As if managing our own little family’s money wasn’t hard enough, I’m also in charge of my elderly dad’s financial life. He’s in his 90s and has pretty severe dementia, so it’s absolutely necessary that I step in.

Last fall, Dad developed pneumonia and ended up in a rehabilitation center for a couple of months. I kid you not: The insurance hassles related to a rehab stay are mind-boggling. Enough to make an adult kid want to find ANY solution other than a rehab stay for an elderly parent.

One good thing came out of all this, though. By pure luck (ok, and maybe some divine intervention of some kind!), I found a folder in my dad’s papers titled “Tricare.” I had a vague sense that this was an extra insurance program my dad had through his federal government pension. But he rarely used it when he was of sound mind. There was only one piece of paper in the file–coverage for some long-forgotten dental services.

I’m intrigued by this article in the July 2008 issue of Money. Mostly because I’m hating my credit cards these days.

My issue with credit cards is not about racking up debt. We pay off our cards in full every month. But I have two gripes:
1. I feel like I spend more freely with plastic than with cash.
2. It’s tough to stick with a tight monthly budget when “old” purchases show up in a new month needing to be paid.

My family goes through a lot of sandwich fixings. The kids eat sandwiches almost every day, as does my hubby. But buying the meat gets spendy!

I don’t love the packaged, thin-sliced meats filled with sodium, though they’re cheap. And the sliced deli meat is close to $6 a pound right now–too expensive for every day. So I was thrilled to read a great tip in this interesting book. You can also more read about The Economides family and their frugal living ideas at their Web site.

Saving money at the grocery store is something I fuss about and research all the time. I guess it’s because our monthly grocery budget feels a little more–flexible?–than, say, the monthly mortgage payment, school tuition and all of our other fixed expenses.

And to be honest, there are a lot of opportunities to overspend at the grocery store these days (“Oooh! A new kind of cheese!” or “Oh, these would be so easy to pop in the kids’ lunches!”)

So I was thrilled to read a series of real-family grocery spending profiles– “How Low Can You Go?” here, in The Oregonian, my hometown newspaper.