I’ve heard that our politicians gave themselves a big raise — several thousand dollars — and they were big hearted and gave us “oldies” a 2 percent Social Security raise. This would amount to most of us getting an additional $10 a month or about $120 a year. Whoopee! Won’t we have a great time paying our bills with that!

Then today I got a notice from Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Maine that our insurance payments will rise 5 percent a month for the next year.

I heard on television tonight there is some talk of increasing our monthly telephone bill. What are we going to do? Where will it ever end?

There is no way we can make ends meet. Some of us don’t want hand-outs or to go crawling for help. We’ve been paying into Social Security for years. Alice Varney Houlton