Just a little (link) love: Sir Patrick edition
March 12, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $640.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Miranda’s More Money More Options – so true.
I love these parenting notes.
Photography focusing on motherhood.
Chrissy on cancelling their Spring Break trip to Japan and maximizing their refunds. This sort of thing has me reconsidering my usual stance on trip cancellation insurance. Have you ever used it before? I need to do some research to see if it would be worth it on any future travel.
I adore Gina Torres and I love this bit from this interview with her. I’m so disappointed that I didn’t know about Pearson on USA because we haven’t had cable TV for so long. “What would you say to your younger self now?: The messaging is the same, which is: What is yours is yours. It doesn’t matter the road you choose to get there, you’re going to get there. You can get there quick, or you can take the scenic route, and that’s all about choice. I firmly believe your blessings are yours, and we get them when we’re ready. We get them when we’re supposed to.”
As an immunocompromised person, I’m very much irritated by people choosing to do all their normal things and not caring if they are disease vectors because “I’m healthy so I’ll be fine.”
Tanja (ONL) over at MarketWatch cautions us to maintain our cash as we watch the market do its thing with regard to coronavirus. I fully admit that I’m inclined to buy this dip but I’m sticking to my plan for this year’s investing: small weekly purchases. I’m also seeing the sense of the advice. I’m already spending a big wad of cash upfront to stock up our supplies. We’re buying the household supplies we need and a little more like we usually do, but I am stocking up a few months out on Seamus’s meds, and that costs a LOT. I would have had to do it anyway but it’s a little earlier than usual and in one lump rather than spaced out across a couple months.
Angela’s Prepper FI post. I wish Life Straws were around when I first started getting our prepper kit together ten years ago. Back then, I picked out some gravity filtration bags, but Life Straws seem a lot more convenient. It just seems wasteful to add Life Straws to the packs when we already have (unwieldy) filtration options and still need other supplies. We also have a bunch of Mountain House meals but none of them are really good for me, nor are some of the other foods that I’ve laid in. I have been thinking of stock up and activities in case of a precautionary self quarantine, I foresee spending a fair bit of time baking with JB to use up the wheat flour that I can’t have. We should be able to share baked goodies by dropping off boxes of uncontaminated baked goods with the neighbors that we like. But now that that is mostly covered, I am thinking about preparing for a quarantine where one or more of us are actually sick. First and foremost, I am starting a list of recipes to make ahead and freeze that I would be happy eating if I were sick because I won’t be cooking then: curry, soup, stew.
Great compilation of links. I like your idea of preparing freezer meals.
In Canada we are slightly behind in the pandemic spread so it’s still a good time to be prepared ahead of time. I’m going to add making some freezer meals to my list to be prepared. And if we don’t end up “needing” them then at least it will help with meal prep in the future.
Having freezer meals when you don’t need them is far less annoying than not having them when you do! 🙂
Thanks so much for the mention. It means a lot to me! ❤️
You and Angela are clearly very prepared. I need to look into these Life Straws—they sound intriguing, and like something I really should have on hand.
Finally, I loved the Sir Patstew video! He is such a lovely, charming man—and so funny in the video. Thanks for giving me some smiles and laughs during these stressful, uncertain times. 🙂
You’re welcome! Even if you just have a couple, it would be really helpful to have a way to get clean water in case of any disaster. Take care!
I had a trip to France planned for the end of April. I bought trip insurance but did not read the fine print: “cancel for any reason” was only allowed if I bought the policy within 30 days of booking my trip, which I did not.
The tour company for part of my trip allowed us to push our trip forward a year for a $150 change fee, and I was able to cancel my IHG-points hotel for no charge. My only open question is my points-booked flights. Their policy mentions a cancellation/points-restocking fee that still applies since I booked ages ago. But the way things are looking those flights may still be prohibited. My plan is to wait till close to the travel dates to deal with the flights, and hope for the best.
So to answer your question, in this instance the trip insurance is wasted $242. I’ll probably buy a less-comprehensive version before I do take the trip to cover medical, lost luggage, etc but it has not been at all useful this time.
Oh! And thanks for the link to Tanja’s article. I may be putting on a new roof this year (farewell, $11k), and though I could pay it outright, I might take their zero-interest financing so I don’t have to part with it right now.
Thank you for sharing how your travel insurance fell out! Those are great points to look out for.
Zero percent financing is such a good thing to take advantage of.