We had a blast at the annual MKMVPA vehicle rally. Overall attendance was great and everyone was pleased with the outcome. There were a lot of familiar faces and some new ones. Brian met this guy who owns a Pinzgauer, one of only a handful in the entire state. Brian wants one real bad. He will have to wait, though, as we have other plans for the time being. We have home rennovations to fund and we need to save for a house down payment.

Anyway, thank you for your continued support of this web site. We really appreciate all of the visits. Until next time.

Brian and I met with a financial advisor, Jeff Smith at Intrust Bank, today to see if we can setup a Roth IRA for Brian. As you know I’ve gotten pretty obsessive about saving for retirement of late. I don’t know what happened but over the last few years I’ve transformed from a spender to a saver. Brian and I both agree that we want to make sacrifices now to enjoy our retirement later. We want to be like John and Wilma, one of the many wonderful couples we met during our Jamaican vacation this summer. They can afford to spend several weeks throughout the year traveling because they’ve planned for retirement well. My feeling is retirement won’t be that much fun if you don’t have the money to enjoy your favorite activities. Doing the same old things every day will get pretty boring after a while, unless it is playing poker :P. And I really hope that by planning carefully for our future Brian and I won’t end up having to work in order to support our retirement income. I see old people like that now and I feel really bad for them. I don’t want to share the same fate.

I feel pretty secure about our retirement plans. I have planned my retirement pretty carefully and I am confident that Brian and I will have enough money to live on after we retire even without the help of social security. However, we are staring a retirement savings plan for Brian because we want to have some slack. We don’t want to be just surviving when we retire. We want to enjoy. Besides that, since we don’t plan to have any children, we have to think about what we will do past the early stages of retirement. The fancy nursing homes are pretty expensive. We want to make sure we have enough saved up to afford to stay in one of the nicer ones; some of them are like resorts nowadays. Once we are too old to travel, we might as well live in a nursing home that is a lot like a resort environment.

As always, there is a plan B. If we end up not saving enough, we can always go back to the Philippines and retire there. If we retire there, then our dollars will buy us more and will last longer. Don’t ask me why I am fixated on this stuff now. I have at least 30 years ahead of me. I guess it could be that since I’m turning 30 next month, I feel like having some sort of retirement plan is paramount. And it is. It’s never too early to start saving for retirement.

Another thing tha people often take for granted is insurance. Paying for insurance is like a catch 22. On one hand you are paying for something that you might never use so that in the event that you need it you are covered. You don’t really benefit from it unless something bad happens and you have to file a claim, but at the same time you don’t really want a catastrophe either just so you can get your money’s worth. It’s something you buy but hope you never have to use.

Anyway, since it is something that you won’t really need unless an emergency comes up it’s very important to make good choices. Let’s take car insurance as an example. It isn’t always best to go with the cheapest. You should compare car insurance and see how satisfied their current customers are. If you have the cheapest rates, but when it comes time to file a claim they give you a lot of hassle and don’t want to pay out then it’s really not worth it. You want to go with someone you can trust. Choose a company that will deliver when the time comes.

The same goes for home insurance. This is something that one shouldn’t take lightly. One again, you hope never to have to use it but it doesn’t hurt to be covered. Planning for retirement and having insurance or some sort of contingency plan in case of disaster are two very important things when planning for your future.

Brian and I just got home from watching Dragon Wars with his dad. What a horrible movie! I feel bad for asking to see it. I wish that I would have looked at reviews first. I could have saved two hours of my life that I will never get back. What’s up with all the stupid movies lately? We really should have gone to see Resident Evil instead. Brian didn’t want to fight the crowds, though. I didn’t think it would be crowded, but what do I know. Maybe we can go see it in a couple of weeks.

By the way, Brian and I had an interesting weekend. We went to celebrate Darcy’s fifth service anniversary, but ended up leaving early because I misread the time. I thought my watch said 6:30 PM but it was only 5:30 PM. Brian said it was okay because his head was starting to hurt from the smoke and loud music anyway. I wasn’t too pleased about the mistake, though, because we could have hung out a little bit longer and I really didn’t want to get to poker too early.

Brian said that I could use the time to read my book. Sounds like a good idea in theory, but it doesn’t always work. I really don’t like going to poker early because strange people end up talking to me and I don’t end up getting much read. Don’t get me wrong. We know a lot of wonderful people at poker with whom I enjoy chatting. However, I really didn’t feel like talking to anyone right at that moment. I just wanted to be left alone to read my book in peace.

Brian’s solution? He said he’d let me stay in the truck and read until it is closer to the start of the tournament. We turned off the truck and rolled the windows down. Just as I opened my book to start reading, Brian started blabbering on about stuff. “Baby,” I said, “You’re being like the annoying people I’m trying to avoid.” He stopped because he realized what he was doing. “You promised me I could read in peace,” I reminded him.

I got through two pages before I got disturbed again. This weirdo in the other car four parking spaces down (there were no cars in between his car and ours unfortunately) starts trying to make conversation. I smiled, nodded, turned my attention back to my book, and prayed that he would get the hint to leave me alone. It was a welcome relief when he finally gave up conversing with me and walked into the building. Even in the parking lot you can’t avoid them.

Having given up reading, Brian and I decided to just go in. It was a pretty crazy night at poker. Usually, I end up playing with mostly normal people. A little before break our table got broken up. Chris moved me to a table with a girl tweaked out on meth to my right and Lotto Man to my left. It was bad. “Chris must hate me,” I joked at Brian. Chris is the tournament director.

A few hands in, I ended up with pocket queens. I went all-in pre-flop. Lotto Man, living up to his name, called me with 10d 8d while declaring “Let’s dance.” Another guy called me with queen jack. I don’t think he would’ve called if it weren’t for Lotto Man’s call, but whatever. Maybe he didn’t believe I had a hand. Who knows? I had Lotto covered, but guy had me covered. Lotto hits a straight. Guy ends up tripping his jacks on the river. Go figure. The girl with the best hand gets knocked out. Stupid, stupid, stupid. It sucked to get knocked out before break, but it was a bit of a blessing to finally get away from that table. I could finally read my book in peace.

Of course, I still didn’t get much reading done because I ran into Big Rick who was already out also. Him, I didn’t mind talking to. I didn’t start reading until after he left to go play a sit-n-go. Not much progress, though, because Brian got knocked out of the tourney shortly after. Such is our poker rut.

Next week we will forgo poker in favor of the Final Fridays art crawl. It’s time to do something different.