I am truly struggling with what and how to set goals for 2024. I have been pondering them and trying to figure it out since a workshop I attended in late October. I did another challenge. Now I am trying to write my rule for life to see if I get any clarity. I guess for this week my goals are 1. Enjoy my daughter before she goes back to school on Sunday. 2. Continue to pack and get ready for flying to Kenya next Wednesday: get groceries, create the song to teach the chaplain asked me to, figure out her family's gift, etc. Yet knowing that depending on what the test shows Monday I might be trading the trip in for biopsies and cancer treatments.. Hard to hold both possibilities in my head. Other than that I have no clue what my overarching goals for the year should be. None.

Yes, I had already told my husband that I didn't like this tech. I have been getting mammograms for over 20 years now faithfully every year. She was very rough and very fast. Everyone else I have ever had has been much more gentle ( Now yes, the thing squeezes you, but they aren't rough with you.) and very particular about how they do them. I wondered if they had trouble reading them. But then you should call and say, the images were not what we hoped, so we need to redo them. Fine. No problem. I am very grateful that they did schedule it quickly. Honestly, I wonder if my doctor even knows that they did it. I think this was all the breast center imaging center at the hospital. Normally, when I have had some other results come back (I once had an abnormal result from a pap smear.) he called me that evening, but I had actually already seen the results in my portal before he called. But he has called me every single time. There are no results in the portal. So, I am leaning toward the they didn't get good images. My guess is when I have my regular appointment in the morning he will be surprised/angry and leave the room and call the radiologist/get into the system and look me up. I am also hoping maybe he could get me in to get the diagnostic test tomorrow or Friday. He also goes to serve on mission trips often and knows I am flying to Kenya next week (if everything is fine). I think he isn't going to be happy about the way it was handled.

You also have to be careful about tying your identity to what you do. I notice you said part of your identity so I think you know this, but when retirement comes many men die soon after because they are so tied to what they do. Also, one other cautionary note and this is SO coming from someone who still struggles with this, but make sure you are able to lovingly detach yourself from his suffering. It is hard when they are such caring, wonderful men, but you have to stay afloat. Part of my complete collapse almost a decade ago was when I realized that it didn't matter how supportive I was or what I did, his angst would always be there. Somehow I thought that if I was the perfect wife I could somehow eliminate any suffering he went through or at least alleviate it somehow. His journey is his journey. Yes, be supportive but also detach.

Well, sad that it happened, but looks like he will eventually be better off than he was as the "dream" job. Still sucks. Sad for other people, but glad it helped your dh see it wasn't him, but the company. Praying he finds something soon. I'm betting he will have some good recommendations from some of the other workers. Hang in there. You are doing great, even if it doesn't feel that way...

Thank you. Yes.

So I had a mammogram last week. Yesterday, was heading to meet my daughter and her boyfriend for a fun outing when I get an email: We have scheduled your diagnostic mammogram for such and such a day next week. Click here or call to reschedule... So I call the number because I am supposed to be in Kenya the day it is scheduled. "I guess something abnormal was seen and so this was scheduled FOR me. No one has talked to me. I will be out of the country can we make it earlier and can you tell me what they saw?" "She prefers to talk to the patients after all of the tests are run." She then changed my appointment to Monday. My doctor is a he. My husband is guessing that the radiologist ( I am guessing the she)is the one who scheduled it and my doc may not even know anything yet. I will see him tomorrow for my yearly exam anyway.. He has always been so good and calls me as soon as he gets results even if it is after hours. But really, you just automatically schedule another test without any information on the test that has already been done? It just shows up in my inbox without any warning? GRRR.... Update 2/5/24 So when I got back in the country last week, I called because I didn't have the time for the biopsy on my calendar. They told me 12:30 on the 7th. I just called again today because I have gotten no instructions at all and didn't know if I could drive myself or about eating or anything..... They don't show me on the schedule..... She went off to talk to scheduling to figure out what is going on... Waiting for a call back.

You will probably be unhappy with a guy as well. It won't make you happy.

