stapled binding, thin, soft-covered book about our family in “the old country”. Lastly, when I was in high school I embroidered a table cloth. When I got married we could not find it, I figured if any of it ever would turn up – it would be as the house was emptied. I have the army shirt and the loose leaf book of song lyrics. The other items did not show up.

There has been a tag sale by a company that my sister found and much of the contents of the house are gone. We have to go in and clean and fix it up a bit before we sell it. The next day neighbor already is telling us about someone she knows who is interested in the house.

Just in case anyone is interested – mom has had her pacemaker (or its battery – story of what is to be done was different to my sister and me) replaced, so we won't have to figure out how to plug into a wall outlet if it dies. :-) She has also had (within the same week) surgery to remove a lesion that was causing her anemia. As of tonight she is back in her apartment at her assisted living facility – pretty good for a 90 year old woman I think.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK - If you were getting ready of your family home – or your own home – what would you be looking for as you would want to make sure that you kept them?

WATCH THE PENNIES AND THE DOLLARS GROW

Yes, saving money involves being organized.  One thing that husband and I agreed on - very early in our dating - was that neither of us liked being in debt.  The day before we were married I paid for every one of my bills sitting waiting to be paid - including adding up the credit card slips and sending a check for same to the credit card company.  I never wanted husband to be able to say that I married him in debt.  (Well, technically I was in debt - my student loans were still being paid off by my parents and were not fully paid off until some time after we married - but he has been polite enough to never mention same.)

When I was a child - before age 5 - my parents started teaching me about money.  I got an allowance of something like a penny (US) a week.  Now, remember, both my parents were accountants.  My mom set up a “bank account” for me.  She drew up a little bank book (do they still exist now?).  When I received my allowance I could keep it and spend it (amazingly, one could actually buy things then with a penny) or I could deposit it in my bank account and save up for something.  If I “deposited” it in the “bank account” she would note in my bank book.  If I decided to buy something and needed money, I could withdraw it from my bank account and she would note it in my bank book.  Sounds crazy right?  Well it taught me to save and what saving could do.  (I don’t remember if she ever added interest to my account - I don’t think so.)  If I got a gift of money from a relative I could, again, keep it and spend it or “deposit” it.

 Over the decades the amount of my weekly allowance increased.  By the time I was in junior high school (around age 12) I was getting $3 per week.  My allowance was calculated so that I could buy lunch in school every day (50c per day), if I wanted to, from my allowance and I would still have money left over to spend.  Over time I saved up money and took my parents and my younger sister (second sister was still a baby) to see a Broadway play (tickets were a lot cheaper than - under $10 even for orchestra seats and I bought for the mezzanine). 

We have lived within our means since we married.  We found an apartment that we could afford.  At first we were spending most of our income.  As we went along I came up with an idea.  Husband received promotions at work - first director of his department and then director of the agency at which he worked.  With the first promotion I took half of the increase in his net salary and saved it - only using half of the net salary increase for spending.  Why?  Well, we had been living on the amount he (and I ) received before - the raise was extra money that we would not miss if we put it in savings.  I used the net amount (after taxes were deducted) as that amount was the extra money available to us.  I did for some time. 

Watch where you bank.  Different banks, savings & loan associations or credit unions can charge hugely different amounts for the same services.  A credit union functions just like a bank, only the depositors own it so fees are less.  The same financial institution that works for a friend or family member - might not be best for you and what is good for you now (or last year) might not be the best for you right now or in the future.  The credit unions I have been involved with locally require one to deposit $5 in a savings account and leave it there. One then gets a free checking account plus can make other deposits and withdrawals to the savings account.  Generally the interest rate on credit union accounts is higher than those on accounts at banks.


We eventually bought a house.  We bought one below what we could afford.  We put down a good sized down payment on the house  - much of it from my savings as a child.  We did not like the idea of having a mortgage and wanted it paid off as quickly as we could.  Instead of dividing the net salary increases in half after that, I would divide into thirds - one third to spend, one third to save and one third for extra mortgage payments.  We paid the mortgage off in half the time it was for - again since the money was new money, it was not missed by us as we had not had it to spend before. 

When we have bought cars - and we buy them, we do not lease them - we have mostly paid for them in full from savings. When we have had to take a loan - 3 times - for a car it was always for less than 25% of the price of the car.  We drive them, with two exceptions, until it no longer makes sense to repair them.  We have 23 year old van and a 10 year old car at the present time. 

