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5 Personal Safety Apps that Could Save Your Life

Life

Image representing iPhone as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase

No one likes to think about the possibility of dying too young. But knowing that potential exists, you take the smart step of protecting those you love by carrying term life insurance. But what about preventing the worst? Did you know your iPhone or Android device can call for help or record vital information if you ever find yourself in a life-threatening situation? Here are five personal safety apps that could save your life.

1) myGuardianAngel

Once this app allows you to reach all of your emergency contacts with the push of one button. You enter the contact information for anyone you would want to get in touch with if you were in any sort of emergency as soon as you download it. If you are in an emergency, the app will call your contacts, send them an e-mail with your GPS location and immediately begin recording audio and video from your phone.

2) StaySafe

This app is good for anyone who works or travels alone. You can schedule the app to automatically notify friends or family after a certain period of time when your phone is inactive. For example, you can estimate how long you expect to drive from one location to another on your own and then the phone will contact someone automatically if you are out of contact longer than expected. That way your friends will know to send help because something is wrong, even if you aren’t in a position to contact them yourself. StaySafe sends your contacts a detailed GPS location for you so that they can easily find you and bring help.

3) RESCUE

This full-service app can help you on the scene as well as notify your emergency contacts for you. If you are in trouble, you can trigger the app to sound a loud alarm that might frighten off anyone who might be planning to do you harm. The alarm can also help someone find you if you are lost or unable to move from your current location. When the alarm is triggered, the app will also send immediate notifications to your emergency contact list so that they can begin to send help right away. Emergency services such as the police and fire department can also be set for notification through the RESCUE app.

4) Night Recorder

This is a good app to have when you need to make a quick recording of your surroundings for any reason. The app can be set to begin recording at a touch. If you are stranded, you could create a recording by speaking about the landmarks you can see and explaining how you got to your current location. The recorder can then send an email of your recording to anyone on your contact list.

5) iWitness

With this app, you can instantly make video or audio recordings of your situation so that there is a permanent first-hand record of everything that happens. It is a handy tool for anyone who has been in a car accident or involved in a medical emergency because you can go back and look at the video to see exactly what happened if there is any question about it later. The app will also contact emergency services or your personal emergency contacts if you are in trouble. The built-in GPS locator will transmit your exact location so that people can find you quickly and easily.

Post by Term Life Insurance News

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Budget Lesson, Part 5

Finance

I’ve explained my budget in some detail already.  See these posts for the history of this series.

Now, I’m going to go through each section, reviewing ways that I can reduce, or have reduced, my spending.  I’ll be starting with my monthly payments.

  • House Payment – I’ve mentioned that we have a small house payment.    A few years ago, when the interest rates dropped to almost the lowest point they reached in that particular cycle, we refinanced and got in under 5%.   There is nothing to cut.  We won’t refinance again, and the loan will be paid within 7 years, according to the lender’s schedule.  I’m aiming for 4 years.
  • Netflix – We’re on the 2 DVD/unlimited plan for $13.99.  We could drop down to the single DVD plan, but I’m worried that will trigger a rash of movie-buying.  2-at-a-time scratches that itch well.  I don’t think we’ll be reducing this plan in the foreseeable future. [Read more…] about Budget Lesson, Part 5

Budget Lesson, Part 1

Finance

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Over the next few weeks, I will be going over my budget in detail.

The first section is income, but that’s straightforward.  A line for each income source, bi-weekly, monthly and annual totals.  Simple.

Before we start, a word on the organization.  There are five columns:

  • Category – This is the description of the line item.
  • Cost – How much do you pay for this item?
  • Time – What is the frequency of the payment?  Valid values are ‘m’, ‘q’, ‘y’, ‘w’ for ‘Monthly’, ‘Quarterly’, ‘Yearly’ and ‘Weekly’.
  • Monthly – Cost and Time are combined to calculate the monthly expense, to make it possibly to budget.  If this is $100, I need to set aside a C-Note each and every month to make the payment when it comes due.
  • Yearly – This column is mostly informative.  It’s helpful to see this in comparison to my annual pay.

The first section I am actually going to address is discretionary spending.

  • Groceries/Dining    $475.00 – We don’t budget heavily for groceries, which would be a surprise if you saw me.  At the smallest I have ever been, fit, I was never small.  We shop smart, buy in bulk when it makes sense, and rarely eat out.  We also keep cooked rice and beans in containers in the refrigerator as a cheap and healthy way to stretch almost everything we eat.
  • Discretionary    $250.00 – This gets used for household items, like toilet paper and soap.  It also get used for the odd book or movie, or to cover the gaps between the other categories and reality.
  • Baby stuff    $60.00 – We have two children in diapers.  ‘Nuff said.  This category does get progressively smaller as the baby items are outgrown and the children get potty-trained.
  • Gas/oil    $200.00 – Gas and auto-maintenance.  This is actually higher than monthly costs, allowing us to set some aside for larger maintenance issues.
  • Clothes    $15.00 – All of our dressers are overflowing, so this is strictly replacement cost for the time being.  Our kids wear a lot of hand-me-downs.
  • Blow Money    $50.00 – Occasionally, habitual shoppers need to shop.  If they don’t do it on-budget, they will do it off-budget and kill the whole idea.

