Personal Finance and Investing

I don't get credits, or miles, or anything else. I just have the peace of mind in knowing that the debt is paid.

My credit score at the moment is 813. It ranges a bit below and above that number.

I rarely fly. I'm a former airline employee, and remember quite well what travel was like back in the somewhat distant past. The rare times that I do fly these days, I always book a first class seat. For one thing, I don't want to be crammed into the horror they call coach these days. For another, I long ago learned that if I planned far enough in advance, I could get a first class seat at a price I was willing to pay. Granted, it was probably not the cheapest possible seat, but it was first class.

In recent years I prefer to take Amtrak, which I've done several times, from New Mexico to Kansas City. I book a sleeper car, which includes meals, a lot of privacy. Since I book a roomette, a very small room that supposedly is good for two people, although I'd hate to share it, and I try very hard to get a roomette on the lower level of the sleeping car, which gives me much more privacy than I'd have upstairs, I just love Amtrak. I've had the occasion to take it about four times recently, from Lamy, NM (a bit south of Santa Fe where I live) to Union Station in Kansas City. (Bonus question: Why are so many train stations in this country called Union Stations?




Okay, I'll tell you. It's because in the beginning of trains in this country, each and every train company had its own station. At some point, different train companies realized there was a better way to do this. So they got together, pooled their stations, which they now called "Union Stations". How cool is that?

Back to my recent Amtrak travels. On those several trips I took the train to Kansas City, where my sister picked me up and we drove to the Washington DC area to help our older brother and his wife clear out their hoarded home and get into assisted living. Sigh. It took three trips and well over a year to do this. I am now adamant that people need to understand they cannot stay in their homes forever, they must realize they need to get rid of stuff, move on, go into an independent/assisted living place.