The Halloween decorations are all up here at Camp Islandwalk. This was one of my wife’s creative activities over the past two days. Mine was laying by the pool watching football. I’ve owned homes with pools before and have stayed in many luxury hotels, but I’ve never had an outdoor TV that I could watch while swimming. I consider this the ultimate in luxury, apropos for the retirement life. Now, if my teams would finally start winning, although Da Bears did manage to beat the Bengals yesterday. Last night, I also started watching the Ken Burns documentary series on Mohammed Ali. This will keep me occupied over the next few days.

Today is busy with both a doctor Zoom and chiropractor appointment. We also plan to see the Clint Eastwood movie Cry Macho later this afternoon.  Fortunately, the new movies are starting to finally roll out after all those production delays. We’re looking forward to some of the new releases over the next few weeks. Maybe there will be a few more people in the theater besides the two of us. Tomorrow night and Saturday evening we have two more dinner dates with friends. “Date Night” might not happen again this week, but “Tourist Thursday” should return after a brief hiatus.  All these camp activities keep my wife content, but often interfere with my quiet time. 

We finally had a low spending week for the first time since we moved to Florida. This was emphasized in last night’s Finance Meeting, after month after month of budget busting. The good yet frustrating news is that we’ve saved so much not traveling these past two years, but most of that has gone into home improvements. I have to keep reminding myself that the first year is a new house is financially draining, but over time this levels off. We continue to drain our IRA funds at a much faster pace than planned. Eventually we’ll have to live on just Social Security and my pension without these supplementary funds. I’m not sure we’re capable of doing that, after being spoiled all these years with big paychecks. Learning to cut back is a necessary evil in retirement for most people.