Heading into the Holidays, Be Kind, New Hip

Hello Everyone! Here we go into another month. Well, quite a bit happened this last month. For starters, I have a new hip! Yep. Still kinda crazy to think about it, but I had a total right hip replacement. I now have a titanium rod, ceramic ball and basically high-density plastic cup type thing in one hip. This puts me into the realm of travelers now carrying the “I have metal in my body” cards when I go through airport security. If you didn’t catch any of my other posts, basically I had leg pain for years. I had been able to ignore it. Last November I could not sleep without IB profine. Finally I got my appointments, go in and I had severe arthritis in my R hip. I saw a handful of providers and they all basically said the same thing, “What the heck happened to you?!” So in the matter of an 1 hour surgery I now have a new hip. It’s been a wild time. I hope to write an in-depth post about it in the near future. Especially because as a young 38 year old, I had a hard time finding what the experience was like for people in my age bracket. I had no hesitation going forward with the surgery. I got to a point I could not do any extra walking and basically had to give up hiking this past summer. Time will really tell and I am very hopeful my next upcoming x-ray shows that everything looks as it should. I am doing great and as you can see below based on the unicorn shrine I was overwhelmed with generosity of well wishes from people. We are gratefully in Vermont recovering. I see this time as a huge gift and I have been working away on projects and writing. I anticipate two stories coming out for Northern Woodlands. Which by the way, if you are looking for any gifts, they are a non-profit and you can check out their gift shop here. Or subscribe to their magazine for great woodland content. Thank you for all the really nice comments and interactions from our recent Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn postings. We were so fortunate to get a plethora of fall photos and I am still working my way through posting them. I really could do a whole post on saving money for the holidays (and maybe I will!) but I will just touch briefly on these two options if you are not using them for your regular and this potentially higher volume shopping now. Rakuten (formally ebates) can save you some serious cash in such a simple way. When you opt to use it, it goes on your browser and will automatically tell you if you can earn additional money back on a purchase. For instance, I ordered some more cards from Moo.com and an order from Backcountry. Rakuten gave me an additional 12% back on those purchases giving me $6.98 into my account. That’s almost $7 bucks cash money from items I was going to buy anyway. It is so easy and to date I have redeemed $52.56 into my paypal account which I then transfer to my bank account as straight cash money earned! There is currently a $40 offer to you if you sign up! You get $40 and I get $40. It’s a win-win! Ibotta is also the other one that I can find some decent savings on. I recently made a very simple video showing how I earned FOUR categories of rewards on the purchase of 1 pound of butter. The sticker price for the butter was $4.79 and I paid $1.22. It’s these little actions done over and over again that cumulatively add up to a lot of money saved or earned back. To date I have earned back $84.51 on purchases I was going to make anyway. Currently there is an offer to get $10 for signing up! Ok, there’s more. There’s always so much more. But those are two quick, tangible things you can do this holiday season to help have the bling bling remain in your account. (I’m not sure if they work in Canada? And sorry to all the international readers.) As we enter what can be a really challenging time for many of us, even if we are in a really stable and good place, let us all take a moment of zen. Presents are nice. But it needn’t dominate our thoughts. And it’s ok to say you have a budget and set some boundaries with your friends and family around gift giving. It can really escalate quickly and none of us benefit from needless consumerism. So maybe try to: Give one bigger gift -> Maybe a family member has a more expensive item they could really use in their life. Pull together with a few members to get that person a gift they will use. Yes, it feels good to physically wrap a gift for each person, but many of us just don’t need a back up potato masher, you know? Chip in for a product that will be useful. Focus on Food -> The food costs alone can be a big expense for holiday gatherings. If you have a hard time figuring what gifts to buy for people, maybe you can offer to host a holiday gathering meal and your gift is purchasing the food and preparing it. Again, none of us benefit from needless consumerism and items that will just get tossed out later. Just be -> Among my friends’ group, we don’t do gifts. None of us feel the need to. We simply enjoy getting together for the joy of being together. We eat, drink and are merry. A toast is enough to suffice the need of celebration. Experience -> Plan for something awesome! I see a shift in our culture of valuing the ability to have an experience more than yet another object in our lives. Plan to do something. Spend time with loved ones. Again, it doesn’t have to be a super high monetary value. Go to a museum near you that maybe you have never visited. Purchase a membership to a zoo or gym. There are so many creative avenues to this. Give the Gift of a Bond -> The US treasury series I bond rate until April 2022 is at set with an interest rate of 7.12%! That is amazing. What a great time to gift someone a bond and instill a hopeful mindset shift to the importance of long-term saving and investing. Ok, well all of what I just wrote wasn’t even planned. That had just come to my mind, but I suppose some practical tips never hurt. I retell myself those all the time. What I wanted to say was to remember that this can be a particularly hard time of year for people who have loved ones lost. Always try and keep the mantra of we don’t know what internal battles people are fighting despite what they look like on the outside in the fore front of our minds. And be kind. Holy smokes. The amount of drama in the news headlines. Don’t make that your reality. Don’t be the types of people that comprise those headlines. If you see someone struggling, help them. Carry a bag for someone. Get a door. The other day a dear old gentleman couldn’t get his quarter out of his Aldi’s cart. All these other people were standing behind him, tapping their feet and getting impatient. It was like for gosh sakes. I just went and pushed the cart a little harder for him so he could get his quarter back. It really doesn’t take a lot of effort to not be a complete asshole. Be kind. Keep yourself motivated. Be real with what you can do and what is a realistic budget for yourself. And let’s keep heading into the holidays. Tiff and Chris Here is a quick video of some mushrooms in the park that looked like they were melting! Ah. I loved them.