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The no-pants guide to spending, saving, and thriving in the real world.
A few weeks ago, I discovered the queue at my public library’s website. The process is simple: Select your books, wait a few days, then pick them up. They are available from any library in the county, delivered to my local library. That’s awesome. Much more convenient-and cheaper-than Amazon.
So I moved a couple of pages of my Amazon wish-list into the library’s queue.
I must not have been thinking, because two days later, I got an email telling me that 19 books were ready to be picked up and 10 more were in transit.
In this county, each checkout is good for 21 days. For items that don’t have a waiting list, you can reserve 3 times. That’s 12 weeks for 29 books. Hopefully, I’m up to the challenge. Please keep in mind, I’m a father of three, two of whom are in diapers, and I’m married, and I have a full time job.
I have frugally blown every second of spare time for months.
Update: This was another post written in advance. When all of the books came in, I suspended my request list. Little did I realize, the suspension cancels itself after 30 days. That was 30 more books. Whee!
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
When you run a big company that handles a lot of one-year renewable contracts with the government at every level from city to federal, you tend to expect that you’ll need to do some legwork on the contract renewals before they expire. Preferably, you’d do this a few weeks before they expire so the bureaucratic mess that is the federal government can process the renewal on their end.
That’s a reasonable expectation after 30 years in the industry.
If, instead, you wait until the expiration date on the contract to submit the renewal to the federal agency in question, you’ll have a department to shut down for a week due to lack of work.
Then, at the end of that week, you’ll be reminded that the wheels of the federal government grind. very. slow.
So slow, in fact, that the department in question gets to stay shut down for at least another 2 weeks.
If you haven’t been doing the math, that is a surprise, unpaid, three-week vacation for my wife.
Our emergency fund hasn’t grown to the size that can handle this, but it is enough to take the edge off for a couple of weeks. Yay!
We’d already decided that we would be skipping a vacation this year, to give us more time to deal with my mother-in-law’s estate and hoarding remnants, so the vacation fund will be tapped. That should cover the rest, assuming her job does come back.
That’s part 1.
Part 2 is the story of a cat whose butt exploded on our bed at 1AM last week.
Poo–the cat named for her coloration–has been acting funny. She’d suddenly sprint in a circle around the room, then poop on the floor. Irritating.
One night, her sprint crossed our bed, so my wife pinned her down, hoping to break the cycle.
The cat screamed, then sprayed blood from her butt all over the pillows, blankets, sheets, and my wife.
That’s called a midnight visit to the emergency vet.
See, cats have anal glands that they use to sign their work when they are marking their territory. Sometimes, these glands get infected. Sometimes, the infection gets so bad the glands kind of…explode.
On my bed.
While I’m sleeping.
Pop.
Fixing that involves sedation, an ice cream scoop, and a sewing kit. Or something. I wasn’t really pushing for details when my wife called from the vet’s office.
For those of you who’ve never had a cat’s butt explode in your bed at one in the morning (and if you have, I’m not sure I want to hear the story), the emergency vet isn’t cheap. This visit cost us $500. It probably would have been half of that if we would have waited until the regular vet opened, but…ewww.
We’ll be starting our emergency fund from about 0 in the next few weeks, but it beats going in to debt over a couple of setbacks.
How’s your emergency fund? Is it enough to carry you through any unexpected setback?
While I find it fascinating to read about other people’s net worth, I’ve never bothered to figure out my own. With the start of the new year, I thought it would be fun to do. This is me, upping my personal transparency bar.
Overall: $240,137
Update: I wrote and scheduled this before I paid off my car loan.