Hi Don and Terry! I am still alive and kicking. I've been busy working with my wife in the garden still, and selling my old Mazda B4000 and enjoying my New RAM 1500 Laramie truck. When the weather here gets to the point where I spend more time indoors, I am sure I'll be back here often again. Thank you for asking. It was not my intention to ignore this site, and now I feel guilty, lol. Yup Don, thanks for my P/W reminder.
Don, I wanted a RAM 1500 Laramie Crew CAB with leather bucket seats. In order to get the leather bucket seats, I needed to order all the expensive options which brought the sticker price of the truck to 51K, which is sickening, but I went for it on a 3 year lease. I figured in 3 more years I might night be able to climb into it anymore, so therefore a 3 year lease. I was very happy with the Mazda B4000, but the new truck is SOOOOoooo nice and comfy and powerful. As hard to believe, the 5.7 Hemi engine in it, and the truck weighing over 2,000 pounds more than the Mazda, it gets about the same or better gas mileage around town. It has the variable valve technology engine, like the old Caddy's miserably failed cars did in maybe the 70's or early 80's. We CAN do it in the back seat and leave the power Moon roof open. It is too high for any normal person to look down into. Back to reality: I'm not sure that is going to happen, lol. But I can hope and dream for it. The truck is a hacker's dream, I would think, with all of its electronics and direct connection through the Internet through a built in cellphone or sattelite trans-ceiver system. I loaded tons of MP3's on an SD card to listen to.
how does one max out his SS account?
Dat true, same here. I do get the max payment for having retired when I was 66. It only goes up when there is a COLA increase. The past few times I went to the local SS office, if there was a group of maybe 300 people sitting and waiting, there was only maybe 25 Senior Citizens in that group. The rest was people on welfare, each with 10 kids, waiting to get their new offspring added to the welfare check. Those, mostly young single mothers, let their kids run around the room, pulling pamphlets out of the racks and onto the floor, screaming little monsters, and the mommas say nothing to them to control them. And those that cannot speak English have no problem, as the law seems to require some or all the Soc. Sec. agents to speak their language. None of them are Russian or German, Chinese. I am a charitable person, but I hate being robbed and pillaged.
I'm still around, just been pre-occupied.
