My name is Dale Sowards. I am 63 and I live in Newport News, Virginia, in the same house Diane and I bought in 1994.
For twenty-two years I bought parts for a shop that supplies the shipyard. Bearings, gloves, wire, freight. Eleven of those years I ran the purchasing desk. The work was getting three prices on the same job, reading what each one actually covered, and writing down where every number came from.
The shop was sold two years ago. I was let go that May, at 61, six weeks after the sale closed. I had planned to work to 66.
So I sat down with our own paperwork. The savings, the homeowners renewal, the silver I bought at a coin show in 2019, the Medicare plan my wife’s sister is on. I kept finding what I used to find at the desk. Two prices for the same thing were far apart, and nobody had said so.
What It Ran Me is where I write it down. What things cost me, what readers send in from their own states, and where each figure came from, so you can check it yourself.
I am not a licensed advisor and I have not taken a course. I do not tell anyone what to buy. When I get a number wrong, I say so in the next letter and print the right one.
Diane, my wife, still works three days a week on the payroll side for the city schools. Our daughter lives in Richmond and our son lives fifteen minutes away. The dog is Bo, from the shelter on Route 17. Nobody knows what breed he is.
Dale