"On my 85th birthday I felt like a 20-year old. But there wasn't one around." - Milton Berle

One year ago this weekend I was driving from our home in AZ to the property we'd recently purchased in OR to spend ten days rehabbing the single wide we'd soon call home. I wasn't thinking about a holiday weekend when I left on Friday, July 3, or I would have realized half of America was on the road for the long weekend. By my first gas stop I'd lost all faith in the common decency of mankind; it was war for access to a gas pump. One guy driving a pickup and pulling a boat took up the entire lane at the pumps. He pulled in and leisurely checked his phone before getting out to fill his tank. Then he slowly walked into the convenience store where he... I have no idea what he did, but by the time he got back at least five minutes later several people were waiting to share their opinion of his parentage. I don't know if that's what motivated him, but he sat in his truck for several minutes before pulling away. People were f u r i o u s.
It went on like that for the rest of the 22-hour drive. Traffic, speeders sharing lanes with Winnebagos, and harried travelers at every restaurant, gas station, and rest area.

We're staying home this weekend, enjoying that single wide in the woods, accompanied by our chickens and tending our garden.

One year ago next weekend I was still here, still working on what we named MoHo (short for Mobile Home), cleaning, painting, putting down new flooring, replacing outlets, and more. That meant almost daily 15 mile trips into Eugene to Lowe's, Lumber Liquidators, and Fred Meyer. But by Friday noon the traffic on all the local roads, including the one route into Eugene, were CRAMMED with cars. I quickly learned that the second weekend in July is always Country Fair weekend, an event held in a number of adjacent fields about 5 miles from Moho. Think tens of thousands of people, most of them of the hippy persuasion, from all over the country. Woodstock redux. Tie-dyed skirts (on the men), alternative bands, and pot. Lots of pot.
A trip back from Lowe's that took 20 minutes on Wednesday took me over an hour on Saturday.

We're leaving town next weekend, pulling the teardrop to a campsite up north, and from there to Seattle to celebrate my dad's 94th birthday.

We're still learning how to live on S.S. income alone, and it's a process. June was our best effort at trimming all the fat from the budget and I think we did well. We took some cash out of the sale of our AZ house last year and the goal is to stop drawing from that balance each month. We came really, really close in June.

Chad Manberg has been a HUGE help as we planned this new stage in life and then began implementing that plan. I'll spare you the story of how we met (the overused expression "God thing" fits in this case), but for the last 18 months he's taught us a ton and guided us through some key steps to get our finances in order.
We don't have much money at all, and having a financial advisor seemed like a serious case of overkill. But I think a case could be made that those of us with very modest means need to be especially careful, having a wise plan to guide us. If we had a lot of money?? It's still about stewardship and wisdom.

I had an email conversation with Chad today and in the course of that back-and-forth we talked about the market swing of the last week. The market took a nose dive as a result of Brexit, loosing 1,000 points over two days, and by today had recovered all but about 50 of those points. Yeah, it made me a bit nervous, but Chad has us in a variety of things to hedge against bad news in any particular market segment.
Today he told me that our portfolio caught 83% of the drop and 111% of the upside. We actually came out ahead. Yeah, he's good.

If you're looking for a very good, very principled, and very helpful financial advisor you can't do better than Chad. If you live in the Phoenix metro area that's easy, but even if you don't, the internet is an amazing thing. We're in OR and getting the same service we did a year ago.
I can send you his contact info, including the name of the small firm where he's a partner.

And if you don't want to contact Chad, that's fine. But do consider hooking up with a good financial advisor.
And re. that word, good, you gotta read this article from Forbes. It's short and gives critical information on the various types of advisors and the differences between them.