Just sitting here pondering life during the middle of a growing windstorm. Hoping I don't lose power but it doesn't take much here to do that; trees and power lines don't mix. Gusts of 55 to 60.

Hey, does anyone want to make an easy $100? If you apply for a Discover card using the link I send you and you make a purchase in the 1st 3 months after receiving the card, we both get $100! Here are the details:
https://card.discover.com/web/cardacq/referral/?page=referfriend&trafficCode=75

Dad is doing a bit better though still in the hospital. Better in the sense that he is more talkative and alert than he was a few days ago. He enjoyed the green chai tea I brought him. I want to make a lentil soup and bring some of that but I seem to be missing the dried lentils and this storm is getting worse. I sure wouldn't want to lose power in the middle of cooking; if it's not too late, I'll run out tonight after the storm eases to get those lentils.

Did anyone catch the Saturday Night Live special last night? It had all the classic holiday skits from years ago. I still get a laugh out of them. I guess there's another SNL special tomorrow night.

All of the loans I reviewed this week for Kiva were from borrowers in the Phillippines. I was notified of one small default (less than $2) which I consider as part of how the Kiva system works. Defaults are very uncommon and of inconsequential amounts.

I took a quick look at my stats since we are wrapping up 2025. Since joining Kiva as a volunteer in 2019, I see this statement: "You've reviewed 3,911 loans enabling $2,108,535 in lending activity."

I was pondering an interesting post here by Tabs, who wondered why some people savers, and others spendthrifts.

I was thinking more about the abrupt transition from "lifelong working gal with a career" to "retiree with hobbies." It can be a little rough to consider what all those years of hard work meant. I mean, I'm left with a a file cabinet full of writing samples from every job I ever had. I did a lot of work I was extremely proud of, and even got a few awards, but in the end, it just went to help this company or that market the product they were selling, and I daresay all that hard work has already been forgotten by the few who may have appreciated what went into creating it. So to add to my answer to Tabs, my self-worth was internally driven, and that's what remains today. I thought I was working to earn praise (and maybe a higher bonus) from my manager, or my manager's manager, but really, I am self-motivated, and do the hard work to please myself.

What kind of delights me is discovering that I am still using my decades of work experience and skillsets as a writer/journalist/researcher in my volunteer work, and that it is appreciated by others I work with. It's nice to work those muscles even if I'm not earning money for it. 

This winter could be very quiet though, since my 2 main volunteer activities naturally become a little less active due to the nature of our work. I am still on the lookout to take something new on; I've found that I like working with very small organizations because they will more likely offer more interesting volunteer opportunities to someone like me and will also appreciate what I can do more as well.  

The wind is really picking up and the rain is coming down in sheets. So far, I still have power.

It's been an awful couple of weeks with continued high heat and humidity. But it's all getting washed out of here by strong rain tomorrow, just in time for what we're told will be a wonderful weekend followed by more temperate and pleasant summertime temps in the 80s all next week.

So I can catch up on some much-needed yardwork. I see weeds everywhere, for one thing.

Brought my father to the periodontist last week and the dentist broke his crown. This was the 2nd time it broke. She also informed me he has 2 cavities. We were able to get that all taken care of at his regular dentist today. They didn't charge for the crown, but even with his dental discount plan, he still paid $500 for the fillings.

Next week after his physical therapy I have to take him to TJ Maxx. He had brought 2 pairs of what had to be 30-year-old, dirty, stained pants with him when I picked him up today, and he wanted to have a tailor take the waist in becus they are too big. I had to persuade him it wasn't worth the cost and it would be better to buy new, but the last few pairs of pants i got him on amazon didn't fit. I just hope the local TJ Maxx will have his size. It's going to take him forever to try them on since he uses a walker and I don't think there will be seats in the dressing rooms. 

I've revved up my weight training routine in recent weeks with Romanian deadlifts. Sounds exotic, doesn't it? I like these becus they do not bother my knees, since you're lifting with your glutes in your butt. I started with 2 20 lb hand weights and progressed to just lifting the long bar, which is 45 lbs, and now I'm doing 55 lbs. I hope to get up to 110 lbs to replicate a well known study.

I have totally revamped the website of one of my volunteer groups after assuming control of it from a board member who stopped coming to our meetings a year ago. I had no idea I could do so much with it, but I've really enhanced the design and attractiveness of it and added major new content. Everyone is very happy with it. I have a background as a writer, not website publishing, but I've certainly worked with many designers/developers, so I knew the kinds of things I wanted to do and just was able to figure it out. 

