Donnann, your Bee Balm garden sounds like heaven! and I am so sorry that naughty Woodchuck literally cleaned up his plate with your garden...I am sending much warm wishes for your Bee balm garden's speedy recovery...Yes, definitely get wire fencing for it. I would have loved to have seen your Bee Balm Garden.I am keeping my fingers crossed that Mr. Woodchuck will chomp on only the wild weeds instead, like crabgrass or nutsedge or those invasive tree shrubs! I recently saw Kristenflower's absolutely gorgeous rose/lavender heaven too at the gallery and was so impressed! Yours and hers are ideal bee gardens just like Celestialrose. I need to grow much more bee balm because I found out that my dwarf bee balm is not as "invasive" as I had hoped, LOL, no thanks to my crappy soil. I actually planted my bee balm away from my roses in a bare 3 by 3 area. My bee-attracting plants are too young, too few to really attract many bees so next time I have to amp the collection and not! deadhead my beebalm, hoping the seeds will scatter My dad on the other hand has 3 crabapple trees, a persimmon tree, a dwarf apple tree, his yard is completely overrun with wild honeysuckle bushes, lilacs, a forest of hollyhocks and sweet peas(which the bumblebees used to love before they died, one flowering redbud tree, winterberry, azaleas, gardenias, jasmine, 3 crazy rosebushes that are like 8' tall because he never prunes them, 1 rootstock Dr. Huey, all these bee and bird attracting plants which I am so jealous about...But! he does not have bee balm... I think he can certainly add this to his collection...Donna, LOL! I think you will be "enabling" him; the neighbors already think he's got enough of a jungle...Also genes run in the family, hahahaha! I tried to keep as tidy of a garden as I could, but my garden still looks like a jungle because I planted like 50! overly tall gladiolus and now I want to grab some of my Dads overly tall hollyhocks as well! Anyway, I cant wait to see your bee balm garden recover and flourish once again. Hugs! Greenhaven alas I have just a handful of those native beesbut am grateful that at least I have those few. Your post reminded me, do you remember that "I am so excited thread" I wrote? The wonderful cute Mr. Bumblebee that used to visit my garden in May did not survive it seemsIn Mid-June it disappeared after my next door neighbor hired a professional pesticide company to spray the foundations of their home. Perhaps it too was Sevin? It was not until an entire month and a half passed that my Dads bees disappeared... (he and I live in completely separate neighborhoods and bees only have that 3 mi. radius anyways) So as you can see I feel why I feel so guilty. Perhaps if I had mentioned this to my Dad, who knows something could have been prevented? Again, you may be right in that the wild bees are hardier in comparison. They have shorter life spans and dont have communal hives, and that is why they have survived You see if you do the research and look up native bees youll discover thisThey dont have the hives and therefore, they dont have the communal death that the honeybees experience when they are exposed to Sevin. Because wild bees have so many tiny individual nests, each is independent of each other ... Not so with honeybees. Once their hive is contaminated, their entire hive is destroyed, thousands are gone. But to be honest I will always love the honeybee and bumblebees more... There's just something so special about their fuzziness that I love!