We did buy our little RV.  It does have a loan on it.  I send an extra $100 at least 4 times a year to speed up the payments on it and cut the amount of interest we will have paid on it when it is paid off.

We have paid our credit card bills in full - with one exception - since either of us had a credit card.  No interest paid means money not needed for same and available to use.  I recently read an article and the person who wrote it said that one should always pay in cash for everything.  I wrote to them and pointed out that if items are put on credit cards one has a record of where their money went (and records for tax deductible items).  If they are paid in full, it costs nothing in interest or fees.  If one gets a credit card one can get one that pays a very small percentage back in cash - additional money to spend or save.  In our case we use several credit cards - each for a different purpose and depending on the card and what we buy we can get up to 5% back in the purchases. Does not sound like much?  We bought a fence for our house - we got 5% back on the price of the fence.  We put a car down payment on a credit card - paid the credit card in full and got 5% back on the down payment towards the car.  The one exception was decades ago.  Husband used to get his unused sick days paid off at the end of the year, which was August, so we used the money received in September for the sick days to pay for vacation (and the balance of what was received into savings).  One year there was a problem and the sick day pay was coming in October.  We discussed should we take money from savings to pay the vacation bills and then deposit the sick pay to replace what we took or should we pay the half of the credit card bill we could and then pay the balance in full the following month.  It was an odd time and the two interest rates were just about the same, so we went with paying half and then paying the bill in full the following month.

If one can get their bills in order, one can actually pay less and have money available for savings or needed items.  I was reminded this past weekend when the movie “I Remember Mama” was on TV that I actually started my thinking of dealing with money with when I read the book (actually named “Mama’s Bank Account) as a girl.  If you have never seen the movie or read the book - it is about a lower class Norwegian immigrant family in San Francisco in the early 1900s.  Every week the father brings home his wages (in cash which was how people were paid back then at all but professional/executive level) and gives it to his wife.  She sits there with paper and sorts the money “ for the grocer” she makes a pile and wraps it in paper, “for the landlord” ditto and so on. When there is a problem and money is needed for something special/different (such as the son going to high school - they will his potential wages and there will be costs) the mother says that they must figure out what to do so that they do not have to take money from her bank account.  I have gone with this idea of “piles.  I have moved money - in my computer accounts - to save for various things.  By subtracting the money before we have it on our regular savings account, it is not there to spend.  I had subaccounts in my Quickbooks - savings for next car, for vacation, etc. subtracted from the total amount of each paycheck and each time I did I heard in my head “for the grocer, for the landlord..”.  (Spoiler alert - at the end of the book/movie the daughter/author has received her first payment for writing and tells the mother to deposit it in the bank account and the mother admits that she has never been in a bank in her life - but that “it is not a good for children to worry”.)  Set aside money in advance for things that you want or need and you will not have to worry.  Start next time there is a raise if you want and set aside part of the net raise in a savings account (or even a jar) and it will become a habit.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

It is back to school time again.  If you need or know that you will need office supplies - now is the time to buy them.  Pens disappear all the time?  Buy them for around US$ for a dozen.  Will you need a memo book, notebook, ruler, file folders etc.  NOW is the time to buy them!

               

INCOME TAXES ARE DUE IN A MONTH

Here in the US it is that time of year again - tax season.  This year there is even more pressure due to the changes in the tax law and the resulting changes in tax forms.  (If you are here in the US and you have not seen the new forms - they are small, at least for the 2 main pages.)   Some of you may find that your taxes are lower - others will find that they are higher - and I don’t mean your refund, I mean your actual taxes.  Don’t forget, you have an actual tax amount that is calculated by filling in your tax form, then subtracting from that amount the amount you prepaid during the year - through withholding and/or payment of estimated.  So if one’s withholding, say from one’s paycheck - the common thing from which most people have withholding taken - is more than it has been, one will either be overpaid more than usual and get a refund or owe less than usual and pay in less - but one’s actual tax - the total of the amounts withheld, paid as estimates and any amount due (or less any amount withheld) is your actual tax amount.  Does that make sense?  Due to the changes many people will have had less withheld from their paycheck  - so if their tax is the same as last year’s - they will either owe more or receive less as a refund, even though their tax is the same.

Supposedly most people will be paying less in actual tax (the total mentioned above), but many will not.  A client of mine is retired and in the past paid no income tax due to high itemized deductions.  This year due to the changes I estimate that his poor man will be paying around $600 in taxes.  IRS has an online calculator to check one’s withholding and I had used it during 2018 to check all of my clients (and my) taxes with it, and this calculation is done using same. 

