That’s our nice SUV – sitting in the garage of our recently-purchased condo in Florida. We drove it down to Florida a few weeks ago and left it there. Now we need to replace the hole it left in our Minnesota fleet – where we spend most of our time. The big challenge in replacing it is that the automobile industry is in a bit … Continue reading Hole In The Fleet
I ran across these two charts recently and couldn’t help but scratch my head at what is going on in this country. This first chart shows healthcare spending. It’s been steadily growing +5.8%/year on average over the last 20+ years. That’s a whopping 2.4x the rate of overall inflation. The steady growth in healthcare spending stands at odds with political promises that came with the … Continue reading Healthcare Woes
Quite unexpectedly this is the second post in an unplanned series about preventative insurance care coverage. After I posted on Monday about being charged for my annual check up, I ran across this article stating that annual check ups and other preventative care claims will no longer be covered under the Affordable Care Act. Link: Court Strikes Down Coverage of Preventative Care It seems that … Continue reading Preventative Care Coverage Prevented?
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
I’ve had pretty good luck with rental cars over the years. Other than the one time a city bus plowed into my (parked) SUV in front of a hotel in snowy Aspen, I’ve never had a reportable incident. Until this year. I just got back from a board meeting in Michigan, and on the way back to the airport a rock flew up from an … Continue reading Rental Car Curse!
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
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
MrFireStation 