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We are really fortunate to have my wife's pension with annual cost of living adjustments (max 3% per year, but it banks up if inflation is higher and can be used in following years with lower inflation). We will each have SS income with COLA's, though I never made much money so mine will be a...

Yeah, from our perspective we feel wealthy. We don't need much. We drive 20+ year old used cars, live in a small 1456 sq/ft house we built ourselves (never had a mortgage), and generally own little in the way of "toys". No boats, motorcycles, fancy cars, expensive jewelry, etc. My woodworking...

Funny you should say that. We both use our pill boxes to figure out what day of the week it is too. First thing each day... Oh, I guess it's a Tuesday. :) Still, we have forgotten to put our garbage cans out a couple times already because we forgot what day of the week it was.

I can't believe it has already been a year since we retired. Retirement is awesome, but the time has passed so quickly. The first six months were sort of our "honeymoon" phase, with lots of outings locally and a couple of road trips. Great times! Once winter set in we mostly just hung around...

I cut a groove maybe a quarter inch wide, with a perpendicular cut on the ends to stop further growth. Then vacuumed out any loose material and applied mesh tape before applying three coats of joint compound. It was a tight area between the water heater closet and electrical panel, and I didn't...

Assuming the Mac and monitor were both on the UPS, it sounds like there was enough of a glitch to mess up the video connection. That would be enough to make me worry about other glitches in the system that may corrupt data. For instance, what if you were transferring data to an external drive or...

I'm curious about the switchover time on that Anker C1000. Everything I've read says UPS switchover times should be 0-15ms for a typical ATX power supply. Anker shows the C1000 switchover around 20ms. Have you noticed any issues? I wonder how you would even test that without risking data loss?

I got one of those use it or lose it emails a while back on a card we weren't using anymore. We already had two other cards (one of which we never use either), so we just closed it. Our credit score took a momentary dip for a few months, but is back to 810 now. So all good. Nice to have one...

When I replaced our water heater last month, I repainted the little alcove closet it sits in before installing the new heater. So I finally took the time to repaint the rest of our laundry room to match. After 20 years there were a few stress cracks and dings to repair, but nothing significant...

Metoprolol had no effect on my PAC's, but it did lower my BP too much (around 90/60), dropped my heart rate to the upper 40's, and made it impossible to increase my heart rate enough to any kind of activity without being exhausted. So glad to be off that stuff. Tried Atenelol and that was even...

I heard that often when I was debating whether to do Roth conversions. However, this advice always seemed to be looking at things in a bubble. While we are in the same 12% tax bracket we were in while we were working, there are a few reasons I converted my traditional to a Roth while we were...

Fence Cleaning We built a privacy fence about two years ago and it was starting to look dirty and grey. So I spent a day earlier this week cleaning the fence. Light pressure wash, spray with 30 second cleaner, another light pressure wash, spray on "wood prep", and another final light pressure...

I held my shop vac hose under my sanding block as I was sanding and had very little dust on the floor or in the air (fine filter bag in the vac). Of course, I was just doing small areas in one room. It wouldn't be very convenient for sanding an entire house. I did that 20 years ago and I came...

Once you trace the circuits down, label the panel for future reference. Someday a spouse or child may need to turn off the power and won't have your tester handy. :)

Repaint the Living Room After 20 years in our "new" house, we had quite a few nail pops and stress cracks in our living room. My wife is out of town this week so I figured it would be a good time to make a mess of the house. Overall it took me about four days to prep, do the drywall repairs...

Catalytic Converter Heat Shield My car developed a really annoying rattle in the exhaust. I lived with it for a few months but it was getting really bad lately. So I climbed under the car yesterday and tracked the noise down to loose heat shields on my catalytic converter. They were only held...

We retired last year about five months before my wife started her pension. We lived on our personal savings during that time, which put our income level well below the ACA threshold and were forced to go on Medicaid. I wanted ACA but the state did not give us any option, so Medicaid it was. We...

Mini Split Fan Motor Replacement After just three years, the fan motor in the indoor unit of our Mr Cool mini-split started making a squeaky noise. It sounded like loud crickets chirping all day long. :) Not loud, but extremely annoying over time. I contacted Mr Cool and after a few email...

I received my new Samsung A9+ tablet yesterday. It has an aluminum case and no visible seams anywhere. As you said, I'm guessing it's glued together and certainly not something that is ever meant to come apart again. Sadly, once the battery dies it will just be more ewaste. So far it seems like...

I replaced a couple of exterior door jambs a couple years ago due to rot in the bottom corners (wicking up moisture from the bottom). The doors themselves were fine, so I made careful measurements of the door height, width, hinge sizes/shape/locations (to the 1/16"). Then I went to Home Depot...

These situations could be avoided if they would just make the batteries easier to replace. Unscrew an access panel for instance. For some reason it seems everything now days is made to avoid screws. Light switch covers, car panels, appliance panels, electronics, etc. Snaps, clips, etc. that all...

I've been checking our retirement account balances almost daily for the last few years. Like you, I've been trying to space that out a bit lately. I'm down to once or twice a week now. Eventually I might get to once a month or so. :)

It has been many years since I've done any real electronics work, so the FPC connectors were new to me. I didn't realize the little lever just swiveled up to unlock the cable. I know now, a little too late... Odds are I'll never need to know again. :)

Repair FAILURE - Tablet Battery Replacement The battery in my three year old Dragon Touch Max10 tablet started failing. Initially it started draining faster, then it wouldn't charge up more than 7% or so. It worked great otherwise, so I thought I would see if I could fix it. After looking...

I wonder about that too. It's one of the things I'm hoping to ask our agent tomorrow. I generally keep receipts (digitally) for most bigger items (appliances, electronics, power tools, etc.), but the vast majority of our stuff is little items we have no receipts for (clothing, food, towels...