Sorry for the length of this: It's half-amusing, half-offensive to be accused of shilling for anyone, since Im as self-taught as one can possibly be. Dreamgarden seems to have ignored all my many posts on other threads over the years. So let me restate my (lack of) credentials to reassure you that I have no vested interest in whether anyone ever uses a planner, advisor, broker, or banker. Havent earned a penny from anyone since 2006 when I retired and the last time I met my ex-boss for lunch, I bought HIM lunch, LOL. For the record, most of my friends and all of my family are like DH & me - we don't have enough liquid assets to be of interest to most financial planners. I have free access to CFPs thru DHs retirement portfolio, but I dont need them. Why? Because I enjoy finance and investing the same way I enjoy reading history, science, and mystery novels IOW, for the sheer fun of it. I read extensively Ive had a subscription to the on-line WSJournal since it was first offered, and read it every day plus I clip articles obsessively from a variety of websites. But I would NEVER assume that others want to spend their time the same way. Old Joyful, for instance, likes to invest in individual stocks. He and I had a recent discussion thread about this. I have no interest in anything but mutual funds. Individual stocks dont fit into our tax and financial situation. I have the healthiest respect for his knowledge and acumen, but the fact remains, he lives in Canada and I live in the US. My financial planning is going to be very different than his, just as my goals are different. I know from our own experience how hard it is to sit down and do estate planning. We dont have much of an estate compared to many, yet it took us decades to learn to identify the things we needed to do, so we could finally do the things we wanted to do. Ignorance is most certainly NOT bliss, as we, and so many others, have discovered! I am a firm believer that we should be teaching some of this stuff in school. The world has changed rapidly and drastically, and us middle-class Boomers are stuck trying to figure out a world so much more dangerous than our parents grew up with. If you read my post more carefully, you would see that I wrote that even cheapie (e.g., simple) plans can at least provide a starting point. I do my own planning, using the WSJournal calculators (a subset of which are available on Schwabs website, or so Ive been told). Ive tried others on the web, but wasnt satisfied as they cant be altered to fit our own unusual circumstances. If a simple planning software can help someone, all to the good. I havent found them very helpful, but that doesnt mean I call them all garbage. WSJs toolset comes closest to allowing me to set the appropriate parameters, without having to pay someone to do a plan for us. Why should I pay, when I have the knowledge to do it myself? Its not hard, it just takes some effort and decision-making. THIS is what a planner is for: to help you (if you cant do it yourself) quantify where you are right now, and where you want to be. This is related to investing, but investing is only a very modest part of it. Its the planning process thats critical, yet not well understood. YOU must do the decision-making. No software program or customized plan means anything if you cant accept the reality of what your current circumstances are, and are willing to work at reaching your goals. I recently talked a young family member out of seeing a planner because I was able to help her identify some long-term goals. She also needed some very basic help diversifying her portfolio. In a decade or so they should probably meet with a planner to ensure theyre on track for whatever their goals are at that time. But until then I told her there was no reason to consult with anyone unless a life-changing event occurs. Its more important for her to have all legal docs in order, at this stage of life. I learned a lot from my ex-boss "G", but I have never referred anyone to him. The people I know who have enough money for financial advisors, already have them. The one time I was emailed off-line to ask for an intro, I refused to do so as the specific circumstances of that person made it inappropriate, in my view. "G" is semi-retired, but stays in the business because he loves working with people. He does a lot of pro bono work and is both well known and respected here as he's been active in professional organizations for over 30 yrs now. He trains his office staff not so much on what to do, but what NOT to do. He is ethical and very, very precise about working for the good of his clients, which is why he has many families who are second- and third-generation clients. BTW, Madoffs clients should have known something was "funny" just in the fact he had them writing out checks to his name. Thats a definite no-no the assets should always be held by a third-party institution. The woman (also a CFP) who works in "Gs" office and produces the financial plans is a former elder care specialist who got into the financial side late in life. These customized plans cost a minimum of $4K and range up to $10K. They are certainly NOT for everyone, but when appropriate, can make a huge difference in someone's life. Most people dont need them, but the ones who do, need them a great deal! I worked with some of those clients, and their lives were definitely better for having gotten a good financial plan and then executed it properly. Actually, now that I think of it I did refer someone to my ex-boss. I told my DH that if I die before he does, he's to sell the house (I maintain it and the garden in addition to all the finances; he has no interest in such things), take the insurance proceeds, and bring the money to "G" to handle. You did not have a good advisor. Thats not your fault. Its hard to evaluate credentials when youre on that steep learning curve. But a good advisor isnt looking for the next hot thing for you a good advisor helps you identify your goals and gives you a roadmap on how to get from where you are to where you want to be. A good advisor says "no" to you almost as often as s/he says "yes." Its important, but difficult, to learn how to differentiate the good from the bad. The more educated we are in this area, the better we can tell who can help us and who cannot. Id liken financial planning/investing to painting a room. You can do it the sloppy easy way. You can do a "sorta-kinda" okay paintjob, shoving the furniture out the way and covering it. Or, you can do more extensive prep work: masking the moldings, laying dropcloths, priming and using two coats. You can use cheap paint and cheap brushes. You can use top quality paint and the best brushes or rollers. Its always your choice. Each method gets the job done, to varying levels of satisfaction, cost, time expended, and durability. Saying that **ALL** CFPs are worthless is like saying all professional painters are worthless. Some are, and some arent. Some people need one all the time/every time, and some only need one on occasion. It isnt for me OR for you to make that unilateral judgment. Using a pro for anything is always an individual decision that should never be taken lightly. Nor should that decision be disparaged, once made. Often a pro does do a better job than an amateur can. Sure, a talented amateur can sometimes better a pro but they need the talent, the interest, the skill, and the time. Not everyone has those in equal measure. To expect it of every person is unrealistic and unfair. I feel fortunate to have had the generous and thoughtful assistance of others in my life. Weve had some serious setbacks that could easily have turned out badly, but in the end everything worked out (so far at least!). If I can help others avoid some of the mistakes we've made, then I feel its worth the effort. We did okay (my ROI over 25 yrs is way better than average), but perhaps we could have done better if we hadnt been so ignorant for so long. We were at times the recipients of sheer dumb luck, but thats something one shouldnt be counting on to happen. Dreamgarden, may you have better luck in the future finding people or resources able to help you.

Thanks, socks. I forgot to explain - some may know alreadyh from last years posts, but short and sweet... Dad lived in MI and suffered a stroke 4 days after tunring 80. My SM was his caretaker. She had a stroke in January of last year. Both were not in good enough shape to live alone and no one lives there to take care of them. The court intervened and now my cousin has guardianship (this is a divorce case between my partents, so it's a little funky). Anyway my cousin has moved them me out of MI, to KC - that's an 18hr drive from me. They are getting better care and as much as anyone can like living in a nursing home, are doing OK. I'm looking for a cheaper plane ticket though. That one is tough because I lost my job last year and am just now getting back on track. We'll see soon though. Anyway - thanks again everyone. I'm getting ready to call my Dad now. gneegirl

I've never been married. I'm 56 now, so I realize it's not going to be easy to find a partner. I dropped out of college in 1980 to take care of my grandmother who helped raise me. Then I became the caregiver for three other relatives in succession, the last was my father, so I didn't get out enough to meet many single men. I got back from Cache Creek casino sooner than expected. One of my cousins wasn't feeling well so we had to come home early. Now that I'm home, I'm feeling depressed, partly because I lost money, and didn't have time to win it back, but mostly because I miss my dad. I thought of how much more fun the trip would have been if he were with me. I remembered the time when we gambled all night together in Reno, when we both were much younger. We arrived home exhausted but happy. I wish we could have had more fun times like that. I thought about my dad on the long ride home and how the world seems so empty without him, even though there were crowds of people in the casino and on the roads and freeways. It's hard to believe I"ll ever feel better, but I know I'm feeling extra weary from lack of sleep. I couldn't sleep well last night, because I was crying so much, more than before. It's a different kind of exhaustion than the kind you get from having fun. I know that no one can take my dad's place, but it would be nice to have someone here to talk over the trip with and to just watch tv with at the end of the day. Thank you for the offer to message you, JoAnn. Feel free to message me anytime, too. Sending hugs and prayers, Gilda