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What are the 20 healthiest foods you can eat?

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The Health Benefits of Eating Blueberries

The next time you head to the grocery store be sure to grab some blueberries. Not only do blueberries taste great, but you can experience a ton of health benefits from consuming them. Here are some of the best reasons we found to eat your fill.

The Super Antioxidant Powers of Blueberries

Blueberries are said to be a superfood because they contain the highest level of antioxidants of all the common fruits. Antioxidants are important because they neutralize the free radicals that are released as part of oxidative stress in your body. Oxidative stress occurs as you are exposed to environmental factors, harsh chemicals, and even natural processes in your body such as digestion. This stress causes damage like aging and can lead to diseases such as cancer and Alzheimers. When you eat foods such as blueberries that are antioxidant-rich, it is like cleaning house in your body. Antioxidants protect your cells and neutralize free radicals helping you stay healthier and younger-looking.

The main antioxidant in blueberries is called anthocyanin. Anthocyanin not only gives blueberries their color, but it is also where many of the health benefits of blueberries come from.

Skin Care

In addition to fighting oxidative stress, blueberries are high in Vitamin C which is used in the production of collagen in the body. So blueberries can help reduce wrinkles, age spots, other signs of aging, and even acne.

Heart Health

Because they are full of fiber and anthocyanin, blueberries help lower bad cholesterol and help regulate your blood pressure. In this way, they help you avoid heart disease and increase your overall heart health. 

Blueberries are also rich in potassium, calcium, and magnesium, folate, and vitamin B6. These nutrients help your body repair damaged blood vessels and decrease artery stiffness, inhibit the buildup of plaque, and regulate the muscles in your heart. (1)

Diabetes

The fiber in blueberries helps individuals with diabetes lower blood sugar and improve insulin sensitivity. (2)

Cancer

According to a cancer research journal, blueberries can be part of a long term cancer prevention plan. Not only do the antioxidants in blueberries decrease the risks associated with oxidative stress, but blueberries contain other compounds like pterostilbene and ellagic acid which are currently being researched for their anti-cancer potential. (3,4)

Brain Health

The vitamins and minerals in blueberries help support a healthy brain. The flavonoids in blueberries prevent the degradation of your brain and can even heal damaged brain cells and neuron tissue. This can improve your mood, your memory, and may even help prevent memory loss and brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

Weight Loss

Blueberries are a low-calorie snack. 1 cup of blueberries contains only 84 calories. The high fiber content of blueberries helps with digestion and helps you feel full faster. If you are trying to lose weight and control belly fat, blueberries make a satisfying snack that won’t leave you with full of regret.

Digestive Health

Blueberries contain nutrients that stimulate good gastric and digestive juices helping your body to digest food more efficiently and reducing constipation.

The husks of blueberries have potent anti-inflammatory properties. Consuming a large number of blueberries, along with probiotics, can help alleviate symptoms of bowel disorders such as bleeding and pain caused by Chrone’s Disease and Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). (5)

Urinary Tract Infections

You have probably heard that cranberries are an effective tool against UTIs, but did you know that blueberries are as well. Both berries have antibiotic properties and compounds that prevent bacteria from sticking to the bladder wall. The next time you have a urinary tract infection, try blueberries before you schedule a trip to the doctor, or better yet, eat blueberries on a regular basis to prevent one altogether. (6)

Eye Care

If you are worried about the health of your eyes you should consume blueberries. That’s because blueberries contain antioxidants that prevent age-related degeneration in eyes. Carotenoids and flavonoids in blueberries support eye health and prevent conditions such as macular degeneration, cataracts, dryness, and infections in the retina. (7)

There are just a few of the benefits of eating blueberries. A ton of research has gone into exploring all the amazing ways blueberries can improve your life. Blueberries have been found to boost immunity, reduce muscle soreness, detox your body from heavy metals, and even increase your lifespan.

Blueberries are such a versatile fruit. They are a great choice when eaten fresh, frozen, or dried. You can add blueberries to muffins, cereal, smoothies, or oatmeal, or use them as a topping on pancakes, ice cream, salad, or your other favorite dessert. And now that you know how healthy they are, you’ll want to add them to your diet a lot more.

Blueberry Nutrition Facts

One cup of fresh blueberries contains:

84 calories

0 g of cholesterol

1.1 g of protein

0.49 g of fat

21.45 g of carbohydrate

3.6 g of dietary fiber

14.74 g of total sugars

  That same one-cup serving provides:

24 percent of daily vitamin C

5 percent of daily vitamin B6

36 percent of daily vitamin K

  Blueberries also provide:

9 milligrams (mg) calcium

0.41 mg of iron

114 mg of potassium

9 mg of magnesium

18 mg of phosphorus

1 mg of sodium

0.24 mg of zinc

9 mg of folate

  https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/140/9/1582/4600242

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3921/5/4/44

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862148/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18444155/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18680631

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17492798

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4632771/

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Pros and Cons of Owning an Amazon Business

Over 200 million people visit Amazon.com each month. Amazon’s web traffic is unique in that most of the people on that ecommerce are there with the intention of purchasing. Amazon has over 100 million Prime members, meaning they purchase a high percentage of the things they buy on a regular basis from Amazon.

