Hello bgroper,

An alternative way on using the Date::Manip module could be:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Date::Manip;
use feature 'say';

my $date1 = ParseDate("today");
my $date2 = ParseDate("2019-08-10");
my $delta = DateCalc($date2, $date1, \my $err, 1);
say Delta_Format($delta, "Months: %Mv Days: %dv");

__END__

$ perl test.pl
Months: -2 Days: 0
[download]

You can create your own conditions based on the string when you want to have an alarm etc.

Hope this helps, BR.