Well, we've only just begun 2023 and already I feel lots of big changes happening in my life.

For one, I will earn a living as a writer again after a roughly five-year hiatus during which time I was copy editing p/t. I've been hired as a W2 writer for a university not in the Northeast, and I'm expecting my first assignment this Friday.

I'm excited because it's really just the kind of job I was hoping to find: one with pretty p/t hours so as not to interfere with my semi-retirement (!), one that contained minimal exposure to the usual office meetings, politics, etc. and one that paid pretty well.

I was not expecting it would be a W2 job, but having the employer (the recruiter agency) deduct taxes in each check makes my life soooo much easier come tax time. And they pay every week, as opposed to the nightmare that was waiting a full month to be paid (and often it would not be on time) from my former employer, the India-based tech company.

The other big change I've set in motion is something I knew I wanted to do for a few years now, but recently I realized there was no need, really, to wait til age 65 to do it. It will faciitate my transition from working stiff to retiree. Meaning, I'm removing a chunk of assets from stock market exposure and putting it into a Single Payment Income Annuity. Dido from this site has been enormously helpful in providing various insights as to taxation and such.

Since the bulk of my savings are in the stock market (mutual funds), I will feel better taking some of that risk away, because once in full retirement, I won't enjoy that risk and want to sleep pretty well at night. The SPIA will deliver monthly guaranteed lifetime income, very much like a pension. It won't cover all my day-to-day expenses, but it will pay out at about $1,100 a month.

One thing I need to learn more about is the optional cost-of-living adjustment. I want to know how that will affect my monthly payouts.

I will have a firmer feel of things after I speak with the New York Life agent later this week. They are highly rated, but I may also schedule a meeting with Guardian Life, which has equally high ratings and about the same monthly payout.

I'm also getting started on my first big home renovation in late April. I'm hiring a guy to refinish my kitchen cabinets. There's nothing wrong with the cabinets themselves, other than the paint is worn or chipped in places and looks a bit shoddy. I'll be moving from white cabinets to a nice gray. Still up in the air is whether to replace the laminate countertop with quartz. He has to come measure so he can firm up cost of that. I did visit the showroom to pick out the paint color and the quartz, as well as to just check out their operation and hear a lot about the process.

I'm inclined to do it all once, especially now that I have a job again, but I was prepared to defer the counter until next year just to spread out the cost. Also with this job I would be replacing my old ceramic sink, which does not sit flush with the counter, with a stainless steel undermount sink, and I also need to replace a long-leaking faucet.

I'll save thousands by refinishing the cabinets instead of replacing them, and with the color change and new counter, it'll seem like I have an entirely new kitchen.

It's that time of year when my thoughts turn to tidying up, decluttering and eking out more spaciousness and serenity in my home. Living in a relatively small house, I have been feeling cramped, most especially since 2015, when I inherited lots of STUFF. I firmly believe that IF EVERYTHING HAS ITS PLACE, my life will be so much better.

Anyway, I spent some time at the home of a man I was dating, and I admired how attractive and tidy he kept it. Without realizing it, I internalized a few things from his home that I either copied or which inspired me to carve out more space.

Just a few changes in my kitchen have made me much happier and feeling so much more organized, for relatively little expenditure.

1. For YEARS, I have disliked having a trash can sitting in the kitchen. It's a small kitchen, so there it sat near the door the basement. I had upgraded to a stainless steel with the step-on lever to raise the lid when I acquired it through Buy Nothing, but I still dislike it even being visible, and of course the odor of uneaten cat food, even contained in separate little baggies, was so unpleasant. I never thought I had any extra cabinet space for a trash can until I remembered I have a handy pull-out drawer in the small, portable kitchen island I got years ago. Which would be idea if I could find a home for the pots and pans that currently resided there. After decluttering unused dishware elsewhere, I managed to find other spaces for them, and the trash now fits the pull-out island drawer very nicely.

I borrowed a hack I'd read about online by affixing 2 felt pads on the inside top of the can, the kind of pads used on the bottom of chair legs or tables to keep them from scratching the floor. Then I put a few drops of essential ois on each, and now I get a nice waft of ecalyptus scent each time the lid opens, not icky cat food!

2. I also realized that there is no need to separate the newspaper/cardboard recycling I collect from the plastic/metal food containers, since they are all dumped in the same container at the transfer station. It's been this way for quite some time, but I guess I thought it was easier to continue collecting my recycling separately. But this meant multiple paper bags hanging at the top of my basement stairs and you kind of had to duck your head whenever going downstairs. Now I have another large trash can in my hall coat closet, which I repurposed a few years ago to double as a food pantry. So now ALL recyclables except for plastic bags and compost go in this one can...it's just easier.

3. Next up: For the past 27 years, I've had a dish drainer reside to the right of the sink. It's a black metal Victorian-style thing that I found more attractive than the usual tacky plastic, but still this dish drainer hogs a whole lot of countertop space, whether it's full of dishes or not.