For anyone who’s connected with the world of ecommerce, you’ve learned one way or another about Amazon’s rise to dominance in online shopping, especially in the United States. As of 2018, Amazon had captured almost half of the ecommerce market in the United States, surpassing $250 billion in annual sales.

My Own Amazon Seller Story

When I first started selling products in 1999, I was using mostly eBay (which is now a very distant second to Amazon) and selling through the revolutionary auction style interface they presented to the world. Soon after I started selling on eBay, I opened my first ecommerce store and learned how to drive traffic to the products there (mostly ones that I drop-shipped from suppliers) using Google. This was prior to the existence of social media, so I relied mostly on writing unique product descriptions, optimizing titles, image names, etc., and doing link building. Later, my strategy evolved past old school SEO stuff to also use the various social media platforms that emerged, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram.

Sometime around 2010, I started getting regular solicitations from Amazon reps, asking me to start selling my products on their up and coming ecommerce platform as a 3rd party seller. Looking at their commission structure, and knowing that as a middleman drop-shipper, I couldn’t afford the Amazon fees and still make a profit (also, I’ll admit, lacking some creativity), I passed on several of their invitations to open a store on Amazon.

However, in 2015, I decided to finally take the plunge when I decided to take a small vinyl decor business, open an Amazon seller account, and put some of our products in the new Handmade category. I was surprised to see that we started getting orders almost immediately. With Amazon leading the charge, my wife and I were able to build the business into one that sold nearly $700,000 on Amazon in 2018, with much smaller amounts (very small fractions that amount) sold on my website, Etsy, and eBay.

To consistently grow the business over those few years, we mostly spent our time consistently adding new designs to our catalog. When someone ordered one our design, we’d make the product, ship it, and collect our profit. It was great.

Until that point, my Amazon experience was a great run to say the least. This past year, however, has been much different.

In June of 2019, Amazon flipped a switch on our main product category and essentially cut our sales in half. That’s not a great thing to ever experience, but it hurts much worse when you’re employing people who expect to have work to do. We’re still making efforts to overcome that sudden, crippling drop in sales. We learned a huge lesson: Amazon has the power to give, but it also has the power to take away just as quickly.

With that background, I’m going to explain to you what I’ve experienced as the pros and cons of owning and operating an Amazon business.

For some more context, I’ve also done other varieties of Amazon business, including doing private label product launches, retail arbitrage, and consulting for other business owners. At this point, five years after getting started with Amazon, I have enough experience to have witnessed most of the good and the bad that comes along with being an Amazon seller.

Pros of Owning an Amazon Business

As with my experience, there are lots of pros associated with owning a business that sells completely or mostly on Amazon. Here are some of the positives I’ve seen.

Access to Lots of Customers

Amazon has such a large number of users that you can sell almost anything on their platform. I have been surprised at the things that people are interested in purchasing. Some of our vinyl designs were so random and not very well thought out, including obscure quotes and other things, but people bought them.

Having access to millions of customers gives you a much higher chance that you can find a sweet spot on Amazon than with pretty much any other ecommerce venue.

Sales Start Coming in Quickly

Whenever I’ve started a new drop-shipping store that relied on traffic from Google, I’ve seen it take at least several weeks if not months to start getting enough legitimate traffic that I got orders. With Amazon, I learned that if you optimize your listing well and have a solid offer, you can start getting sales pretty much from day one.

Amazon gives newly listed products a “honeymoon” period (usually about 10-30 page sessions) to try them out. Often this will translate into quick sales that can beget more quick sales for your product if it converts well enough.

Much of the Marketing For Your Product Is Done For You

With other types of ecommerce businesses, selling off of Amazon, you have to spend a lot of time building your own traffic streams. With Amazon, those traffic streams are already there. Your responsibility is simply to harness that traffic for your benefit.

Lots of Selling Tools and Training Available

Because of how big Amazon is, there are lots of tools that have been created to help you understand where there are voids in the Amazon ecosystem that you can fill with new products. Some of the tools I use include the following:

Merchant Words: keyword research

Helium 10: several different tools including product rank tracking, competitor research, keyword research, product niche finders

Jungle Scout: similar to Helium 10, but the tools are slightly different

Lots of Support From Communities

Again, because there are so many Amazon sellers, there are lots of opportunities to interact with other sellers and trade suggestions, get help, and otherwise become part of a community of like-minded small business owners.

