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I am a retired Information Technology specialist who worked for 34 years at a large aerospace corporation in the northeast USA. I retired at 58. ~~~ I married my college sweetheart at 23 while in grad school. We have adult children who are married and have further blessed us with grandchildren. ~~~ We are enjoying retirement, enabled to live at a slower pace and setting our schedules however we choose. We have two fantastic border terriers that we spend lots of time with in the outdoors and at various dog events. In addition to hiking, we also love to bike and kayak. Working in our gardens and yard also fills much of our time in the warmer months. And any time of the year we love to visit local breweries to take in a good beer and meal. ~~~ From my earliest memories, I was always frugal. I have consistently been interested in making the most of the money we earned trying to balance its use for both the present and future. Fortunately, that went well enabling us to comfortably retire at a relatively young age.
Comments
Here is just one example of what I mean by deceitful: https://yankeeinstitute.org/2026/02/26/connecticut-wants-to-ban-your-leaf-blower-and-use-your-electric-bill-to-pay-for-it/
Post: All you need to know about health insurance, social security and utility bills – sort of
Link to comment from February 26, 2026
Although I have a hard time following this guidance myself, most of the time it is better not to offer advice (especially to adults) unless you are first asked for it.
Post: Do some seniors make life more difficult for themselves?
Link to comment from February 21, 2026
I use Boldin which I recommend as a very good full featured financial planning product. It can handle all of the options you mention and so much more. It has both a crippled free tier, and a paid tier that currently costs $144/year. But there is a 14 day free trial for the full featured version.
Post: Maximizing Lifetime Retirement Spending
Link to comment from February 5, 2026
The website is called FIDSAFE: https://www.fidsafe.com/index.html Very Basic but might be useful. One nice feature is that it has a mechanism to provide access to someone you designate in advance after proof of your death via a death certificate.
Post: Financial Happiness
Link to comment from January 24, 2026
An additional technique to help your children improve their credit rating (FICO score) is to add them as an "authorized user" on one of your long term credit cards WITHOUT giving them access to the card. When you add someone as an authorized user, the entire history of that specific credit card account, including the age of the account and the payment history, is typically reported to the authorized user’s credit bureau file.
Post: The Debt Free Penalty.
Link to comment from January 23, 2026
In general I am not in disagreement with the general thrust of your forum post. However, for the "Utility Bill" item, at least in my state (Connecticut), there are some monthly "fees" built in that are really hidden taxes on people who are actually paying for electricity. These fees are called "Public Benefits" charges. On average, the Public Benefits charge typically makes up between 20% and 30% of a standard Eversource residential bill. The "Public Benefits" charge in a CT Eversource utility bill is a collection of costs for state-mandated programs that the utility is required by law to fund. Importantly, Eversource does not keep this money as profit; they collect it from you and pass it through to the state or specific programs. These programs include: - Hardship Programs: This includes the "Systems Benefit Charge," which funds assistance for low-income residents, prevents shutoffs during winter months, and supports programs like Operation Fuel. - Energy Efficiency: Funds "Energize CT" initiatives, such as home energy audits and rebates for energy-efficient appliances. - Renewable Energy: Supports the CT Green Bank and provides incentives for residential solar and electric vehicle (EV) charging. Thus, paying electric customers are funding programs decided on by the state government and not for electricity itself. =========== This is the kind of financial manipulation by our particular state government that I judge to be deceitful: Using our utility bill to pay for governmental programs that should be debated in a more fully transparent way. https://ctmirror.org/2025/05/19/ct-public-benefits-charge/
Post: All you need to know about health insurance, social security and utility bills – sort of
Link to comment from January 8, 2026
According to a CPI Inflation Calculator I found, $10,000 in 1968 is equivalent to $91,000 in 2025. If that is true, you two were already above average in income...
Post: Fifty-seven years and counting and it’s snowing…again.
Link to comment from December 14, 2025
In addition to Windows PCs and devices running Linux, I have also used Chromebooks since they were first made available in 2010 (I received a prototype for free from Google for early adopter review). Since then I have had several different Chromebooks with ever expanding functionality and quality. I just upgraded to the latest and greatest available: Lenovo Chromebook Plus (14″ MediaTek) If you are a user of the Google ecosystem and don't need to run Windows applications, and mostly just access web based content, I highly recommend Chromebooks for their ease of use and maintainability. They can also run Android and Linux applications. They are a very useful tool.
Post: How to buy a laptop computer in an AI world
Link to comment from December 5, 2025
Just saw this article and thought I would share: https://behavioralscientist.org/why-dont-people-return-their-shopping-carts-a-somewhat-scientific-investigation/
Post: Shopping carts. Please don’t consider this a rant. It is a lamentation.
Link to comment from November 18, 2025
Yes, some services don't allow you to eliminate phone based mechanisms (text or call) even after you have enabled other 2FA methods (TOTP or Passkeys). That is very unfortunate. As an alternative for text based authentication, you might want to use a service like Google Voice, as it can be used to receive texts to Google Voice (instead of to a particular phone). You can access those texts via the website and/or have them forwarded as desired - I have them sent to my email account. But if you have implemented Passkeys and/or TOTP I would recommend disabling text based 2FA wherever you can after you are sure that your other mechanisms are working successfully in all situations and you have duplication of those mechanisms through various means.
Post: Beefing Up Security
Link to comment from November 16, 2025