The luck of the New Year: Health and finances

Happy New Year! Whoopee, it’s January, friends, and time to assess where we are in terms of health and finance. At least that’s what the media would have us believe since this month we’ll be deluged with a plethora of “can’t miss” hints, ideas and suggestions to make us all feel better about the upcoming year.
Yes, it’s mass media’s way of letting us compensate for all those overindulgences that the holidays bring. Over-eating, over-spending and over-you-name-it – we’re at the point of reckoning, wanting to atone for the error of our ways brought on by overloading during the holidays.
In terms of health, perhaps you’ve signed up for a gym membership because the act of signing a membership contract will cause you to lose tons of weight. Right? Now, I’m not saying I’ve figured out how LONG it takes to lose this weight after signing the membership contract, I’m just convinced that it does. Because I’ve signed about a zillion of these things and SOMEDAY, sort of like playing the lottery, it’s going to work, right?
“Oh, but, Gale,” you are probably thinking, “What you need is a personal trainer!” Oh, yes. I tried that too. And I’ll tell you, that’s a no-fail guarantee for building a talent in fabricating ever bigger fibs to get out of your training session.
“Hi Wanda,” I might say, assuming my trainer’s name was Wanda, which it wasn’t, but I digress. “I won’t be in tomorrow. I’m, um … going in for a hysterectomy.” To which Wanda, that little wisecracker, would reply, “ANOTHER hysterectomy? I thought you got one six months ago.”
Well. You see how well that worked out. And speaking of working out, I might just as well go out to the garage and bench press my car because it would be WAY easier than what Wanda the Warrior Princess had in store for me.
Now let’s look at our diet because that’s part of health. Here again we have many different options to go with and, trust me; I’ve gone with most of them. Here’s the thing. Suppose you’re into the point counting diet. I am SO good with that one, even though I’m not necessarily a math person. But I’ve unlocked the secret: ALL FOODS CONTAIN POINTS! Which means you can eat anything, right?
So if we take this piece of cake here and break it all down, you find you have “x” number of points and BINGO! You’ve got your points tally and you write it down and then you totally forget about it because, after all, you wrote it down or stored it in your smart phone or some such, right?
OK, so that theory probably needs a little work. Let’s take a detour from health and resolve our finance issues.
Now everyone should have a financial plan. That’s when you’re 20-something and decide that, crazy as it sounds, you’re actually going to retire someday and in order to do that you need what is cutely referred to as a “nest egg.” So you keep storing money and building your nest egg and pretty soon you have a safe and secure future. Right?
Well, sort of. For example, I have a friend whose husband decided his financial plan was death. He assumed he’d check out at the appropriate time and leave his family with a nest egg in the form of a big fat life insurance policy. Hey – that could work!
Or another friend who was a persistent chain smoker. “Jack!” we’d exclaim! “Those things are going to kill you! They’ll take at least 10 years off your life!” To which Jack would intelligently reply, “Well, I figure the last 10 years of anybody’s life are the worst ones anyway so if I’m not around, I’m better off!”
This tells you I should check into getting a new set of friends.
As for me, I think my ideal financial plan would be to spend my entire nest egg, max out every credit card and when all the bills come due, I would die.
“And with my luck,” says my optimist husband, “I’d still be alive.”
Yeah, he’s lucky like that.