Initially, we used a “virtual envelope” system.  We had a spreadsheet and every time something was spent in this category, we entered the amount and stopped when the category was spent.   Didn’t work.  We are going on a pure, cash-only system as of the first of the year.  No money, no spendy.

Make Extra Money, Part 6: Setting Up a Site

Business, Finance

In this installment of the Make Extra Money series, I’m going to show you how to set up a WordPress site.   I’m going to show you exactly what settings, plugins, and themes I use.   I’m not going to get into writing posts today.  That will be next time.

I use WordPress because it makes it easy to develop good-looking sites quickly.   You don’t have to know html or any programming.   I will be walking through the exact process using Hostgator, but most hosting plans use CPanel, so the instructions will be close.  If not, just follow WordPress’s 5 minute installation guide.

Installing WordPress

Assuming you can follow along with me, log in to your hosting account and find the section of your control panel labeled “Software/Service”.  Click “Fantastico De Luxe”.

Fantastico

On the Fantastico screen, click WordPress, then “New Installation”.

Install WordPress

On the next screen, select your domain name, then enter all of the details: admin username, password, site name, and site description.  If you’ll remember, I bought the domain  http://www.masterweddingplanning.net.   I chose the site name of “Master Wedding Planning” and a description of “Everything You Need to Know to Plan Your Wedding”.

Click “install”, then “finish installation”.   The final screen will contain a link to the admin page, in this case, masterweddingplanning.net/wp-admin.  Go there and log in.

Configuring WordPress

After you log in, if there is a message at the top of the screen telling you to update, do so.   Keeping your site updated is the best way to avoid getting hacked.  Click “Please update now” then “Update automatically”.  Don’t worry about backing up, yet.  We haven’t done anything worth saving.

Next, click “Settings” on the left.  Under General Settings, put the www in the WordPress and site URLs.  Click save, then log back in.

Click Posts, then Categories.  Under “Add New Category”, create one called “Misc” and click save.

Click Appearance.  This brings you to the themes page.   Click “Install Themes” and search for one you like.   I normally use Headway, but before I bought that, I used SimpleX almost exclusively.   Your goal is to have a simple theme that’s easy to maintain and easy to read.  Bells and whistles are a distraction.

Install a theme

Click “Install”, “Install now”, and “Activate”.  You now have a very basic WordPress site.

Plugins

A plugin is an independent piece of software to make independent bits of WordPress magic happen.   To install the perfect set of plugins, click Plugins on the left.    Delete “Hello Dolly”, then click “Add new”.

In the search box, enter “plugin central” and click “Search plugins”.    Plugin Central should be the first plugin in the list, so click “install”, then “ok”, then “activate plugin”.  Congratulations, you’ve just installed your first plugin.

Now, on the left, you’ll see “Plugin Central” under Plugins.  Click it.  In the Easy Plugin Installation box, copy and paste the following:

 All in One SEO Pack
 Contact Form 7
 WordPress Database Backup
 SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2
 WP Super Cache
 Conditional CAPTCHA for WordPress
 date exclusion seo
 WP Policies
 Pretty Link Lite
 google xml sitemaps
 Jetpack by WordPress.com


Click “install”.


On the left, click “Installed Plugins”.   On the next screen, click the box next to “Plugins”, then select “Activate” from the dropdown and click apply.


Activate plugins


Still under Plugins, click “Akismet Configuration”.  Enter your  API key and hit “update options”.  You probably don’t have one, so click “get your key”.


Tools


The only tool I worry about is the backup.   It’s super-easy to set up.   Click “Tools”, then “Backup”.  Backup


Scroll down to “Schedule Backups”, select weekly, make sure it’s set to a good email address and click “Schedule Backup”.   I only save weekly because we won’t be adding daily content.  Weekly is safe enough, without filling up your email inbox.


Settings


There are a lot of settings we’re going to set.   This is going to make the site more usable and help the search engines find your site.  We’re going to go right down the list.   If you see a section that I don’t mention, it’s because the defaults are good enough.


Writing


Set the Default Post Category to “Misc”.


Visit this page and copy the entire list into “Update Service” box.   This will make the site ping a few dozen services every time you publish a post.   It’s a fast way to get each post indexed by Google.


Click “Save Changes”.


Discussion


Uncheck everything under “Email me whenever…” and hit save.   This lets people submit comments, without actually posting the comments or emailing me when they do so.  Every once in a while, I go manually approve the comments, but I don’t make it a priority.


Permalinks


Select “Custom structure” and enter this: /%postname%/


Click save.


All in One SEO


Set the status to “Enabled”, then fill out the site title and description.  Keep the description to about 160 characters.  This is what builds the blurb that shows up by the link when you site shows up in Google’s results.


Check the boxes for “Use categories for META keywords” and “Use noindex for tag archives”.


Click “Update Options”.


