[StressLess]

It's very weird, in a good way. I keep "waiting for other the shoe to drop." We've been a one-income household for eight months now. We're paying our own health insurance, we're paying a little [Edit: extra] against principal on our mortgage each month, we take money out of savings for emergencies and then go back to building it up again. I've bought a new computer and upgraded to DSL from dial-up. Our only debt right now is the mortgage and about $28 on the credit card, for slacks I'm not sure I'll keep.

OTOH, I'm getting more careful about how I drive, and trying to waste less food. (It's hard to use up fresh things in a two-person household, before they go bad.) I've started keeping track of food and gasoline expenses in Quicken again, and so far it looks like we aren't spending any more than we were two years ago. We've just downgraded some of our purchases to make up for higher prices. For example, frozen juice instead of cartons, Aldi saltines instead of Toasteds, and so forth. I do still try to buy low-fat dairy products and whole-grain things whenever I can.

Also, I'm waiting for a veterinary and a medical thing until I know we have the cash on hand. Surgery to remove a bothersome lipoma on our dog's leg, and a colonoscopy for me.

Being we have the high deductible insurance, I'll have to spring for most if not all of the colonoscopy bill. I remember seeing old movies when I was a kid, where they talked about saving up for operations. It sounded so old-fashioned and backward to me, that someone would live with a medical problem for months or years while saving up for specialists, tests or treatments. And now I'm doing it!

Something weird IS going on in the economy, and we've definitely been affected, but so far we've been able to adjust enough to handle it.