Cons of Owning an Amazon Business

With the good things about Amazon, there are also lots of negative aspects of building a business focused there. Here are the major ones I know of.

It’s Not Easy, Takes Persistence and Iteration

Many of the Amazon training programs will tell you that it’s easy, that anyone can do it.

That’s not true. Just because there are lots of customers on Amazon willing to buy a range of random things doesn’t mean you will succeed without being persistent, observing what’s working and what’s not, and making changes whenever and wherever necessary. This principle goes for doing everything from retail arbitrage (which involves buying underpriced or liquidated products locally and sending them into Amazon for them to sell and fulfill) to private label, in which you create your own branded products and sell them on Amazon.

Amazon’s Platform Is Unpredictable

As with my experience running a thriving vinyl decor business that suddenly dropped in sales based on an algorithm change, it’s impossible to predict what Amazon is doing to do. Your business is never secure on Amazon. You could be rolling in the dough one day and then see your sales drop dramatically based on a random internal decision made in an Amazon strategy meeting you didn’t even know was taking place.

Also, speaking of Amazon’s formula, they automate a lot of the policing of their marketplace. That means that there are very often products and seller accounts that are terminated, suspended, or otherwise thrown out like babies with the bathwater. It’s almost impossible to anticipate when that might happen. The Amazon seller forums are full of stories of people who have decided to quit selling on Amazon because of what they believe is mistreatment by the ecommerce giant.

Your Customers Are Actually Amazon’s Customers

In the past, with all of my businesses, I’ve considered them my customers, people that I had a relationship with, that I could email when appropriate, call when necessary, and otherwise treat like a part of my community.

That relationship doesn’t exist on Amazon. They are careful to ensure that you know that it’s against their policy for you to use their phone number. As much as possible, they abstract customer information so as to avoid tempting you to even think about communicating with people who they consider to be their customers, and who have purchased your product only through the paradigm of your being a hidden, nearly silent guest on Amazon.

There are ways of overcoming this negative about Amazon selling, but you have to be creative to do so while remaining within Amazon’s terms of service.

Amazon Has Created a Culture Where Customer’s Cheat

Amazon’s commitment to the customer always being in the right has created an environment where many of the Amazon users know that they can get away with abusing sellers. All they have to do is complain, and they often get your product for free with no repercussions from Amazon.

Ask anyone who has been selling on Amazon for any significant amount of time, and you’ll likely be told several stories about customers abusing them without any recourse through Amazon, who considers its users much more important than 3rd party sellers.

Competition Is Fierce

Especially as Amazon has reached a critical mass in popularity, the competition has become fierce. The same tools I discussed above are used to find out which of your products are selling well (after you’ve put a lot of effort into making it that way), and competitors can rip off exactly what you’re selling. Often these are Chinese manufacturers, who undercut you in price and take away business.

In addition, there are getting to be so many sellers on Amazon that it really seems like there’s not much space available to share sales unless you have a product that is truly differentiated from the others, and that is not easy to imitate.

Competitors Can Often Sabotage Your Business

There are lots of instances I’ve read about, and some that I’ve experienced, where competitors find a way to sabotage your products, and where they can come after your entire seller account.

Fake negative reviews, falsely reporting supposed violations your account is doing to Amazon, and other tactics are used very commonly by competitors to try to tank your account and/or your products. Because Amazon is so big and doesn’t care about any particular seller, they’re not so much interested in justice and what’s correct. Instead, they often simply respond to a complaint by handing out a guilty verdict. The account owner is then left, often while his business is offline, to try to redeem himself on a timeline that is much different for Amazon than it is for any eager business owner.

Alternatives to Running An Amazon-Based Business

Although Amazon is a great place to sell and a great resource for selling products, it’s obviously best to diversify where your sales come from. It’s also a very good idea to put yourself in a situation where you “own” you customers, meaning that you have access to communicate with them through email addresses and phone numbers that you’ve collected outside of Amazon.

Ecommerce Website

Having your own website is always a good idea for ecommerce business owners. Your domain name and the website that resides there act as a solid home base for your customers. You have full control over the experience there, including sending out offers, collecting email addresses, keeping fees much lower than Amazon, and several other benefits.

Building an Audience

You can use any combination of several different social media platforms in addition to publishing content and optimizing for referrals from search engines to your website. Building a loyal following on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and in other places allows you to have access to an audience that you can consistently sell to without the blockading practices done by Amazon.

