A day in my mid-life

I took off work today for a doctors appointment over at Lawton. Mr. C. Woke me up at 6AM. We are putting a roast in slow cooker for our dinner tonight. My husband seen the recipe on Tic Tok and wanted to give it a try. It’s a bit different than our usual roast method.  I will be adding the recipe in a later post. 

We spent 2 hours in the doctors office. I will say that my anxiety was rapidly rising. No way should anyone have to wait that long to be seen. Hopefully the next visit the wait will not be that long. This was the first time to be seen by her, so will see how we like her going forward.  She did seem to go over everything carefully, so that eased my anxiety.  Dr. Grimm seemed friendly enough so that helps. 

Mr. C. And I ate at our favorite Mexican restaurant Espranza’s. He ordered his usual dinner. It has a little of everything. I can’t believe I didn’t take a photo of our lunch!  When Jon delivered our food we dug right into the middle of the plate. 

Pictures or it didn’t happen! As we get older I am trying harder to document our days. Life is too short not to be recording our daily lives. So I am being intentional with memory keeping.  Am still working on a big personal journal and hope  to get it finished by October.  Of course having this blog in place helps to preserve my personal life as well.  If anyone would have told me I’d still be blogging after all these years I would have said no way. Some years I wrote more than others but at least I wrote a few things. 

Our neighbors were having a garage sale. So I walked over when we got home.  Seen several cool things , but I honestly don’t need anything at all.  But found this brand new stationery kit from Hallmark for only $2.00.  In fact I will be writing a letter this evening, hopefully at least a couple of letters. Lately I have enjoyed going to garage sales.  Maybe it’s the thrill of the chase. Might be something Dawn and I could do every now and then. She is always finding good stuff.

We watched an episode of  the new season of Wednesday.  The past season was fun to watch. So hope this season will be even better. 

We just finished watching The Hunting Wives…oh my! Would hope they are going to make a second season. So much happened in that series that it was easy to get confused. Lots of twist and turns. I absolutely enjoyed watching this show. 

So for rest of the day we will probably chill and relax. Being in our mid-life season is pretty basic.  My husband isn’t in the best health so many of our activities revolve around how he feels for the day.  I wouldn’t change our lives ever. 

Retirement thoughts

 

Do you sometimes wonder how you to to this exact point in your life? I always wondered if  I would be here when I was 50ish years old.  Am amazed with my life, it’s much better than I could have ever dreamed.  No it’s not perfect and it’s a lot messy, but wouldn’t trade it for anything else. 

As I look toward retirement I know I am not prepared. I have just started my 401k and Roth plans. So not very much money in them.  Looking back on my past life is I was just trying to survive. Neither one of my parents really spoke about saving money for the future. They did the best they could with what knowledge they had.  I just wish I had someone who could have taught me the importance of saving money. Now I am struggling with when I can retire on just social security. I don’t want to work forever, but realistically I may have to work till I am 65 years old. I haven’t exactly put budget to paper to see what I may be looking at going forward. 

What my mom did teach me was how to be thrifty so I do have that knowledge.  I love thrift stores and watching how people repurpose stuff.  Comparing prices from a few different grocery stores is next on my list to start doing. I do pay for Amazon Prime annually and do feel like it saves me money on shipping. Although I know if I order a certain amount that I will still receive free shipping. We do watch Amazon prime frequently. I already watch for sales on birthday gifts and Christmas gifts. I keep a tote of gifts I pick up thru the year.  For instance I bought a grill utensil set 1/2 off.  When Victoria Secret and Bath and Body have sales I will buy and put up. My love language is gifting others, so I need to save money when I can. 

We live out in the country on 2 acres on a dead end road. Our bills are very reasonable compared to so many others. So we are very fortunate in that area. We don’t have a water bill as we have a water well. The maintenance on it could be expensive but overall it’s been good to us.  We also have a septic system and that has also been a low maintenance system to us.  So as we get older at least our household expenses are lower than others.  

So here I am thinking about my overall life and what budget cuts I can do to make my money stretch. I think I will up the percentage to my Roth plan.  Like seeing the numbers add up each pay period. I won’t miss that money since it will be such a low percent every 2 weeks.  

I am blessed with my life no regrets just wish I had been more wiser with money.  If you have any tips on saving money as I move toward retirement, please drop them below.