You never know when life can turn on a dime - my spouse, out of the blue with no warning, was let go (ie. fired) from his job on Friday six months before his full retirement age. It was a very difficult, technical job which required extreme attention to detail (Application Support Analysist) and even he said as he's gotten older that it's been harder for him to multi-task all the different technical things he had to do during the day. But no one (his boss, his bosses boss) pulled him aside to say anything specific about his performance. It came as such a shock to us and one could twist themselves into a pretzel and drive oneself crazy about the reasons.

So what to do now? We are going to have to buy at least one month of COBRA health insurance. I have an appointment on Monday to talk to someone about getting signed up for Medicaid (BeWell New Mexico) and K. can apply for full Medicare (he is already signed up for Part A). I can't help but be extremely worried about the stoopid Big, Beautiful Bill and even getting on Medicaid; thank GOD I live in a very blue, but very poor state (we do get a lot of oil & tax revenues, so I now the state budget has a surplus for now). I am 15 months from being able to sign up for Medicare.

I made him sit down with me to go over our bare minimum monthly expenses and even I was a little shocked to see it all add up. His salary was so good (six figures) for the past 2.5 years that I lost a little bit of my frugal bone and he never had one. I think we will be all right due to our savings and the fact that I was approved for SSDI. I won't get that much but when I add in my little monthly IRA distribution and the job I manage to work at one day a week it is more than a little chunk of money. He already has a job interview tomorrow and has put out his resume to several recruiters anyway because he was so stressed in that job. I know the job market is getting bad though and who is going to hire a 66 year old when there are all these kids with computer science degrees looking for jobs...

He will be filing for unemployment today so there's that. And he is committed to severely pulling back our spending to just the bare essentials. Now I am really glad we stocked up on a lot of food and other essentials at the start of the trade war two months ago. I guess the thing that worries me the most is the health insurance stuff. I still have ongoing issues with my shoulder and arm. On the day he got fired I was getting an EMG and ultrasound of the brachial plexus. I don't know yet how serious this is but she found a lot of fluid in that area, which shouldn't be there a year after surgery. So more doctor visits for a followup locally and there is a possibility that I have to go back to St. Louis at some point too, but I'll cross that bridge when/if it comes to that.

Ughhhhhh, just ugggghhhh.