Coll, I think your garden is just stunning! You mention the garden is fairly small, and you have about 125 hostas, and also that you have a bathroom area for your dogs. How big is your yard and garden, actually? I posted some photos of some of my hostas the other day, and am going to add a couple of wider angle photos to show how the yard sits (size, arrangement, etc). Would you maybe be able to do the same? I'd love to see the total overall effect. You said that in the photos you put up, we just couldn't see the weeds, failures, etc, and I have to admit that I tried to avoid those in my first photos as well, but I'm going to go for it and lay the whole thing out there for all to see! LOL! I'm hoping you'll do the same :-)

Thank you very much, Kris. I've had some health problems, but they haven't caused more than minor reductions in what I can do, and thankful every day for that. Good genes, I think. Started to smoke at 15, after a few months liked neither the taste nor the cost - so had sense enough to quit. Daughter, who has dual citizenship, her mother being from Iowa, has spent most of the last 20 years or so in the U.S., most of it in Phoenix, recently moved to the Atlanta area, her husband being from there. She comes up for a few days every few years and said summer of '18 that they'd have to celebrate my 90th during her trip up in Aug.: flew me to Phoenix for my 8oth, ten years ago. At the party, when I said that I'd been rather worried after the announcement, as birthday wasn't till Jan, so figured I didn't dare die in between, or wouldn't be keeping up my end of the bargain, there was some laughter. The old guys at the village church that I attend had a group called "Senior Mens' Coffee Hour" on Thursday mornings, that they renamed the "ROMEOs", as in "Retired Old Men Eating Out", (and wouldn't touch my suggestion that it should be"ROMDOs", as in "Retired Old Men Drinking Out" with a 10-foot pole) give each guy with a birthday that month a cupcake with a candle on top at the meeting. I hold mine at arm's length: if I blow it out, called "blowhard", if not, "bit off more than you could chew, huh?", and laughter whichever way. When the cake came out at the party, the numbers were facing me, but the cameras were on the other side. I was holding the cake at arm's length, and turned it around to have the numbers "89.5" facing the cameras ... ... and gave a sigh of relief: happy to be off the hook! Hope you're having aq good year. I spend uite a bi of time over on Kitchen Table. ole joyful

Another use for duct tape to keep my mouth closed, I've been figuring, but it looks as though the tape has flown off unannounced. I got in via icon today - and was able to make this post without restriction. It's been just over a year since the accident made my old car unrepairable, I live 11 km./7 mi. from village and 20 - 30 km./ 12.5 - 19 mi. from the city, so have been doing some hitchhiking. Had a vehicle available part time from late Oct. till end of Jan. I've had quite good luck hitchhiking, some folks have driven me out of their way to help, and almost always refuse compensation for gas. Fairly frequently when coming home with bags of groceries. A few have passed me, then turned around and come back to pick me up - surprising! I've been surprised that quite a few women have picked me up, including younger ones and several alone in the car. Some neighbours bring me a few items of groceries, e.g bags of about a gal. of milk, from time to time. A few are willing to drive me on my errands, when convenient, and some accept compensation. ole joyful

Mother's day has come and gone... so should this thread! I am struggling with some of the statements. I justified the reference to our levels of earnings by saying that most of the stuff that we buy using "credit" cards isn't deductible, so using them isn't going to increase our amount of after-tax cash on hand, which will have an impact on our pre-tax income, as well. Almost none of the things we buy are tax deductible, so this is simply not relevant... because it doesn't change between the alternatives. The only way this becomes relevant is if you are taking money out of your traditional IRA to use for interest payments... So the entire before tax / after tax logic pretzel only works for one specific thing that is not mentioned in the original post. Next, a 28% credit card rate is not equal to a 28% savings rate. This is the difference between compounding interest and effective interest. Even though the two are calculated the exact same way, and compounding is a type of effective, compounding grows but effective interest can shrink. Credit cards are basically rolling installment loans with an 8 year and 4 month payback and no early payment penalty. So the total interest you pay on a $5,000 purchase would be $5,892 over 8.33 years. People will often struggle to convert avoidable interest to investment returns, and most people shouldn't need to do this. The easiest way to do so is by using a version of the Modigliani-Miller theorem. If you want to equate a loan into an investment, then just hypothetically use the loan to purchase the investment and find the interest rate where the total payments on the loan = the total return of the investment. The equivalent investment rate of a 28% credit card, is 9.38%. However, if you are not working with the capital structure of a business, that is pretty useless information. Unless you are borrowing to invest, you should just avoid equating loans to investments. It isn't going to provide useful information. ---- Math questions are best solved with math and not an application of some vague wisdom. Interest is not that hard to calculate, so learn to calculate it. There are times when using your credit card is wise and there are times when it is not. Generally speaking though, balances on high interest credit cards are a symptom of another problem. Typically, either frivolous spending or insufficient income. So, if you can, work on that problem first and the credit card problem tends to fix itself.