My aunt had a medical situation occur and I ended up traveling unexpectely for eight days. My mother can't really travel on her own and so she and I flew from different points to the same airport, where I met up with her. We rented a car (which I drove) and stayed at a motel. Our days were spent visiting my aunt in the hospital. On the first day we spent almost the entire day at the hospital, but after that I put us on a routine of two visits per day, interspersed with meals and an afternoon rest period. My mom's pretty spry but she was still tired from this activity. While at first I wondered if this would be a "good bye" visit, my aunt is slowly recovering. She was quite active prior to the medical situation, took good care of herself and has many loving human connections. We saw and interacted with many other visitors including Mom's living siblings. Both Mom & my aunt are in their 80's. It's possible we'll go back at some future point.

Now I am back at my house and trying to remember what I was working on before I left.

One thing I've thought about - and that is who I need to contact regarding my landline disconnection. During the last 10 or so years I have just given various businesses and organizations my cell number & not my land line number, but anything set up prior to that would have my land line number. Before my trip I attempted to reactivate a dormant airline loyalty account. I couldn't do it online. After calling the airline I found out it couldn't match me because I'd signed up using my landline. It never occured to me to put that in. We got that sorted out. Today I updated my phone numbers on our bank accounts and on my account with our home & auto insurance and credit card. I prompted Mr. H to do the same.

Today I also finished setting up my spreadsheet for 2026 and put all of January's transactions on it. I've been really conscious of careful spending decisions. The spreadsheet looked pretty good - until I remembered I had to add the health insurance to it. 

The year has ended. Well, technically it ended 10 days ago.  Health insurance ended up being 22% of annual expenditures for 2025, medical expenses were 14%, and taxes (property and IRS) another 14%. Altogether this was 50% of annual expenditures. It's a little disheartening. 

Our health insurance premiums increased by $286.76 per month for the two of us for 2026. Lots of Ideas and Rob have suggested that I check in with an insurance broker, so that's on my list. Late in December I talked with an aquaintance who mentioned that all four of her family members are on different plans, because they all have different needs. That is also an option that I hadn't considered.

Trying to help defray this additional cost I implemented two changes that I had been thinking about and/or planning to do for a while. 

In 2013 I asked here about dropping the land line and just going to cell phones. https://petunia.savingadvice.com/2013/06/26/phone-switch_103343/  I finally did it, saving us $56.93 per month. I've liked having a landline for a few reasons, and in 2013 Daisy was still a young teenager. But it's 12 years later now and this is - the low hanging fruit to pluck in decreasing our spending.

Daisy and I have been on a cell phone plan together - since 2013 or 2014. At that time she was given a basic phone (could call and text - not a smart phone). When she got her first job after graduating high school at 17, she saved up her first few checks and bought a smart phone. Through sheer laziness on my part we've been paying her phone bill since. I really should have gotten her to pay for her phone a few years ago when she started her first post-college job. My cell plan has a feature that will easily (so it seems) send a bill to her for her part of the phone bill, so I set that up this morning. We're going to continue on the same phone account. Daisy paying for her own phone bill will save us another $67.00 per month. This is the next piece of low hanging fruit.

We've had the landline for about 30 years so it feels - kind of sad to give up that phone number. Splitting the cell bill is another change. I do think 2026 is going to bring a lot of change, maybe more than is comfortable but some years are like that.