He is retired.  His income is almost entirely Social Security.  His deductions should be the same as last year.  How come his taxes are higher than before?  Well, the information about the changes left out some things - one of them is that is in past years each person was entitled to a personal exemption of (in recent years) just over $4000.  They were eliminated in the changes.

What does this mean?  If one has always filed using standard deduction then one was entitled the standard deduction plus a personal exemption for themselves plus same for each person they were taking as dependants, plus their spouse (on the same return filing jointly or their own return if filing married separately).  So a couple was entitled to exemptions totaling $8000, a family of 4 was entitled to exemption totaling $16,000 and those exemptions no longer exist.  If one is taking the new standard deduction and one is single with no dependants than their new standard deduction is more than last year’s standard deduction plus exemption , but if they have any dependants - such as a single mom with a child, it is less than same was.  Similarly, a couple with no dependants will find that the new standard deduction for same is more than the old standard deduction plus their 2 personal exemptions totaled, but if they have additional dependants - children and/or elderly parent for example - the new standard deduction will be less than the old one plus their personal exemptions were.

Now, if one has been itemizing deductions they were also entitled to the personal exemptions, and are no longer entitled to same, but since they listed their actual deductible expenses they do not pick up anything additional to replace their lost personal exemptions.  In addition a variety of items which were deductible in the past in a category of “other deductions” if the category was more than 2% of their income are no longer deductible.  Depending on where they live they may also be losing part of their state income tax/real estate deduction.  Now, it is possible that the new standard deductions might be higher than their itemized deductions and they can take same as deduction, but chances are that even if this is the case, it will still be less than they were able to deduct last year as itemized deductions plus personal exemptions  - whether they have other dependants or not. 

So, this year make sure to gather your related tax papers - W2 forms, assorted 1099 forms, forms from any other income you have - such as K1s and records of other any other income you have to list.  Then make sure that you have all of your deductions - medical (insurance premiums, copayments, deductible payments, doctors, prescriptions, etc. ), taxes - real estate, state & local income taxes (still allowed up to $10,000), interest on your mortgage, and charitable contributions.  (Medical is still limited to same in excess of a certain amount).  Make sure that you check carefully with your tax preparer as to what else you should include this year.  Don’t wait until the time to file is about to approach (only just over a month left) in case you have any questions or find that you need to come up with money to pay income taxes that you did not anticipate paying.  If you due your own returns - leave extra time to figure out the new forms.  There are some programs that will help one prepare their taxes (free) if you need help including one called VITA from IRS that uses volunteers to help people.

Your state income tax forms may have been changed also as a result of the Federal changes.  The state I live in has traditionally used the Federal return information as a start and one then made changes to it.  This year those changes include allowing some of the items no longer allowed on the Federal return (such as real estate taxes in excess of $10,000) and will have extra forms to fill in for same also. 

And this is a good time to decide to do better to have your paperwork organized for next year when tax season comes again.


Past posts on income taxes that may be of interest to you -
http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2016/03/gathering-papers-for-income-taxes-part-1.html
http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2016/03/gathering-papers-for-income-taxes-part-2.html
http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2017/04/holidays-and-taxes-unrelated-subjects.html
http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2018/02/income-taxes-are-here-again.html

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

Take the time to put together your tax papers properly and completely now, while there is time to find missing information or get it replaced.  If you have someone do your income taxes - contact them soon about having your taxes done.  If you do your own - leave extra time this year to figure the changes that have been made and how they affect you. 

As you put together the paperwork - think about what you can do to make next year’s taxes either
 to do.

Again, this is general information and not tax preparation information related to you.  Check with your tax preparer about your specific information needed. 

PAYING BILLS

Well, the smoke smell finally left the house. 

It occurred to me in looking at last week’s post that it makes no sense to someone reading it that I have to be home to pay a bill.  It was not the writing of the check (yes, I still pay my bills by check) or the need to mail out the bill and payment (yes, I still pay my bills by mail), but the fact that money needed to pay the bill would not be credited to our bank account until today, the 11th.  It would go into our savings account and I had to be here to transfer the money needed to pay the bill into our checking account.  I like to do this so I know that the money is actually in the checking account and did not for some reason go awry.  If something did happen the savings account would be short funds and I would not be able to transfer the money - but at least I would know of the problem and would be able to cover the checks I needed to send out in another way, while I tracked down where the money owed to us was. 