So I got rid of the dish drainer and bought one of those roll-up mats that you lay over your sink to drip-dry dishes. I had never tried one of these before becus I have a ceramic sink with a lip that's not flush with the counter, so I didn't think a roll-up mat would be secure, but it is. I also don't have double sinks, but found that by laying the mat over  just half the sink, I can still wash dishes and then use the mat. It doesn't have space for a ton of washed dishes given that it's over just half the sink, but I'm content for now to just do dishes a bit at a time and I absolutely love the newfound counter space as it looks very minimalist.

4. I also bought a thing you buy which plugs right onto a 2-outlet outlet, but offers 3 outlets plus 2 USB outlets for recharging phones (see above). I always recharge my phone in the kitchen, so now I will always have plenty of plugs for various other items when needed. I love this little gadget, it looks so techie.

5. I bought 2 fairly small woven baskets made to hang from a hook. The company was from the UK but these were shipped from China and took forever to arrive, but I like them a lot. I hung them from the 2 hooks on the basement door for fresh fruit so i don't need to keep a bowl on the table for this anymore.

5. Lastly, I hate seeing electrical cords, and I just decided to rearrange things on my counter top to minimize the appearance of microwave and tea-maker cords. I decided to put away my food processor as I really don't use it every day, or even every week. Everything looks so neat and tidy now. I like the kitchen to have not just function, but beauty.

I already splurged on a new, very modern-looking desk lamp for my office, to replace a more traditional-looking one I got on Buy Nothing, and which I'll regift on Buy Nothing. Again, visiting my friend's home, I saw that he reallyy liked more modern furnishings, and I have to say his place looked so hip and fresh, and I started looking at some of my furniture and things I've had for DECADES and never updated. The desk lamp will make a big difference in the feel of my office, I think, and I love that it, too, offers a USB port for charging.

If I can find another home for the all papers now in my old wood desk, I'd love to replace that too. I have found a modern desk I really like, but it's a bit more than I wanted to spend and I really do need my old desk's storage space while the new one has NO storage at all.

I feel like I'm on a roll. What next?

My total net worth bounced back nicely in the past 2 months, gaining over $50,000 since November.

Total net worth is $1,146,410 + home value of $405,100 = $1,551,510. It's still not back to its pre-recession peak in September 2021 of $1,272,391, net of house.

If I have a  New Year's resolution, it will be to find a new p/t job to stem further incursions into my assets.

Greetings, all.

Here's my annual rundown of the prior year's income and expenses.

Overall, I spent $43,687 in 2022. I earned just $29,689, so I'm in the hole for about $14,000. It's not what I planned, nor wanted, but after a June layoff from my p/t job, a new p/t job failed to deliver the hours I was counting on. In fact, I haven't worked since before Thanksgiving.

I have been half-heartedly looking for a new position, but I really need to get more serious about it. I think I'll be fine if I wind up starting full retirement 2 years early, but I would rather stick to my plan to work a p/t job until I'm 65.

Here are my top 10 expenses, which combined, account for 61% of total expenses. (Note: Among my top 10 expenses are IRS and state income tax payments. I've chosen not to include their breakdown here.)

1. Property taxes: $6,788. No surprise here. The amount hasn't changed much since last year, but they just did a 5-year revaluation, and my home appreciated in value by $75,000. The mil rate will be changing too, so I haven't figured out how big of a tax increase I'm looking at for 2023.

2. Food: $4,731. This increased by $368 compared to last year. It's always in the top quartile of my expenses; looking at my pie chart of top 8 expenses, it's shocking what a huge amount of my budget it consumes.

3. Out of pocket medical/dental: $2,101. This is still a big expense, despite it being so much lower, by $4,100, than last year, because last year I had my knee surgery. I did have some cosmetic things done this year that weren't covered at all by my plan.

4. Cat, $1,815. This was about $156 more than last year. He's eating premium, mail-order cat food these days and is on meds, but this does seem high.

5. Lawn & garden, mowings, $1,217. This is about the same as last year, but my mower did slightly increase his fee at the tail end of this year, so I'll see the full impact in 2023.

6. Heating oil/cleaning, $1,173. This represents a big jump, $578 more than last year due to rising energy costs.

7. Electric, $1,104. This was a bit more than last year, by $122. The 2 standard offer suppliers in my state have really caused an outcry after raising rates, but I am luckily locked into an alternative supplier at a much better rate until December 2024.

8. Clothing, $1,029. This was about the same as I spent in 2021.

Taking a look at what categories saw an increase OR decrease OR stayed about the same, I can see:

Categories with increased costs = $2,420 across 11 categories
(Food, cat, heating oil, electricity, gasoline, entertainment, car insurance, car maintenance, homeowners insurance, dining out and my umbrella policy)

Categories where my spending stayed about the same as last year: 8 categories (property taxes, lawn & garden/mowings, internet, water, borough taxes, dump sticker, haircuts).

Categories where my spending fell = $6,932 across 9 categories
(Out of pocket medical/dental, clothing, "household" (my one catch-all category where I tend to dump expenses that don't fit somewhere else, usually stuff for the home), health insurance, gifts, home maintenance, landline)