I enjoyed it. So much so that I started wondering if I should try to find some very part time work somewhere doing something fun. Cus lately, with the cost of everything going up, I feel a little insecure not making any income. It would need to be local and need to be no more than maybe 10 hours a week max. I have a feeling I won't find anything interesting but I'm sort of keeping an eye out.

But it would be nice to make a little pocket money. I've observed how well my handyman, a guy who recently retired, does doing odd jobs for mostly single women in town. I myself have hired him probably 6 times already. His price was great to start, but recently he raised his rates, though I still think he's pretty reasonable. Most recently he cut down one large trunk of a paper birch that was leaning low in my yard after just becoming too big, I guess. Just $70.  A tree guy would charge more. He's helped me put together a large obelisk type thing in my garden, build a platform for my washer/dryer...he's coming over Saturday to install a new rack in my garage to hold some heavy duty hooks I bought for all my cordless landscaping tools and other stuff. The garage needs organzing. 

I committed to writing 200 postcards to remind environmentally leaning voters in Virginia to vote in the general election there this fall. A friend from one of my groups is going to help me by doing 25 of them, which I'll drop off this weekend. It's basically just 2 sentences on the postcard, plus their name/address, but it's going to take me more time than I realized. They have to be mailed on a specific day in September. 

I've had some communication from a web guy from this site and he has informed me that he's fixed the issue where you lose everything you write when trying to post. Let me know if it's still a problem for you.

I got brave enough to take a peek at my brokerage balances and was relieved to see my overall balance was only down $5,000 compared to the pre-tariff idyll in early March. I had to log in as I needed to restart automatic withdrawals from my settlement fund for monthly income. I had paused auto withdrawals in favor of taking some income from a taxable fund I have, mainly because the amount of taxable dividends and cap gains on the taxable mutual fund was getting to be a bigger number and I never knew what it was going to be til tax time, so it was kind of unpredictable and not very helpful when trying to calculate total income (desirable for a variety of reasons), so I had decided to shrink the balance some.

But I've since concluded that taxable mutual funds can be helpful to have on hand in case you are, for instance, near the top of your desired tax bracket but need income that is not fully taxable like traditonal IRA distributions are. Long-term dividends and capital gains from a taxable mutual fund are taxed at the lower capital gains tax rate.

So my plan is to draw income for the rest of the year (and the next 7 years actually) from my traditional IRA funds. Continuing to do this for 7 years should substantially lower my required minimum distributions when the time comes. I will stick to a fixed amount withdrawn each month, and should I have any leftover money in what I have withdrawn I would use it to do and pay taxes on small Roth IRA conversions. (I could happily use unspent funds on home improvements and or fun vacations/trips should the opportunity arise.) 

I used the very helpful AARP RMD Calculator. The last time I used it was in January 2025, which is not that long ago, but I wasn't sure I had used my latest monthly income figure at that time, so my estimated tIRA balance that's subject to RMDs could have been off.

So I redid my calculations and yes, the new RMD estimate is lower, at $12,300 starting at age 73 compared to $16,000 that i calculated in January. Which just kind of confirms my original feeling all along that doing a lot of Roth IRA conversions before age 73 may not be necessary for me. $12,000 a year is not a ton of money, and I need money to live on anyway, so that, plus roughly the same amount from my annuity, plus about $43,000 from Social Security will give me a comfortable income.

The closer I get to RMD time, the more accurate my projections will be, so since I'm still 7 years out, I'll want to run these numbers annually to see how they change. Or don't.

All that being said, Roth IRA money is the best place to be since it's tax-free, so I wouldn't mind adding to the Roth IRA portion of my assets. Right now I've got roughly 53% in traditional IRAs, 29% in Roth IRAs and 18% in taxable mutual funds. 

I've done a few Roth conversions in prior tax years but I think they were pretty small and I didn't keep track so I'd like to see if I can go through old tax returns and tally up how much I've converted in the past and to remind myself how to do it on the 1040 form. Every little bit helps.

In other news, I got through to Home Depot about the door installation. They were out here a week ago to measure the entry dimensions, but I hadn't heard a peep from them since.  Of course they required payment over the phone in full first, and it was quite a bit more than the original estimate of the "baseline" labor cost I was given due to new trim, inside and out, caulk and so on. At this point, I just want to get it done, but the earliest date she could give me was end of June. This has been one of the more trying projects I've done around here.