June is one of my favorite months.
Schools get out so kids are excited for the summer.
I love warm weather.
And the June newsletter is always packed with fun stuff 😉
Agenda
- The Medicare Supplement Series
- A Book That Will Make A Difference
- Words of Wisdom: A Simple Moment In The Car
The Medicare Supplement Series
Zacc and I are doing the Social Security series you can find here:
The Complete Social Security Series
And it got me wanting to do something similar with Medicare topics.
So… I’m moving my way through the Medicare Supplement series.
If you haven’t seen them already, I started with the 3 most popular Supplement plan types and how they work.
Here is the full series for you to watch as you please:
The Medicare Supplement Plan Series
I’ll add a couple of others in there over the next week and then I’ll move on to the Medicare Advantage series.
I think we’re all friends here, so I hope you get the sense from these that I genuinely don’t care which plan you pick. I’ll explain how they work and I’ve found that people know themselves better than I do, so they can feel which one they like best as they watch and listen.
So, in other words, I’m not telling you to like one over the other.
They are all great in their own ways.
In maybe more transparency than I “should” say… I go into most of my videos with the idea of, “I’m going to teach them how to do it themselves.”
I have found that there are people who will go and do it themselves.
But then I’ve also found that a lot of people watch and realize they don’t want to do it themselves, so they reach out to us for help. And, since it doesn’t cost anything for them, it has created quite the nice little community of friends and fellow Medicare nerds 🤓
So, if you are one of my fellow Medicare nerds, I salute you, and hope these videos continue to be useful for you.
Book Recommendation
The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt
I started a new… we’ll call it “tradition” with my teenage daughter.
She is fully into wanting to hang out with friends more than us – which I get – but also makes me sad. So, she and I go on walks, and we listen to books together for part of the walk, and talk about the book and how it applies to our life right now for part of the walk.
Part of this time of life includes her friends all owning cell phones.
Our 13-year-old does not.
As you can imagine, we have regular… disagreements… that involve her wanting one and us saying, “not yet.”
“But all my friends have one!”
“They tease me for not having one!”
“They all say my parents are too strict!”
Some of you can probably hear the teenager’s tone of voice through the written words because you, too, have lived through similar conversations about phone use, music, movies, cars, boys, girls… [insert teenage drama here].
I had the same arguments with my parents.
Man… you know… I empathize so much more with them than I ever thought I would.
Anyway… this book is the one she and I listened to most recently.
Cell phones in the hands of teenagers terrify me.
Not just because I don’t trust my teenager’s brain.
And not just because I don’t trust all the other teenaged brains.
But because I don’t even trust myself with the technology in our palms.
This book tells the story better than I can about the impact of the smartphone generation on our kids and grandkids. Must-read if you have teenagers in your life.
Get it Here
Words of Wisdom – A Song in the Car
I love my kids.
Like… so much.
Some would say… “More than anything else in the whole world.”
Ever since I was a kid, mainly because of the relationship I had with my parents, I wanted to have kids of my own. Raise them by teaching them what my parents taught me – and correcting some of the mistakes I thought they were making at the time.
Turns out… my parents were right.
Back to my kids and how much I love them.
They are cute, smart, funny, talented, and they bring me so much joy and happiness.
At the same time…
They can be real turds.
They know exactly how to push each other’s buttons to the point that they are all screaming at each other, chasing each other with plastic bats, slamming doors, calling each other names, and whining to me and my wife about how stupid the other siblings are.
I also just happened to give you a list of the types of things that push my buttons.
So… honestly… There are tiny little moments when, as much as I love them, I question my childhood dream of having kids.
Setting the Scene
It was at one of these moments of them being little turds in the back of my car that something happened.
My youngest is in the middle and is shrieking, “Don’t touch me! You’re in my bubble!”
My oldest to her right, “I am not! I’m just sitting here!”
Youngest: “No you’re not! Leave me alone! And Stop Looking at ME!!!”