Again... I will give this advice. You need to swear off dating for a minimum of a year. Do not date until you can be completely happy with yourself and your life. Until you don't really need it. That is pretty much the only way you are going to find a healthy relationship. If you are happy with yourself, you will not get so attached so quickly and just shrug off and be like, ok that guy wasn't interested. Glad I found out. But seriously... forget men for at least a year, maybe longer.

Praying Scarlett!!!

Yes. Yes. Yes. To all of it. From what I saw with my husband's patients and what I have heard him tell people: As wathe said, surgery is a last resort when the pain can no longer be managed. A lot of it is just SO patient dependent. The ones I have seen do really well are pretty active anyway and don't take many pain meds. They typically didn't let pain stop them before. They are like, "Wow! I am pain free!" I have seen many of my husband's patients ( including some of his relatives he worked on) like this. Many older women and especially the Honduras patients were like this. They also got very little pain meds and reported no pain afterwards... However, others like his dad and his uncle ( he didn't operate on them) were so pain adverse that they didn't do the PT they needed to do. They probably hurt as much after as they did before. My dad was also like that with his injury. Any pain at all and they complained, complained, complained. (Not just about their knee surgeries but any injuries before and after.) My husband's grandmother was running, holding up her walker a month or two after major hip replacement. Same thing with many other older women who got knee or hip replacements. But again, they were very active before their surgeries.

Ok, so have Targets set up. But another question... So in March, I will have a massive bill for my husband's whole life and our long-term care policies. I assigned money in the savings account that I had already saved and called it life insurance. Then I have a target/budget category I called NML where I save the amount per month that I need. So when that massive bill comes, how will I do that? The amount in that target category will cover the long term care premiums, but the life insurance will need to come out of that savings account. I am pretty sure that for that life insurance, when I categorize it life insurance it will take it out of that account. But the issue is that the money needs to come out of the checking account, so i need to transfer it from the savings account to the checking account to pay for it... The way I do it now, each quarter I transfer all of the money to savings from the checking to the savings.... (Sort of.... really, so much of it was going back and forth that many times it was really just in my ledger and nothing got transferred at all because I needed to transfer 2400 to the mission savings but needed to transfer 2500 to checking account from savings for a long term care payment, so really I just transferred 100 from savings to checking for the quarter. ( We have 10 or more savings categories each month.) Right now one "paycheck" goes into our regular checking account and pretty much all of the expenses come out of that account. Another "paycheck" gets put into a different savings account. That is the money that gets transferred to the money market/CD savings account and sometimes gets transferred to the other checking account like when we make a large purchase or something. But we live pretty much on that one "paycheck" in our regular checking account. So it feels like I have chances to get overdrawn in my account because YNAB just treats it like a giant pot of money. But I don't want to keep our savings accounts in our checking account that earns no interest as opposed to the over 5 percent we are earning on the money now ( It has our short-term, long term and emergency savings in it.)

Ok, it looks like I put 700 a week instead of a month. And the truth is that there are NO transactions since it didn't download any. It just has the lump debt on the credit card or lump sum in the checking account. We haven't spent any money on groceries since I created it. It is green now... I am not sure why changing it made it go from yellow to green since the money was in the accounts to cover it whether it was 700 or 2100. I will need to have some expenditures, which I don't have yet or rather they haven't posted yet. I know my husband has made some Amazon purchases that are showing pending in Monarch, but are not showing in YNAB yet.

So sorry and this is the second sudden death of someone in their fifties that I know about. A Sunday School member went in with pneumonia and was dead within 24 hours. So strange.

But I didn't spend 2100 on groceries and when I click on that, nothing clicks. I have no idea where that comes from. Ok, honestly, I don't need what you described in the last paragraph. We typically spend 3600 a month on discretionary spending like groceries, bills, gifts, and such. We have no car payments, mortgage or anything else. We average 2700 a month on various insurances (health, house, etc.). Together that is about half of our first source of monthly income. The rest of the categories for that first source are put into savings or given away.

