DrLefty

Comments

• What a lovely tribute to Tory. I hope family and friends who knew her will find it comforting as you confront that painful anniversary. I resonate both with your reflections on grief (not being linear or disappearing) and with your insistence on remembering the person and not just their addiction. I remember when my father died of a heart attack in 2000 at age 61. I would be shocked by the sudden waves of grief crashing over me, like when I heard Christmas carols in the grocery store the day after Thanksgiving. My dad sang in the church choir and loved Christmas music. There I was in the frozen food section, just losing it. Around the same time, the movie "Meet the Parents" came out, and the Robert DeNiro character reminded me of what a hard time my dad gave my boyfriends when I brought them home. For the first time since we lost him, the memories made me smile and laugh. I still love that movie just for that reason. My dad also struggled with depression and anxiety and drank to excess. Sometimes when he'd had too much to drink, he'd call me late at night. I had two young children and a demanding career, and the lost sleep from these calls was costly, but I learned some things about him in those calls that I wouldn't have known otherwise. Anyway, peace and blessings to you and yours as you remember and celebrate dear Tory. Thanks for writing this beautiful piece.

  Post: My Sister – A Reflection One Year Later

  Link to comment from August 12, 2026

• Jerry, we have a Bible study (church-sponsored) that meets in our home. There are 13 of us, six couples and a single. The oldest couple turned 70 last year. The youngest member will turn 60 next March. All of us have adult children. We started meeting in 2020, and in the 6+ years we've been together, six members have lost a parent, three couples have become first-time grandparents, and another couple and the single have added new grandchildren. All of us except one couple had COVID, several of us multiple times. There have been two cancer diagnoses, one heart attack, and myriad other health issues around the group. Plenty of worries/events with our kids--car accidents/injuries (that was our daughter, twice), prison time/mental illness, unemployment, estrangement--oh, and three weddings, too. Part of this is the natural consequence of the stage of life we're all in together, but it certainly makes it all a bit easier to take when you have friends who will pray for you, bring you meals when you're sick or lost a loved one, provide gifts for a new grandbaby, and so on.

  Post: Looking Back On My Hard Luck Days

  Link to comment from August 10, 2026

• I think there are studies showing that petting a dog or cat actually can lower blood pressure! And, of course, the obvious benefit of needing to exercise a dog.

  Post: What is the right percentage?

  Link to comment from August 10, 2026

• He loves dogs, and in some ways, I think it is good for him. But he can barely use either arm because of his shoulder issues, and it’s hard for him to manage even a small (and energetic) dog without help. Right now he doesn’t have any help, so it does feel like yet another problem we may have to solve in due course. But just to put your mind at ease, no one is planning to try to take the pup away from him.

  Post: Before Someone Else Decides

  Link to comment from August 10, 2026

• I read this piece when it first posted last week but am coming back to it because we’re living some of it in real time. My husband’s widowed stepfather is 84, frail, and has ongoing health issues. For example, he’s about to undergo his third shoulder surgery since February because the first two failed (hardware problems). He lives alone in Southern California, 400 miles from us, and even further from his only child, who lives with his family in Virginia. It’s been clear for a while that he shouldn’t be living by himself, and (incomprehensibly) he also decided a few months ago, while still recuperating from round 1 of shoulder surgery, that it was a great time to adopt a puppy(!). We’re having conversations with him and about him that he needs help, whether it’s caregivers in his SoCal home or moving to our town or to Virginia. We’re not quite at the “someone else will decide” stage with him, but it’s getting very close. It’s a volatile situation. The hard part, of course, is that he’s still an independent adult and we can’t just decide for him (yet).

  Post: Before Someone Else Decides

  Link to comment from August 10, 2026

• As others have said, this is a very individualized discussion that a lot of authors have tried to throw generic answers/calculators at. Once my husband shifted from a state agency to the private sector ten years ago, our income jumped sharply. We weren’t spending all of it, not even close, and we were never going to spend all of that as retirees. Replacing 100% of our highest income was never going to be either realistic or necessary. So for retirement planning, back in 2019, we built a spreadsheet (of sorts—I’m not very good at them) that details our actual spending (and update it at intervals). The goals has always been to marshal our sources of income (pensions, savings, SS in due course) so that we could comfortably maintain our spending. We’ll have to keep adjusting as things change. For example, I’m still gathering information about the actual monthly costs of the home we moved into three months ago. Once we get a dog, he’ll go into the spending plan, too. I imagine that things like less travel and more health care costs will also factor in over time.