We did drive down to Pennsylvania last Saturday and had a very nice day.  The weather was sunny and warm - but not the hot weather that had been there during last week and there was no rain.  We did lose an hour locally in transit as there was roving road repairs being done - and the GPS did not know that how long the delay was or did not care.

Since we had to stay home to transfer money to pay a bill, I thought I would talk about paying bills today.  I deal with bills for a living, you probably only deal with yours or maybe yours and your business’s bills.  The idea for personal or business bills are basically the same - make sure the amount you were billed is right and pay them - on time.

I admit to probably being older than most of you and grew up with paper bills and paper checks.  Therefore I am more comfortable using them than paying bills online.  It is not that I am new to computers or a “late adaptor”.  I learned to program computers when they were huge mechanical devices.  The one I learned to program, in Fortran II, was the size of a good sized office desk (which were also larger back then than they are now) and there was a second device the same size to compile the program.  Today the compiler is software, not hardware.  Heck, even the keyboard setup to punch the software and/or data into cards was larger than even my desktop computer is today. My problem is that having learned to work with computers so long ago I have learned the concept that no computer is secure (and we did not have the computers connected to the Internet back then).  When I am not using a computer it is turned off and unplugged - the exception being that if a laptop needs charging it may be off and charging. 

So, I am more comfortable paying my bills by check.  I have written abit about this before - http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2017/04/last-October-10-26-16-i-posted-on.html

We don’t like to be in debt.  We pay our credit card in full every month. 

Well, except one month.  When husband was working full time he would receive any unused sick pay when the new company year started in September.  (They operated on a school year as they were partly a school.)  We would take our vacation in August as I could take time off then and the place he worked would close for 2 weeks in August.  So the unused sick pay was rather convenient to cover the charge card bills from vacation.  One year the sick pay was delayed a month.  Our choice was to take money out of savings and pay the bill in full, or pay part and pay the balance the following month when the money came in.  It was one of those odd periods in which the interest rates on debt and the interest rates on savings were about the same.  We decided to pay half the bill and then pay the other half, plus any new charges in full, the following month and that is what we did.

We have taken out some loans over the decades. We only do so for large items - house, car, RV.  Everyone of them has had every payment made on time - with some of them we have paid them off in less time than originally scheduled by making extra principal payments.  (More on this next week.)

Medical insurance and bills - have also been paid in full, although we have been lucky enough to have our medical insurance covered by his employer while husband was working.  In addition the largest medical bills we had were when husband had cataract surgeries.  We had the sort of insurance that covers more of the bills for “providers” in their plan and less, although still most, of the bills for providers not in their plan.  Our doctor was the latter. We paid our share of about $4000 on the two surgeries in full to the doctor. 

Oh, a thought here - make sure you know what is covered on your medical insurance - if you can use a provider who is covered it will save you money - expenses might not even be covered if your doctor, pharmacy, etc. is not on their list and you will be stuck for the full cost. In addition make sure that you check your bills for accuracy and if there is a question or problem don’t just accept it.  When husband had his first surgery (each eye was done separately) the insurance company rejected the claim.  The doctor’s office assure me that it was not my problem, they would have to “eat” the costs.  I did not let it go.  I telephoned the insurance company and asked what had happened - I had followed all of the rules for an out of the plan doctor, etc.  I was told some stupidity that the claim was not submitted in time.  Turned out that the doctor’s office had a O for a 0 or a 0 for an O and it was rejected.  When it was fixed and they went to resubmit it, they were told that it was too late to do so and there was no record of the original, rejected submission.  I called the insurance company again and started, politely complaining.  Not much was happening.  I told them that my husband decides which policies everyone at work will have (this was true).  I suddenly had a phone call from the insurance company that there had been an error - the surgery had been preapproved (which it had been) and therefore was covered.  (We were extremely popular at the doctor’s office after that.)  So know what has to be done and do it to make sure that your claims are covered - follow up with the doctor’s staff to make sure they do what they need to do and make sure you do what you need to do.  If you need to have a referral, have it - and make a photocopy for yourself in case it “gets lost”. 

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

Basically we try to live within our income and waste as little as possible of our money paying interest charges and not paying other fees.  We live comfortably but not over the top.  We don’t eat at expensive restaurants.  We find discounted movie theaters or discounted tickets to same.  We drive Chevys not Cadillacs, BMWs or Mercedes Benz.  (You do know that Chevy and Cadillacs have “twin cars” don’t you - as do Ford and Lincoln.)  We sleep better at night not worrying about huge bills or mounting interest charges. 

Other posts will follow on related financial matters including some of the things we have done to “find” money for bills and for savings.