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Remember me? It looks like my last post was in February 2026 so about 7 months ago. I decided I needed a break at that time. I've lurked periodically since then (and banned some spammers along the way) so I never fully left. I have been very active at the early-retirement.org site and encourage you to join there too as it's far more active and has a really great and helpful community. They've helped me work through many financial questions.
Update time
Nothing has changed dramatically. I'm still retired. I'm still selling on ebay though not as much. DW and I are still trying our best to do a 3-4 day getaway every month. My mom is still plugging along at 96 years old.
Financially, I've done some more work to consolidate our accounts for simplicity and to make things easier for DW if anything happens to me. I converted a small traditional IRA to a Roth and combined it with my existing Roth. I transferred our small taxable brokerage holdings at Schwab into our much larger brokerage account at Vanguard. Stuff like that.
My daughter started a new job in February that involves a lot of travel and I've tagged along on a few of her work trips. It's all local-ish within the state but that could mean being 2 hours away. She goes to work in the morning and I spend the day exploring the area before picking her up at the end of her day. It's a nice change of pace for me.
She also started her own ebay account in December and I've spent a lot of time teaching her how it all works and taking her around to all of the area thrift stores as well as introducing her to many of the estate sale companies I deal with so they all know her now. She's been doing really well and is working to increase her ebay sales to make that a significant part of her income as the other job is not full time so she's hoping between the two of them, she can net a good amount.
DW is fine. She's still crocheting and sewing though not really for money unless a friend asks her to make something. No more craft shows. She also rejoined the Sisterhood Board at our synagogue so has responsibilities there, and she plays mah jongg at least one day a week.
We continue to be active with the whiskey club at a local liquor store and usually go there about once a month for a tasting event. Through that, we've become very friendly with a few people and have started going out socially apart from the store events - just doing dinner and such which has been nice.
Our portfolio is chugging along. Gains haven't been terribly strong this year thanks to the war and related issues but we are currently ahead about 100K YTD after all spending is accounted for so I'm satisfied with that for now. I feared it would be worse.
So I'm going to dip my toes back in here and see how it goes. I hope everyone is doing well. As I said, I've been lurking so I've read posts but just haven't responded.
Update time
Nothing has changed dramatically. I'm still retired. I'm still selling on ebay though not as much. DW and I are still trying our best to do a 3-4 day getaway every month. My mom is still plugging along at 96 years old.
Financially, I've done some more work to consolidate our accounts for simplicity and to make things easier for DW if anything happens to me. I converted a small traditional IRA to a Roth and combined it with my existing Roth. I transferred our small taxable brokerage holdings at Schwab into our much larger brokerage account at Vanguard. Stuff like that.
My daughter started a new job in February that involves a lot of travel and I've tagged along on a few of her work trips. It's all local-ish within the state but that could mean being 2 hours away. She goes to work in the morning and I spend the day exploring the area before picking her up at the end of her day. It's a nice change of pace for me.
She also started her own ebay account in December and I've spent a lot of time teaching her how it all works and taking her around to all of the area thrift stores as well as introducing her to many of the estate sale companies I deal with so they all know her now. She's been doing really well and is working to increase her ebay sales to make that a significant part of her income as the other job is not full time so she's hoping between the two of them, she can net a good amount.
DW is fine. She's still crocheting and sewing though not really for money unless a friend asks her to make something. No more craft shows. She also rejoined the Sisterhood Board at our synagogue so has responsibilities there, and she plays mah jongg at least one day a week.
We continue to be active with the whiskey club at a local liquor store and usually go there about once a month for a tasting event. Through that, we've become very friendly with a few people and have started going out socially apart from the store events - just doing dinner and such which has been nice.
Our portfolio is chugging along. Gains haven't been terribly strong this year thanks to the war and related issues but we are currently ahead about 100K YTD after all spending is accounted for so I'm satisfied with that for now. I feared it would be worse.
So I'm going to dip my toes back in here and see how it goes. I hope everyone is doing well. As I said, I've been lurking so I've read posts but just haven't responded.
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