Ok, I cannot do what half of you say. And I am so confused because I put in my budget yesterday, but now all of the screens have 0 for assigned. So do I have to enter the amount for every single category every single month?????? Here is my screen:

Don't know what I was doing, but the 1 for the hundred thousand place just disappeared every time I tried to enter it... But I realized that since we had already paid, it shouldn't have that much in it anyway. Ok, I am so confused. I am putting in the budget. But like right now it says I need 992 more dollars to fund auto insurance. I click on that, and I can't figure out how to see the transactions. I put in the monthly amount, that it would be if you took it out evenly. But we pay our car insurance twice a year, so I am paying 6 months at a time. How do I fix it? And like it shows over 2000 dollars in groceries and I have no clue where it thinks that money was spent. I spent more like 500, so it is categorizing something wrong. But I have no clue how to fix what it put in there...

Houston... I think we have a problem So, can you assign more than 100,000? When I try to assign a category with more than that it will not let me? For example, we have an RV fund that was over that as part of a savings account. We just purchased one, so it will not be over 100,000 anymore, but it needs to start at over 100,000. We actually only spent half of what we budgeted for it. But we will keep that account and continue to add a little bit to it in case we want to buy another one in 15-20 years. (If we are physically able to RV at that point.) But our emergency fund part of that savings account will be over 100,000 as well.

Actually, it is looking like Monarch will give me the picture I need for December. It was very mint-like and I am through categorizing December now. I think I will be able to do the budget for December with it. Then I will just have to do last year by hand. I have January - November already done with Mint ( as we went along) and categorized. But I normally do a year in review and look to see what categories if any went down or up substantially. For example, son graduated from seminary in May, so he is totally supporting himself. I had a category of expenses to help him with while he was in school that no longer applies. We no longer have cows, so our farm budget has gone way down. But I will have to add it all up by hand because Mint there is no way for me to only do Jan-November. it gets the half of December before it stopped working. Ok, so I guess. YNAB will be starting Jan 1... Still not sure I understand it. But we will see. Will ask if I have anymore questions.

But they will never truly be paid off... I mean I pay the entire balance that is due for the due date, but we have made more charges. So I get the bill that is due January 10th and I pay 3, 478 but the entire balance is 5129. Plus, if I do do 0 that means January will be totally screwed up and there is no way I can get it set until February... One credit card is due on the 10th the other on the 25th.

So how is going to reconcile it?? So I am just making up numbers. So for Mint, when I spent the money on the credit card it put it in December budget so if I paid 250 to Walmart, it put it in Groceries. So now, it shows me with a debt of let's just say 3, 457 on one card. I will pay it out of the checking account January 7, but the money was actually spent in December . So it will just show 3, 457 out of checking account... But they should be from 30 or more different categories... I am so confused....

Ok... but I have over 5,000 on it and it just put it as a lump sum. Where are the actual transactions? I think I understand what you said. But I need December budget.

UGGHh.. sounds like most of you don't do credit cards. That is pretty much all we do. We pay them in full each month. All of our expenses are pretty much paid by them with the exception of 5 bills that get automatically withdrawn from the checking account. We pay our charity on credit card to get the miles. So does it not work if you use credit cards? I am really confused.

UHHHHHHH I M SO FRUSTRATED. I could not figure out the budget categories in Monarch. It wouldn't let me do the overarching... I don't know I found it very confusing. When I imported my checking account in YNAB and created the budgets it was so incredibly easy. But now... I imported the credit cards, but all it did was just do the balance... WHAT???? I have 100 or more transactions in the credit cards under different categories. Most of our spending is done through credit cards. We pay it in full each month. We put our big charitable giving on them...gas, everything. Our current credit card we get miles for United on it. Anyway, I am totally stuck. I know you are right. I probably shouldn't do both, but I want something easy that I can quickly do in a couple of days.... I am so upset....

Ok, to be honest, I do not completely understand it. Does that mean the vaccine only worked for 30 days and basically my previous vaccinations are useless. So, if I got my Covid booster in September, it will be useless for my travel coming up to Africa?

Yep. So sorry, Dawn. Your dad will be missed and left quite a legacy. I think I told you how well the chaplains spoke of him in Africa. A life well lived.