Well, we’ve been fairly frugal this week.

I haven’t been to the store for a regular shopping, just bits and pieces here and there. Today, I need to pick up some mozzarella, mushrooms, and olives for pizza. It’s cool enough I think I can actually bake it in the oven.

I did go to Target with my daughter for cat food and then she picked out some clothes for her Library conference in St. George Utah, so that added up but not too bad.

The first of the month’s bills are done and then with the next pay check, it’s just the water bill and Verizon. I got the Verizon bill down quite a bit by paying off my iPhone last month and then we canceled the insurance on both mine and my daughters. So the savings added up. Next when I can pay off my son’s phone in a few months that will drop it even more. As we ready for retirement, these monthly bills must be as low as possible. Plus, no car payment. Right now we’re still paying on the Santa Fe but there is some reimbursement for that from my husbands work. But into retirement, there cannot be a car payment at all.

Next week I do need to get to Costco as we will need some staples like TP and sugar organic tomato paste etc. I’ll try and budget @ 200 for that shop.

We also got our 6-month car insurance bill and it went down substantially because the took off my son’s ticket for speeding and his single person accident. Both of these are more than 3 years old so maybe that was the magic number but it went down almost $400 which is huge. So that will be very helpful.

Figuring out the numbers for retirement is challenging. It will certainly be no frills and if we want to keep living here we need to be sure the basics are covered. There’s no million dollar retirement account that’s for sure.

Today, I’m going to the gym to do weights mostly, and then I have an appointment for getting my Invisalign trays.

Tonight, as I said, is pizza.

Walking in the morning has been delightful and many of the people who were showing up early to beat the heat are gone. There’s still a few who will probably drop away since at 6 am it’s still darkish.  But there have always been a few of us that just keep walking, dark or not. On a sad note, Hobbles the duck went missing sometime during our vacation and I miss him. He was quite a character.