This is not a political post, but the basis is a political action. Friday, Feb. 28, was the so-called Nationwide Economic Blackout. My wife and I decided to participate. For us, this wasn’t about specific retailers. We simply made no discretionary (or mandatory) purchases that day. It was not a difficult commitment.
Thinking about this over the weekend, I realized that the result of that day wasn’t anything special for us. There are many days that we spend absolutely nothing.

MILESTONES MARK the growth of a child as she moves from infancy through school age. In similar fashion, we adults tend to measure our life’s progress with “firsts” or other significant events. Perhaps we remember the feeling of maturity that came with our first kiss or our first job. Milestones help us attach meaning to the course of a life that sometimes seems beyond our control.
Financial milestones often command special significance, like my first “real” job at age 15.

Went out to dinner the other night with another couple. Connie an I ordered and then the others. “We’re going to split a meal,” the wife said.
Okay, won’t be dining with them again.  I think that is rude and unfair to the sever and the restaurant. Just about as rude as the people who finish their meal, pay their check and then sit and talk at the table while a score of folks stand about waiting for their turn. 

As we ponder retirement and moving from savers to spenders i was considering what recent discretionary purchases really added extra value to our lives.
Here is my short list:
1) A home milk frother – we love coffee at frugal prices so we DYI most of the time.
2) a good quality sound bar – we love music.
3) my carbon frame touring (upright) bike – mental/physical health and fun. This wasn’t frugal but so worth it in terms of comfort and road confidence due to it’s wider tires.

I have been a sports fan for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid I memorized all sorts of statistics about professional athletes. Baseball is my favorite sport so I could easily recite batting averages, home runs, and earned run averages. 
I was a kid in Atlanta when the Braves came to town in 1966. I would listen to baseball games on my transistor radio and keep my own score book. Of course,

I LIKE TO THINK I’M rational in the way I spend my dollars, and I suspect most readers do, too.
We are, of course, deluding ourselves.
Spending is never simply about buying what we want or need. Instead, behind every dollar that leaves—or doesn’t leave—our wallet is a complex mental dance that reflects how we feel that day, the influence of others, how we want to be perceived, and our own financial history. We might declare that we’re using our money to buy happiness.

In a recent post Dick Quinn asked for help about buying a car. He was in a time crunch because he and his wife were heading to Florida in a few days, I presume to get out of the cold. I live about an hour south of Dick, and I can attest that it has been cold of late in the northeast. We’ve had single digit mornings, and feels like temperatures too low to mention.
I enjoy living in a location with distinct seasons. 

WHEN I WAS 24 YEARS old, I took a weekend trip to Reno, Nevada. My hostess for the visit wanted to go to a casino. I had no interest in gambling. But not wanting to be impolite, I agreed to go with her.
I was making $16,000 a year back then. I decided I could afford to lose $20. I got two rolls of quarters and sat down at a slot machine. As I was getting close to losing the last of my coins,

THIS HAS BEEN A YEAR of living large in the Kerr household.
I just finished adding up the numbers for 2024, and between my son’s wedding in Colorado in June, my own wedding in October, our honeymoon afterward, a vacation to Key West, a new car for my new wife, and various long-overdue repairs to Rachael’s townhouse, I spent upwards of $60,000 on items I hadn’t budgeted for in 2024.
The tally doesn’t include the $9,000 I spent on a hot tub for the mountain house.

IT’S THAT TIME OF year when people think about giving. For my wife, this is what she lives for. She loves buying presents. She’s a very giving person and puts a great deal of thought into the gifts she buys.
She’ll buy gifts all year round, even when the event—such as Christmas—is months away. Problem is, she frequently forgets where she’s stored the presents she’s bought. They’ll eventually be found, but in many cases long past the date when she wanted to give them.

Based on a Kiplinger e-mail I just received, this year’s Thanksgiving meal, including turkey and all the trimmings, will, on average, cost $58.08, or about $5.80 per person.
A 16-pound turkey now averages $25.67, or $1.60 per pound, 6% less than last year. 
Yesterday I paid $3.49 a pound for a 18 lb fresh turkey. I can’t be average with money matters even on a holiday. 🦃

I FEEL GRATITUDE for the life I’ve had. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a few regrets: Friendships that turned sour or simply faded away. People who died before I got to see them one last time. Professional endeavors where I felt I could have done better. Purchases I made that didn’t live up to my expectations.
But my list of regrets has three glaring omissions.
First, it doesn’t include any of the investments I’ve made.

Personally I have no problem with tipping servers and others for that matter. I just tipped two delivery men $20 each when they delivered a piece of furniture. I tip at Starbucks and usually when I see a tip jar on the counter. My point of view is these workers need the money more than I do and I can afford it. Maybe I’m helping a kid through college or just with family bills. They are working after all and I remember what it was like trying to earn money as a kid.

FOUR 20-SOMETHINGS named Ben, Duncan, Jonnie and Dave came up with a great idea for a reality show in 2010. It involved a purple bus named Penelope, a cross-country road trip and a list of 100 things to do before you die. For every item they crossed off their list, they’d help a stranger achieve something on his or her own list. 
Some of their to-dos were ambitious, with a low probability of success: host Saturday Night Live,

A picture of a Shell Gas Station advertising gas for 33 cents per gallon in 1972 periodically appears on Facebook. It’s followed by a long list of people gushing about either how cheap it was then, or how expensive it is today. But using an online calculator, a dollar in 1972 is worth about $7.50 today, making the inflation adjusted price of that gas about $2.50 per gallon. Now comes the fact that I am only using a third of the gas today due to increased efficiency.