Please email me at:
![Jason [at] LiveRealNow [dot] net](https://liverealnow.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/email.jpg "Jason [at] LiveRealNow [dot] net"){kind=small}
Or use the form below.
[contact-form 1 “Contact form 1”]
5 Personal Safety Apps that Could Save Your Life
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
Budget Lesson, Part 6
It’s been a month 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’ll be reviewing my non-monthly bills. These are the bills that have to be paid, but aren’t due on a monthly basis. Some are annual, some are quarterly.
- School Lunch – This could be cut by sending a bag lunch. We pay about $1.25 per day for school lunch. At that price, I don’t think I can beat the nutrition, let alone the convenience of the meal. We pay this whenever the account gets below $10.
- Property Taxes – We pay this semi-annually. This bill goes up every year due to the ****** ***-******* ******-******* who don’t care about their constituents making ends meet. ******* ***** ******* *******. Huh. Who knew WordPress came with a censor? I could move, but I’d have to get out of commuting distance to get this down much.
- Life insurance – I’ve got two quarterly life insurance policies. I can’t get these much cheaper, but I should be able to next year. The questions asked if I’ve smoked in the last three years, and that will be up on Halloween.
- AAA – It’s only been recently that I’ve owned vehicles reliable enough to avoid paying my AAA dues for me. I could cancel this, but for $80 per year, the hotel discounts make it a wash. One vacation per year comes close to making the difference.
- Vehicle Registration – The only way to cut this would be to get rid of a vehicle. I don’t think that’s possible for us. We work in opposite directions and, for at least one quarter per year, spend too much time chasing around for activities.
- Daycare – We’ve been using our current daycare provider since my oldest(10) was one. When my youngest turns 2 in June, our costs will go down. Without one of us quitting our job, this bill can only go down as the kids grow up.
- City Bill – This bill combines our garbage, water, and sewer. With three adults, three kids, and 5 animals in the house, reducing our garbage level is difficult. We do try to manage our water usage in the summer, to keep that down.
- Web host – I have a few domain names and a hosting package to handle my side hustles and miscellaneous projects. This is a deductible expense. I have been allowing my domain names to expire if the project isn’t being actively pursued.
- Memberships – I have annual dues to two organizations. I’m making payments on lifetime memberships, so these will be going away in about 18 months.
Reviewing this list, there doesn’t seem to be too much I can cut and accomplish any meaningful savings. Am I missing something?
Make Yourself Accountable
Everybody knows the reputation New Year’s resolutions get for being abandoned in under a month. Following through with your saving and budget goals can be difficult. There are thousands of strategies for keeping your resolutions, but I’ve found that the best goal-keeping mechanism is to make yourself accountable. There are several ways to accomplish this.
Make Firm Goals. If your goals are open to interpretation, it’s easy to interpret them in a way that lets you off the hook. Make the goals concrete and immune to interpretation, and that can’t happen. “Get up earlier” may mean five minutes, which is technically meeting the goal, but not really. “Get up at 5am” is clear and concrete.
Get a “Goal Buddy”. When I am out shopping, if I’m struck by the impulse to buy something I probably don’t need, I call my wife. She’s more than happy to encourage me to put the movie or game back on the shelf. I have a friend who will call me up if he’s thinking about buying a new gadget so I can talk him down. Friends don’t let friends mortgage their futures.
Go Public. As you may have noticed, I’m being as open as possible with my goals for the year. I have laid out clear goals and I provide fairly frequent updates through both this site and twitter. If I fail, I fail in front of an audience. That’s strong encouragement to succeed. Tell your family, friends and coworkers. Announce your goals on the internet. Make it as difficult as possible to fail gracefully.
Punish Yourself. I have a line item in my budget called “In the hole“. If I go over budget one month, the overage is entered as an expense the following month. This serves the double purpose of getting the budget back on track and forcing me to sacrifice something the next month to make that happen. Another option may be to write out a check to a charity you hate, and drop it in the mail if you miss your goal. Anything unpleasant can work as your punishment.
How do you keep your goals?
20 Lazy Ways to Save Money
- Image by Paul Vivier via Flickr
Investopedia ran a post on 20 lazy ways to save money. I thought it was worth sharing my take on the post.
1. Schedule automatic payments. I do this obsessively. I run all of my regular payments through my bank’s online bill-pay. I think there are 2 bills that get paid manually; 1 is a quarterly payment, the other is due annually.
2. Eat your groceries. According to the post, Americans–on average–throw away 15% of the groceries they buy. I totally believe that. We don’t throw away that much, but it’s still too much. It tends to be the fresh vegetables, which we eat as side dishes instead of the main course. We need to switch that mindset, both to use the vegetable efficiently and to eat healthier.
3. Bundle services. I refuse. I hate the idea of having a single point of failure for multiple systems. If the power goes out, I lose my cable, but I keep the phone. If, for some reason, I can’t pay my phone bill, I don’t lose my internet connection. I like keeping these things separated.
