Monday Melange: Ailing Parents, Automobile Absurdities & Links I Loved

Last week was super busy and challenging.

I had absolutely no time to write a longer and thoughtful blog post. Instead, I offer a melange of financial updates and observations, and some referrals.

The 4-Parent Problem and Car Craziness

I may have mentioned last week that between Mr. PiN and me, we still have 4 living parents. And that all of them were having issues.

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The original plan was for Mr. PiN to visit with my parents as my mom had a planned procedure. He is, I am embarrassed to say, much more kind and patient than I am, and a better visitor for this sort of thing. He was supposed to stay for one week, then hand off his duties to my brother.

In the meantime, we had arranged for Mr. PiN’s sister to come into town and ride herd on their parents.

Unfortunately, Mr. PiN’s mom took a turn for the worse, so that he had to come home early and his sister had to stay in town.

As you can imagine, it has been a tough week.

What has made it tougher has been the supply issues with automobile supply.

You may have heard that there is a shortage of cars available. When the pandemic hit and no one was traveling, car rental companies sold their cars to everyone who suddenly needed one (who wanted to take the bus or subway?). They made a tidy profit, and didn’t have to maintain their fleet.

Now, however, they don’t have any cars to rent. They can’t buy new cars to replenish their fleet, because of that chip shortage; cars just aren’t being made that quickly. You can imagine what that does to rental prices.

When he realized that he needed to come home ahead of time, Mr. PiN had wanted to rent a car rather than pay last minute prices for a plane flight. However, there were no cars available to be rented. Luckily, this prompted my mom to perk up and find him a last-minute one-way flight; it is a sign of the new times that this was actually a reasonable price.

With her mom’s decline, my sister-in-law decided to stay longer, and had to extend her car rental; she told me they wanted $2500 for a WEEK’s rental. I almost fell off the sofa when she told me.

We may have only one car in this household, but Mr. PiN’s dad still has a car (which he should definitely not drive). They are going to make that back up car runs and then return the rental ASAP.

10 Days to a New Title

In other news, I was surprised to get my new car title in the mail this week. I only paid off my car 10 days prior, so I think that was super-quick service.

6 Posts By Others

Much of my job as a PCP is to figure out what I can handle, and then refer my patients on to someone else when I hit my limit.

I have clearly hit my limit this past week–for everything.

Instead of blathering on further, I want to highlight some posts that caught my eye recently. Luckily for me, I put down some notes when I saved them.

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I grew up in the ’70s (and ’80s), so inflation made a strong impression on me at a crucial age. I find it interesting to see bloggers writing a lot about inflation this year, when prior years hardly mentioned it at all. This article from Millionaire on the Prairie gave a pretty clear illustration of the problems with rising inflation, while tickling my funny bone a bit (I loved the “app” mom and aunts use). Go read Inflation is the Non-Stop Money-Eater.

Here is another post from the personal finance cartoonists at The Woke Salaryman. They explain that obnoxious “The Secret” sounding advice, Rich is a Mindset, and illustrate the real meaning of the phrase.

This article was served up to me by Pocket, asking What If People Don’t Want a Career? Medicine, especially Academic Medicine, is supposedly all about a career; but, in this day and age, it’s also all about the revenue you bring in (grants and clinical earnings). I see some of my younger, hustling, colleagues wondering why they don’t get paid as much as senior physicians–who on first glance look like they are working no harder than they.

I loved, loved, loved this post from Accidental Fire, Cheers For The Yeoman Who Doesn’t Only Seek Promotion. As someone who sees patients, and doesn’t want to sit on committees, or run a course (or start a course), I do sometimes feel overlooked by my peers. It was nice to get a virtual pat on the back and acknowledgement that just getting the work done (and plenty of it) is an achievement.

Forget skipping the lattes. The Incredible Power of Automating Your Retirement Investments (from repurposed surgeon Cory Fawcett at Financial Success MD) illustrates quite simply and convincingly how easy it can be to save a ton of money for retirement. There are a ton of assumptions here–how many years of compounding you have, your average return, etc. But the numbers are impressive.

As I eliminate debt and find myself closer to FI (financial independence), I find myself much more interested in posts explaining why it is OK to spend more money. Or have nice things. This post on Fun Money from One Frugal Girl really spoke to me.

Thank you for dropping by. I hope you enjoyed the links and that your week goes well.