Two comments really resonated with me, Julia: that shoe-drop feeling, and cooking! My wife and I have been cooking more, and cooking more together, which is a great deal of fun. We're trying "Hello Fresh" right now, but don't plan on continuing with it because a) too expensive, but really b) just too much packaging. We may take a shot at "Blue Apron", but I suspect we'll find the same thing. It's fun, but I can't get over the waste. We used to be a member of a local CSA, but with all our travel kept giving away so much of the produce, or it would go bad before we got a chance to prepare something with it. Honey has a habit of "shopping with good intentions" - buying things we should eat, but it being neglected in favor of convenience food. I prefer to buy tonight's ingredients when we want to cook it.
That impending footware clatter is omnipresent. We have reasonable resources, but her health is fragile and I can imagine just one incident biting deep. I had a mini-stroke 10 years ago, so I know I'm not immune, either, but I have the VA as a fallback resource to protect the family resources. I'm/We're in "transitional retirement", not working, but not getting all of our anticipated pension benefits either. That's the downside of "early retirement". We each have a State retirement to come, and I'm not getting SS for a decade, yet. In the meantime we're filling the gap with savings. The impending downturn is scary, financially.