4. Pay off credit card. Hardly a lazy process, but otherwise…duh!
5. Mark your calendar. I use my Google Calendar as obsessively as I use automatic payments. I put in reminders, grocery lists, or anything else I need to know at a specific time.
6. File your taxes on time. I just helped a friend dig out of this mess. I pay as soon as all of my paperwork is delivered. The IRS doesn’t give up and they have leverage, including garnishment and even jail.
7. Roll it over. When you change jobs, take your 401k with you. Don’t leave it behind like a series of red-headed stepchildren. It’s too easy to lose track of the accounts. Don’t cash it out! I made that mistake once and lost far too much to taxes. A rollover doesn’t count against your 401k contribution limits.
8. Switch credit cards. If you can a good balance transfer offer that’s followed by a better interest rate than you currently have, use it. But don’t forget to pay attention to the transfer fees. Do the math. If it costs you $500 to transfer the money, how much interest do you have to save to make it worthwhile?
9. Use your privileges. If you have a AAA membership, use it. It gives you a discount on hotels, oil changes, car rentals, and more. Read the paperwork. Former military gets a ton of random discounts, too. Ask.
10. Rent instead of buy. Renting can save you money over buying, if it’s something you’ll only use once, but borrowing is free.
11. Buy instead of rent. Rent-a-center is a ripoff, but they can’t even legally operate here. If you’re going to use something regularly, buy it.
12. Ask. I love to call up every company I give money to and ask if there’s a way I can give them less. Outside of chain stores and restaurants I almost always ask for a lower price.
13. Just say no. Extended warranties are generally a waste of money. However, if I can’t afford to replace the item, I do get the warranty. On my car, I brought it in for a full inspection and repair a few weeks before the warranty ran out and made all of that money back. We are slowly building a warranty fund to replace the need for any future extended warranties.
14. Have the awkward conversation. We tried giving gift-giving the axe, but nobody enjoyed that. Now, we cap the gifts at $20 and do a round-robin type of gift. $40 for gifts keeps 10 adults happy.
15. Eat at home. Generally, I can cook almost anything better at home, but I really do enjoy eating out and trying new restaurants. We just keep it from being a regular expense.
16. Balance your checkbook. What a waste of time! With automatic payments and cash for all of the discretionary budget items, I balance the checkbook once a month.
17. Stick with your bank. Either use your own bank’s ATM network, or use a bank that refunds ATM fees. I only take out cash on the first of the month, for the entire month and I do that with a teller, so this is never an issue for us.
18. Use your TV. Cable movie packages instead of a video membership? Really? That’s a horrible idea.
19. Quit those bad habits. I quite smoking, saving $200 a month. I don’t drink much and I’m working on fixing my eating habits. Vices are fun, and this is certainly not a fun way to save money.
20. Forget the pet. There is no way this would fly at my house. we have 5 cats, 2 gerbils, and a dog. Our renter has 2 pythons. We’re a flippin’ zoo and honestly, mess and cost aside, we all like it that way.
How do you stand on these ideas?
Money Problems – Day 2: What’s Going Out?
Today, I continuing the series, Money Problems: 30 Days to Perfect Finances. The series will consist of 30 things you can do in one setting to perfect your finances. It’s not a system to magically make your debt disappear. Instead, it is a path to understanding where you are, where you want to be, and–most importantly–how to bridge the gap.
I’m not running the series in 30 consecutive days. That’s not my schedule. Also, I think that talking about the same thing for 30 days straight will bore both of us. Instead, it will run roughly once a week. To make sure you don’t miss a post, please take a moment to subscribe, either by email or rss.
On this, day 2 of the series, you need to gather all of your bills: your electric bill, your mortgage, the rent for your storage unit, everything. Don’t miss any.
Go ahead, grab them now. I’ll wait.
Did you remember that thing that comes in the plain brown wrapper every month? You know, that thing you always hope your neighbors won’t notice?
Now, you’re going to sort all of the bills into 5 piles.
Pile #1: These are your monthly bills. This will probably be your biggest pile, since most bills are organized to get paid monthly. this will include your credit cards, mortgage(do you rent or buy?), most utilities and your cellphone.
Pile #2: Weekly expenses. When I look at my actual weekly bills, it’s a small stack. Just daycare. However, there are a lot of other expenses to consider. This stack should include your grocery bill, gas for your car, and anything else you spend money on each week.
Pile #3: Quarterly and semiannual bills. I’ve combined these because there generally aren’t enough bills to warrant two piles. My only semi-annual bill is my property tax payment. Quarterly bills could include water & sewer, maybe a life insurance policy and some memberships.
Pile #4: Annual bills. This probably won’t be a large pile. It will usually include just some memberships and subscriptions.
Pile #5: Irregular bills. The are some things that just don’t come due regularly. In our house, school lunches and car repairs fall into this category. We don’t have car problems often, but we set money aside each month so our budget doesn’t get flushed down the drain if something does come up.
Now that you have all of your expenses together, you know what your are on the hook for. Next time, we’ll address income.
