Money Diary #135

Morning: Mom wakes me up at 6:15 since we want to get groceries & come back home before it get super hot. I roll around & finally get up at 6:45. Brush my teeth, drink a cup of tea, and eat a couple of Ritz crackers. Get dressed and we head out around 7:30. First stop is Albertsons where mangos & grapes are on sale, so we get those along with 6 bagels from the clearance aisle. Also get a couple of agua frescas for free with their Saturday Sampler coupon. Next stop is a nearby grocery store that has shrimp on sale -- in and out in around 10 minutes. I start coughing in the car and put my mask on. Last stop is Kroger, where we get ginger aisle on clearance, three kinds of foacia bread on clearance (though I thought all of them would be $1.79, two of them turned out to be $2.29, whoops), clearance Hawaiian rolls & mushrooms, a free yogurt, and 5 pounds of cherries on sale. Back home around 9:50, unload groceries, and pass out on the couch for a while. Mom makes fried Hawaiian rolls with butter, so we eat those and I drink a cup of ginger tea that she makes. Watch I Dream of Jeannie for a while, and then go shower. 

Afternoon: Lunch is rice, poppy seeds & veggie drumsticks, my favorite spinach dish, and fish stew. Decide that Love Cookies, Hate Cooking would be a great name for a food blog someday. Watch Wimbledon for a bit, take the stems off of the cherries, and then switch back to I Dream of Jeannie, which is on an episode marathon today. I had gotten an email earlier last week that there will be several trainings to complete this week, so I log on to see if I can start them today. They aren't available yet, and I'm not feeling up to reading for work, so I log off and have an snack of tea, grapes/cherries, and crackers. Settle in for an afternoon of reading Money Diaries instead. Here is what I learn:

• "Win some, lose some, still thankful to be in my position": "I would love to have a life where I could just write a check for $500 and not bat an eye, though, yes, the surprise part of it sucks."

• "Would you share a bit about your investment/strategy that helped you accumulate assets?": "I haven’t done anything special. Just having a high income relative to my expenses and investing consistently."

• "It was only one person": "I'm not bothered by someone projecting their own boundaries onto my situation." 

• Manage the margin: "Our cost of living stayed relatively the same while our salaries increased."

• What I want in retirement (renting in a city by the water that has grocery stores I can walk to): "Even though most people have cars here and there's no reliable public transportation, I live by downtown and am in walking distance of the grocery store which covers necessities as someone who WFH. It's great cost savings, and you get in exercise too, so in the end, you are better off."

Evening: After the I Dream of Jeannie marathon ends, I switch over to The Munsters. Dinner is rice, poppy seeds & veggie drumsticks, my favorite spinach dish, and fish stew. Do the coconut oil pull, and brush my teeth. Bed at 9:30.