Date Exlusion SEO


Check the boxes to remove each of the dates and set the alt text to “purpose” or something.   This will suppress the date so your posts won’t look obsolete.


Hide Dates


SEO Search Terms 2


This plugin reinforces the searches that bring people to your site.   It’s kind of neat.  Skip the registration, accept the defaults and hit save.


WP Policies


Scroll to the bottom and click import.  We’ll come back to this.


WP Super Cache


Select “Caching On” and hit save.


JetPack


Across the top of the screen should be a giant banner telling you to connect to WordPress.com and set up Jetpack.  You’ll need an account on WordPress.com, so go there and set one up.   After authorizing the site, you’ll be brought back to the Jetpack configuration screen.   Click “Configure” under “WordPress.com Stats”.  Take the defaults and hit save.


Contact


On the contact configuration page, copy the code in the top section.  You’ll need this in a moment.


Contact form code


Pages


Now, we going to create a couple of static pages.   On the left, click “Pages”, then “Add new”.


Name the first page “Contact” and put the contact form code in the body of the page.  Hit publish.


Menus


Under Appearance, click “Menu”.   Enter a menu name and hit save.


Then, under “Pages”, click the box next to “Contact”, “Disclaimer”, and any other policies you’d like to display.  Hit save.


Widgets


Also under Appearance, click “Widgets”.   This is where you’ll select what will display in the sidebar.   All you have to do is drag the boxes you want from the middle of the page to the widget bar on the right.   I recommend Text, Search, Recent Posts, Popular Search Terms and Tag Cloud.  In the text box, just put some placeholder text in it, like “Product will go here”.   We’ll address this next time.


Posts


We’re not going to worry about getting posts in place, yet.    That will be the next installment.  However, the steps in the next installment could take 2 weeks to implement, and we want Google to start paying attention now.  To make that happen, we need to get a little bit of content in place.   This won’t be permanent content.  It’s only there so Google has something to see when it comes crawling.


To get this temporary, yet legal content, I use eZineArticles.  Just go search for something in your niche that doesn’t look too spammy.


Then, click “Posts”, then delete the “Hello World” post.  Click “Add new”.   Copy the eZine article, being sure to include the author box at the bottom, and hit publish.


To see your changes, you may have to go to Settings, then WP Cache and delete the cache so your site will refresh.


Congratulations!  You now have a niche blog with content.   It’s not ready to make you any money, yet, but it is ready for Google to start paying attention.    In the next installment, I’ll show you how I get real unique content and set it up so Google keeps coming back to show me the love.


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Budget Lesson, Part 7


Finance
It’s been a month(again!) since I’ve written a post for the budget series, so I’ll be continuing that today.   See these posts for the history of this series.


This time, I’m looking at how to reduce my “set aside” funds.  These are the categories that don’t have specific payout amounts and happen at irregular intervals.   One of the convenient features of our set-aside funds–also a feature of our non-monthly bills–is that the money sits in our checking account, providing a buffer against overdrafts.   The buffer is big enough  that I can withdraw our entire month’s discretionary budget on the first of the month.


    

  • Parties  – Twice a year, we have large parties.  We have a barbecue(not necessarily low and slow, I’m in the midwest) and a Halloween party.   We also have three kids with birthdays.   Each year, we try to do something exotic at the barbecue.  One year, it was a turducken.  This year, we’ll be skipping the show-off portion of the show.    The Halloween party is never expensive.   I don’t drink much, so the bar stays well-stocked without frequent expensive shopping trips.   We throw two large parties for less than $300 combined, and our guests start RSVPing a year in advance.  We’re fun.   The kids are getting gypped this year.   I am over my addiction to expensive birthday parties for my kids.  There will be a small party for one, a sleepover for another, and a party combined with some cousins’ birthday parties for the third.    It sound horrible but all of them will have fun.
    • 

  • Gifts  – We set aside money for presents, but we don’t feel we need to spend all of the money we have set aside.   Anything left over stays here.  Eventually, it will be something nice for all of us.
    • 

  • Pet Care – We have 4 cats and a dog.  Cat litter and food are expenses that we can’t make disappear.  We don’t buy the fancy food, but we also don’t buy the stuff that uses cardboard as filler.   We have set a new limit at 3 pets, but that limit will only be reached through attrition.   There’s nothing to cut here for a few years.
    • 

  • Car Repair – This is another category with nothing to cut.   If we don’t spend it, and something catastrophic happens to a car, we’ll be covered.  If it doesn’t, we’ll have a bit more cushion in our checking account.
    • 

  • Furnace Warranty – When we bought a new furnace and air conditioner, we got the extended warranty.   This is an unlimited renewal warranty, so, in 5 years, we’ll have to buy it again to keep it.  If we keep it forever, they will eventually replace our furnace when it dies.
    • 

  • Medicine/Medical – It’s a sad fact that people get sick.   We set aside a small amount to cover our costs.   The costs rise and fall, but over any given quarter, I don’t think I’ve been off by more than $5.
    • 



I’ve taken a hard look at most of the bills over time, so there isn’t always a lot to cut.  Next time, I’ll be addressing our discretionary spending.