Last night we went to the Men’s BB game. They looked pretty bad in the start. Shooting was way off, big lapses in coverage and other things, but they won. The excuse from the radio announcers was that they had the big trip to Cali, and just got home Monday late, had one day to prepare and practice and back in a game. Well guess what it will be that way from now on until late March or early April (we hope). We do have a lot of new guys on the team but they seems to be disjointed. Tomorrow night is the Girls game and I sure hope they are doing better than the men.
Well we are only two days from the trip. I am trying to get all the little stuff done that needs to be done before we leave, as one full week away during my time home puts a crimp in my “things to do” list. Working away from home for more than half the year leaves a lot of stuff that needs to be done or should be done when you get home. Top that off with a week or two on a trip during time off and I am pushed to get it all done.
Critical stuff like getting car tags, paying taxes, etc. all need to be planned out. Getting needed repairs done so you don’t come back to a bunch of “broke” stuff is also pretty important. But even more important is planning so you ensure you can pay for all of it when it needs to be done. In the life past, we might have to just push things aside for a month or two as we didn’t have the funds to cover the costs. When we were young and living “check to check” we had to do a lot more planning than we do now. Back then we started getting Christmas gifts bought by August so they would be spaced out and not a huge drag on our accounts and we “budgeted” for nights out, short trips, everything had to be looked at as do we really want this and how will we pay for it. When your house payment is more than half of your monthly income, or stated better – I got paid bi-weekly and we had to save extra from the second check to pay the house payment at the first of the month as one pay check didn’t cover the house. Now that can be tight and really caused some longer term planning.
Now we don’t have to follow that budget as tight but we should. If I expect to retire soon, we will have to get back to a tight budget as now it is the Health insurance stuff that will kill you. At my age now and not being at Medicare yet, I expect that I will have to pay almost as much as a minimum wage job pays just for that insurance? I am looking and am sure we will h ave to back off to a Very High deductible to just get by for a the few years until I get that help from being 65. I have paid into that fund for 40 years, now I need to collect some of it back. Not my fault if the government didn’t save my payments and invest them wisely so they would have the money to give back.
Today was a check you cloths, check you pocket, check the bills, etc day to make sure it is all set up. I sure like my banks bill-pay. I set up all my recurring payment and even if I forget or get tied up they will get paid, maybe not the exact amount but they won’t likely cut me off for not paying because I forgot. Which brings up that old topic. As you get older your CRS seems to get worse. I now just chalk it up to having too much stuff stored in my brains hard-drive to pull it all back out in a timely manner but in reality my filing system is pretty messed up and things get lost so there are times I just Can’t Remember Sh_t.