By Mark McNease

I like earning the extra income on money I’m spending anyway. If you’re like me and you never carry debt, it’s a win-win.

I didn’t need another credit card, and I haven’t carried debt in at least 15 years. I pay my statements every month, having been strongly encouraged to do that when I met my now-husband Frank in 2006. After many years of paying interest, it was a jolt to the system, but it’s a habit I’m very happy I got into. I don’t necessarily spend less, but I never pay interest, and that makes those cash back dollars and rewards points worth the occasional new card.

I’ve had an Amazon Chase card for years, and usually take the cash back amounts against my Amazon account. Sometimes I’ll cash it out instead. And a year ago we joined Costco. Between the discounts and the cash back that accumulates every month, it’s been worth it.

By Jim Miller

Dear Savvy Senior,

How can I tell if the health info on a website is trustworthy? I usually do a Google search on a symptom, drug or health condition when I want to research something, but with so much information out there I’m not sure what I can trust.

Skeptical Sal

Dear Sal,

You’re wise to be skeptical! There’s an overwhelming amount of health advice on the internet today and it can be hard to tell what’s credible. To help you sort through the online clutter and locate reliable, trustworthy health information, here are a few tips to follow, along with some top-rated sites you can turn to with confidence.

I knew Wendy when we both worked at the same place several years ago in New Hope, PA. I often wondered where she went and what she was up to. And now I know! She was generous enough to share her past, present and future with us, and I’m delighted to have her as a guest columnist for this six-part series. – Mark/Editor

Once he has a career, wife, house, family, he’ll forget about being a girl

I grew up about fifty miles north of New York City in Fishkill, New York. My parents took me to a psychiatric center along the Hudson River between Beacon and Cold Spring New York called the Craig House. I was ten years old sitting with my parents in front of a psychiatrist. He was talking past me to my parents saying once he grows up, has a career, has a wife, has a house, has a family, he’ll forget all about being a girl. I spoke up and said, “No, I’m a girl!” And that was particularly terrifying to me, but I couldn’t hold back.  I was in front of my father who was adamant that I was his son. Unknown to me at the time, he had gone to great lengths to have a son. And no son of his would be a girl. I had declared in front of him to the psychiatrist, “No, I’m a girl”. After five sessions with the psychiatrist my parents told me, “Forget you are a girl. That’s not going to happen. You get that out of your mind. You’re a boy and that’s how you’re going to be. And if you don’t stop behaving this way and insisting you’re a girl, you’re going to be committed and fixed at the psychiatric center.” This was in the late 1950s and I was scared to death.

“Mark gave us a simple exercise, to pick a room and diagram it using the house we grew up in. Put in the furniture, windows, all the room’s features, and take notice of any feelings, emotions, thoughts that occurred as we did the exercise. I was astonished at the power of my memories and feelings as I thought about the knotty pine “den” where my family watched TV, sometimes ate, spent most of the nighttime hours before going to bed. I relived the distance I always felt between my father and me, the anger of my father toward my mother, my disgust with my sad depressed grandmother, who I felt almost didn’t exist for me. I became that teenage boy in Canton, Mississippi, trying to figure out how I could be so different, how I could know I was “queer”, and wondering if I would even be able to act on those feelings.” – Jim G.