My middle child: “What is the matter with you two? Stop!”
Youngest and oldest together: “Be quiet Jared! Stay out of this!”
I’m sure some of you have experienced this same situation.
I’m not sure how you handled it – probably better than us.
It usually ends up with me raising my voice, telling them to stop being turds (or synonyms for that word), and them arguing with me trying to explain their side of the story… which leads me to grounding them from devices or friends for the rest of eternity.
We’re all riled up.
We’re all breathing heavily.
My wife usually puts her hand on her arm to calm me down and slightly adjusts that timeframe of the grounding back by like… billions to trillions of years…
So that’s the scene of this story.
Everyone is glaring at each other.
Kids are making faces at each other.
I’m gripping the steering wheel and I turn the volume up on a song that’s just started.
The Song
One of my favorite bands as a teenager is called One Republic.
I can’t tell you how many times friends of mine and I would roll the windows down and belt out our best renditions of their songs as loud as we could.
We sounded terrible.
We knew it.
But it was so much fun.
A more recent song by this group is called “Need Your Love.”
You can listen to it here if you’d like to get into the full mood of what’s about to happen.
Need Your Love (Song)
It’s one of my favorite songs right now, which means everyone in the family has heard it a bunch of times as well.
Here are the lyrics for those who can’t listen to it right now:
[Verse 1]
Don’t need the buzz or the credit cards
The house on the hill with a perfect yard
Don’t gotta see my name on the boulevard
I don’t need a million dollars
Give me expensive problems
Oh, don’t need a drink just to fill the cup
(Shortened chorus)
But I, I need your love
Oh I, I need your love
Got me sayin’, I, I need your love
I, I need your love
[Verse 2]
Don’t gotta act like such a big deal
I don’t gotta lie ’cause the way you make me feel,
Most people searching for something real
And I don’t need a million dollars
Don’t need expensive problems
Yeah, don’t need a drink just to fill this cup
[Chorus]
[Verse 3]
And when all of the time starts to slip away
Mm, gonna love those lines, gonna love your shades of grey
You know that I have made a million mistakes
But I won’t make a million others
At least not with another
No, don’t need a drink just to fill this cup
[Chorus]
But I, I need your love (I-I-I)
Oh I, I need your love
Got me sayin’, I, I need your love
I, I need your love
I can’t get enough
I, I need your
I, I need your love
Now, this song gets playing with everyone seeing red, but once that first chorus starts… all three kids start softly singing it together.
Maybe you’ve felt this too, but it was like they just couldn’t help themselves.
Kind of like whenever you hear, “SWEET… CAROLINE…”
And you can’t help but go, “Bum, Bum, Bum.”
That’s where these kids were with this song.
The second verse starts and they are all quietly singing along to that, too and by the time the chorus starts again for the second time, all three are singing their little hearts out.
It was this weird… out of body experience almost… hearing these precious little turds singing the lyrics to this specific song after the moment we’d all had that got me a little emotional.
Nobody saw it but me… but it was one of those micro moments where I just felt like I’ve lived a complete life. I could die in that moment and feel alright about the world.
I love having those moments.
And the more I look for them, the more I find them.
After the Song
We pulled into our driveway as the song was ending.
Everyone jumped out of the car and proceeded to start annoying each other again, but for the next 20 minutes or so, my patience with them was much better, and my reactions to their shenanigans didn’t immediately go to my 3 go-to grounding threats… and that felt good.
Your Challenge This Month
Life can be hard.
We don’t always accomplish everything we want or fulfill our bucket lists – I know I haven’t.
But, I do think that, if we really try hard, we can find a moment or two over the next month that will take us out of the monotony of our day to day and pull us up to a realization that… our lives are pretty cool, and the people in them can bring us some headaches, but a whole lot of joy and appreciation.
Would love to hear from any of you who have one of those moments this month.
Thank You
Thank you for being a part of my life.
I hope you have a wonderful month, and I’ll see you in the next newsletter.
Erik
