Wildfires in California. Hailstorms in the Midwest. Hurricane Ian in Florida & South Carolina. It’s a crazy year for home owners insurance. On top of that add in the crazy inflation in the home construction market. After two white-hot years, only now are home prices starting to slow down from higher interest rates. We just got our 2022-2023 premium statement from State Farm. We received … Continue reading Homeowners Insurance Inflation
Have you ever paid for your roof to be replaced? Ever? We haven’t. We’ve lived in houses for 30+ years and never once have we paid for a new roof. Three times the insurance company has on our behalf. Never have the roofs been more than 13 years old. The economics of home insurance don’t make any sense to me. I spoke with a lot … Continue reading Have You Ever Paid For A New Roof?
We’re having a successful ‘repair season’ this Summer in terms of productivity & financial standing. In Minnesota, a year’s worth of exterior home repairs gets shoehorned into the 6 months from May through October to take advantage of the good weather. Right now our neighborhood is awash in a wave of roofers, siding companies, concrete sealers, landscapers, and painters. Salesmen – often the owners of … Continue reading Summer Repair Season
Well, I blew it. I crashed my drone into a tree last week. It fell about 30 feet after shaking loose from the tree and the camera gimbal got damaged. It still flies, but you can’t really take pictures with it anymore. It was the second time I crashed it. The first time, it landed in soft snow and still worked fine. It’s a pretty … Continue reading Down & Out Drone
I waited a long time to get a look at my MegaCorp retiree health insurance benefits and they just arrived. It’s open enrollment time right now and I just booked my new insurance plan. As background, I worked at one MegaCorp for 24 years and a second for just 3. I’m an official retiree of the first one, where I went from temporary Administrative Assistant … Continue reading MegaCorp Retiree Health Coverage
I think I just earned a free Apple iPhone 13 Pro. Sort of, anyway. It’s been 12 years since I got my first iPhone in 2008 and I’ve declined AppleCare coverage on every single phone upgrade I’ve had since then. That’s probably 5 different iPhone upgrades. AppleCare coverage is $10/month or a $200 flat fee. 156 months that have passed since I bought my first … Continue reading Free iPhone! (Sort Of)
I will be 68 years old in 2034. That’s the year that the latest Social Security budget forecast says it will start to run out of money and be unable to pay its full benefits. I will only have been receiving the benefits for 1 year at that point. Related: Social Security Running Out Sooner Than Expected It may not seem like an urgent matter, … Continue reading Social Security Waning
Last week I reached another milestone in my early retirement journey. I called the MegaCorp HR Service Center – for the first time in years – and started the enrollment process for retiree benefits. In 2021, I will turn 55 and become eligible to start tapping into the retirement benefits that I accrued over the course of my career. I worked at this MegaCorp for … Continue reading Ringing Up MegaCorp
Insurance is one of the things I certainly hate paying for. Health insurance, disability insurance, life insurance, and car insurance are all necessary to a degree, but it’s hard to pay for something you only use in a catastrophe. We’ve gradually dialed back our insurance coverage for things we can ‘self-insure’ the risk of. We have the highest health insurance deductible we’ve ever had and … Continue reading Up, Up And Insured
Since folks know that I write this personal finance blog, people have been interested in the financial side of the sudden surprise of my heart attack. While not all of the numbers are in yet, it looks to be less expensive than I thought. It seems like I often read about people racking up tens of thousands of dollars of medical bills when something serious … Continue reading How Much Did That Heart Attack Cost?
MrFireStation 