  Post: What is the right percentage?

  Link to comment from August 10, 2026

• I’ve also been shifting toward frugality, and it’s more conscious than not. It’s not because of my own retirement in that my take-home pension income is higher than my take-home pay was (I had a lot of voluntary and involuntary deductions). It’s because my husband is planning to reduce to 50% time a couple of months from now AND we made a home purchase that added both current new expenses (an upcoming renovation, moving expenses) and ongoing ones. I’ve been way more intentional about things like using points and miles for flights and hotels rather than paying cash for a nicer hotel. So we’re staying at more mid-range places than luxury ones, but whatever—as long as there’s a bed and a shower, you have what you need, right? Anyway, I’ve definitely noticed a shift in my thinking about how I/we spend money. I’ve always leaned frugal, and my husband would say “we can afford it.” Now he’s more receptive to my thoughts about being prudent with our spending because of our recent choices. Could we keep spending in a (relatively) more profligate manner? Perhaps. But I’m not comfortable cutting things too close. You never know what’s around the corner.

  Post: Subconscious Frugality

  Link to comment from July 31, 2026

• W were in Chicago for four days last week, too. My husband had a conference, and I tagged along and then we stayed two extra days to have some fun. Weather was fantastic. We ate a couple of excellent meals and went to exhibits at the science and industry museum. We also love the Art Institue and went on the architectural river boat tour a couple of years ago.

  Post: Go While You Still Can

  Link to comment from July 31, 2026

• I wrote my own reflections on completing one full year of retirement at the beginning of July, but since then I’ve added a new experience that turned out to be surprisingly satisfying and challenging. Our church has for many years offered a large summer day camp for kids, usually during the middle week of July. My own kids went to it long ago, but being past that stage of life now, I haven’t been involved in it. This year, a friend asked me to be his assistant director for the drama team he’s been leading for five years. He is VERY talented at it—he writes a script for a five-act play, casts it, directs it, gathers the props and costumes, and organizes the teams that build sets and provide lighting, sound effects, and video. It’s an amazingly high-quality operation. I wasn’t sure what I really could contribute to all that except as a writer with some limited experience with theater (did some acting as a kid, helped with my daughters’ shows). But I ended up helping with the script, being a second pair of eyes at rehearsals, being “on book” when the actors needed prompting, and even contributing a loud offstage scream(!). It turned out to be fun and rewarding. My friend has already expressed the hope that we’ll manage our July travel schedule so that I can help again next year. I had a little anxiety that I wouldn’t have much to offer, but trying something new and a bit out of my comfort zone was energizing!

  Post: What I Retired To

  Link to comment from July 29, 2026

• I have several items that fall into the "Self-Care/Wellness" category:

  1. membership to a massage studio: for my fee ($80/month), I get one 50-min massage per month and a discounted price on any other ones, though I usually just go once a month. I also tip my therapist about $35 each time.
  2. Pilates classes: I take a class once a week at a local studio; it costs me $37 for a 55-min class, so it's about $150/month.
  3. pedicures: I go every four weeks and pay $60, including tip.
  I started getting the massages when I developed "cranky" shoulders (recurrent bouts of frozen shoulder). At first I just had upper-body work but now do full body. My shoulders are OK at the moment, but I consider it maintenance. I probably could manage without the Pilates classes if I had to cut back; they do have Pilates classes on the Peloton platform that I already pay for. But I like the studio and I like having an instructor with "eyes on" my form. As for the pedicures, yes, I like my toes to look nice given that I live in California and spend about 10 months per year in sandals. But a nice pedicure is good for your overall foot health, too. My husband joins me for pedicures but not for toe polish!

  Post: One Person’s Luxury, Another’s Necessity

  Link to comment from July 21, 2026