PANDEMIC SERIES, ESSAY SEVEN (One Silver Lining in the Pandemic)

 About ten days ago my wife and I felt greatly relieved as we drove out of the Petco Park parking lot in San Diego with little bandages on our arms for the second time in four weeks. We celebrated with linner (the combo of lunch and dinner, not a typo) on Harbor Island, enjoying a table on water's edge, and reflecting on how we were faring as (hopefully) the COVID-19 pandemic faded. We share your hope new variants will not replace COVID-19 as a devastating virus over the next 12 months.

Whether or not we are being overly optimistic, only time will tell. Until I learn otherwise, however, I'll continue to mask but also begin tentatively returning to those "old normal" activities I enjoyed (seeing friends, hugging family, golf, travel and dining out, for starters.) My initial reaction to working on the final two essays of life during the pandemic was to drop them. This essay was (and is) on our spending cuts and the other on ways we interacted (electronically) with friends and family. The second vaccination had given me the feeling the pandemic was yesterday's news, though in my head I knew otherwise. Reinforcing the "drop it" feelings I had, one reaction to Essay Six was "Please take me off your mailing list.  The pandemic no longer interests me." So I did what he asked but not what I was feeling (drop Essays seven and eight). Essay seven follows:

One of the silver linings of the pandemic was a reduction of current spending, some done deliberately by us exercising more control, other cuts the consequences of external factors over which we had no control. For example, automobile-wise I worked with AAA insurance to secure a total of $500 in reduced auto insurance premiums over 2020 and 2021, beyond the voluntary rebates they had sent customers because less driving by everyone meant fewer accidents and claims. Simultaneously, we saved on fuel costs, potential repairs, and wear and tear on our cars given the constraints imposed on society in the fight against the coronavirus.

We also cut spending almost effortlessly in areas such as dining out, movies and live theaters, Padres tickets and domestic and foreign travel. Of course, those cutbacks were both good and bad news, because we missed the activities. One item of note: something several friends and my wife had noticed as a major improvement.  That is, television is producing much better programming, aided in particular by the inability of theaters to compete for live audiences.

We had refinanced our house, taking cash out, a couple of years ago at record low rates, which we began drawing down a bit every month to help fund the cost of everyday living.  Those funds are not taxable as income, but the distributions from retirement accounts, which we had been living on, were. So our reportable taxable income went down, as did CA and Federal income taxes. Further, the lower  taxable income led to reductions of several hundreds of dollars of Medicare-related savings per month.  Medicare premiums are income-related, with premiums subject to significant penalty increases for higher-income recipients.

One final observation, perhaps only a figment of my imagination but it makes me happy, nonetheless: It feels like the frequency and costs of our orders on Amazon Prime have drifted downward in lockstep with our other spending. I don't intend to research this phenomenon. All I  know is neither of us has consciously cut on-line spending. Guess I will just count my blessings.