Spending

Spring arrived bang on cue at the start of March, and the weather gods actually delivered some proper early sunshine. I seized the moment, dug out the power washer, and set about bringing the yard back to life. Forty-five minutes in, my trusty 20-year-old yellow Kärcher started making alarming noises and belching smoke. That was that.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Things don’t stop breaking just because you’ve retired. The last week has been a particular case in point.

Here’s something that might surprise you. Until I retired, I don’t think I’d used an automated teller machine for at least twenty years. If I needed to use a credit or debit card, I usually had to spend a significant amount of time locating the AWOL cards. On more than one occasion, I discovered the card was out of date and had to get my wife, Suzie, to complete the transaction. In short, I had a very close relationship with physical cash.

For all the cash back friends, BoA is changing its “Preferred Rewards” program.
Most people were parking $100,000 with Merrill Edge to get “Platinum” rewards status. This status allowed you to receive a 75% cash back boost (e.g. 5.25% on online categories or 2.62% unlimited).
Starting on May 27, BoA is changing the program. To get the 75% cash back boost, you now have to maintain a $1M balance. The new boosts are:
10% for the Member tier (any account except a credit card,

I can’t help myself. I have to know.
For folks not retired and who use a budget — does your budget determine how much you can save or do you save first and then develop your budget and allowable spending funds available after saving?
No judgement, just curiosity.

We’re putting it off, we are planning to … when I turn 70. We will be doing that in a few years…
As I read HD I see many people mention plans they have for the future. For people retired, I have a suggestion. The future is now – Carpe diem
I don’t care what assumptions you put into your spreadsheet or what the SS actuarial table says, in retirement the old adage “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today,”

We could just ship a pallet full of the things that Chrissy’s niece, Liz, had stored in her mother’s basement before she passed. But doing that would spoil the fun of renting a minivan, loading it up, and driving from Ohio to Los Angeles to spend some quality time with Liz. I also have a couple old friends in LA that I would love to see. 
I thought that I might put my rudimentary knowledge of AI to use in planning the trip. 

🤑

For the 2026 AFC Championship game between the Broncos and Patriots in Denver on January 25, 2026, tickets are available from approximately $307 to over $1,000+ depending on seating. What they call VIVID seats are $30,000.

WHO has that kind of money to spend on a football game? Apparently 76,000 people do. Oh yeah, parking is about $50.00

I wonder if this counts as a emergency fund expense😁

Five hours earlier, I’d been drinking coffee in my sunroom, the heat of a log fire lightly toasting my legs as I looked out at the snowy garden and thought about finding a good book and settling in for the day. At the current moment, I was struggling against a 50mph blustery wind with a wind chill of 13 degrees, hailstones beating against my face while I carefully made my way across a frozen landscape toward a 2,790-foot waypoint.

Many of us have decades of practice saving, budgeting, and optimizing. But retirement requires a different skill: spending confidently—not impulsively, but without unnecessary guilt when the plan supports it.
I’m curious how others handle the mental side of spending after (or near) retirement:

What’s the hardest part about spending money now?
Do you use a “permission system” (annual splurge, travel fund, monthly allowance, separate bucket)? Piggybacks off Dick’s topic.
What purchase meaningfully improved your quality of life long-term?

I was reading an article about the US proposal to cap credit card interest rates at 10%. As part of the piece, they interviewed a US woman in her thirties who had amassed over $6,500 in credit card debt paying for childcare AFTER she lost her job, apparently she decided to keep sending her kid to daycare so she could have some freedom. To me, this is an irrational financial choice.
Being a bit of a nerd on a wet Saturday afternoon with some spare time on my hands,

While life is good, there are a few things I have to work on. 
Let’s begin with the number 36. No, Chrissy isn’t trading me in for a couple 36 year old studs, 36 is the waist size I reached early in 2025. I was not happy with that. Now, sadly, some of my 36 inch pants are whispering into my ear; 38,38,38. It’s like an evil form of tinnitus that speaks instead of rings. It’s not that I don’t exercise,

I consider myself a pretty ordinary guy living a normal, down-to-earth life. If you ever had the misfortune to meet me, you’d quickly realize there are no airs and graces about me. With that mental image in mind, you might understand my surprise when a fellow retiree I play sport with came out with: “how the other half live” after I mentioned booking a short break at a nice coastal hotel for me and my wife Suzie later in January.

Man, I’m neck-deep in wedding season right now. I’ve got two biological daughters, but thanks to life’s plot twists, three other young women have adopted me as their surrogate dad. I bought a wedding dress for one of them this past spring, she looked absolutely stunning, by the way.
Now one of my actual daughters just dropped a wedding date on me, and my other two surrogate daughters are also marching down the aisle. The damage?

And now, as Monty Python might say, “For something completely different….”
Given the recent discussion as to which topics are, and are not, appropriate for HD’s realm of finance and retirement, let me first give my defense of an article on the mundane topic of grocery shopping. It’s really pretty simple: For us at least, our weekly expenditures at our friendly local HEB are one of our most substantial fixed costs, probably around $8000 – $10,000 every year.

I’ve noticed retirement has transformed me into someone who conducts full-scale search operations for objects I was holding thirty seconds ago. Yesterday it was my glasses that decided to embark on an unauthorized adventure, taking my short-term memory along for the ride.
I’m not entirely sure when it started because that’s part of the problem. I needed to reset the boiler, squinted at the instructions, took off my glasses to see the tiny print better, and then—well,