Other Selling Platforms

Besides your ecommerce web store and your social media presence, there are other ecommerce platforms, all of them much smaller than Amazon, but many of them safer in one way or another.

eBay

Selling on eBay used to be the big thing. It’s much smaller proportionally now, but still has a crowd that includes tens of millions of people ready to buy. Selling on eBay requires a different approach than selling on Amazon, but it can be a great source of revenue if you’re willing to learn how the system works.

Etsy

Etsy is for handmade items, and sometimes for other items that can pass as being like handmade. Etsy had nearly 40 million users in 2018. That’s much smaller than Amazon, but still worth pursuing. Etsy is much easier to use than Amazon in many ways, with a clear and straight forward product listing interface.

Walmart Marketplace

The Walmart.com marketplace is the third largest in the US, behind Amazon and eBay. Putting your products on Walmart.com is a little tricky, but once they’re on, you have access to millions of people, and the competition is nowhere near as fierce as it is on Amazon.

Conclusion

Hopefully this article has a given you a pretty good idea of what to expect when selling on Amazon. In all reality, there are still good opportunities to make a living through Amazon alone, but it’s best to not rely entirely on Amazon if possible.

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California Auto Insurance Minimum Requirements

Article Summary

California law requires drives to insure their cars with a minimum liability coverage of 15/30/5.

$15,000 worth in liability coverage must be obtained per person involved in the accident

$30,000 worth in liability coverage must be obtained to go towards all damage done in the accident.

$5,000 worth of liability coverage must exist to pay towards property damage.

For low-income drivers, a 10/20/3 option exists, wherein only $10,000 is required per person involved, $20,000 total, and $3,000 for property damage.

If you’re planning to drive a car, you should know that you’ll need to have yourself insured. Automobile liability insurance is required by law in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

State laws regarding the minimum insurance required to operate a vehicle vary, but most states require your insurance to cover bodily injury (BI) as well as property damage (PD).

In California, the minimum liability limits are $50,000 in total during an accident, including $15,000 for each individual and $5,000 in coverage for the other car to which you’ve caused damage. This requirement is often written 15/30/5, where the first 15 refers to the $15,000 in coverage required for each individual of the other party involved in the accident, the 30 refers to the total of $30,000 total in coverage required, and the 5 refers to the $5,000 in property damage coverage required.

California also has alternative low-limits for low-income drivers under the California Automobile Assigned Risk Plan. Those less restrictive limits call for $20,000 in total coverage for an accident, including $10,000 for each individual and $3,000 in damage to the vehicle, or 10/20/3.

To protect yourself more completely from damage sustained to yourself or to another party during a traffic accident, you can also purchase higher amounts of liability insurance coverage or full coverage. If your car is expensive, or depending upon how good your health insurance is, it is probably a better idea to have full coverage to mitigate how much financial damage you’d suffer in the case of a car accident.

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edX Courses Create Affordable Opportunities for College Credit

The cost of a college education has skyrocketed from the last generation to the current one. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 1985, the average cost to finish school at a 4-year college, including tuition, fees, and room and board expenses, was $12,274 (adjusted for inflation; the actual average cost then was $5,504). In 2017, that amount was more than double, at $26,593.

The ballooning about of student debt, and especially the student debt that is being consistently defaulted on, is evidence that as a society we’re not really doing higher education intelligently. Total student debt reported by the Federal Reserve at the end of 2019 was over $1.6 trillion. In less than ten years, the total debt from outstanding student loans has doubled. In fact, student debt has become so unmanageable that the federal government has had to set up an entire portal for resolving defaulted loans and grants.

Something needs to change before this debt load takes down our whole economy.

You don’t need to go into debt to get a college education. I’ve talked before about several alternatives to attending college that still create pathways for you to earn income that will support you and your family. I’ve also discussed nanodegree programs from Udacity as another solution to expensive education that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to for earning power.

Here’s another opportunity to hack a college education: edX Online Courses.

Whereas the cost of undergraduate credit for college averages about $600, EDX’s MicroBachelors programs have classes that cost only $166 per credit hour. These programs come with certificates of completion that are meaningful to employers, who trust that those who have created and endorsed the programs know what it takes (generally less theory and more hands-on practical training) to prepare people to be successful in a job that requires the skills covered in the course.

What is edX?

edX was founded as an online platform for learning and formal education by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2012 as a global non-profit organization dedicated to bringing affordable education to the world, to pretty much anyone connected to the internet. The model under which these courses are taught fits right in with the highly connected, geographically distributed, technology-based society that has grown up over the past thirty years.

In addition to flexible, self-paced classes, edX has assembled a support team that helps students move through the courses successfully.

Now, almost a decade after its founding, edX courses are being taken by over 20 million students. edX courses number close to 2,500 in subject that range from computer science and math to humanities. edX has over 120 institutional partners that include some of the most well-respected universities in the United States and internationally as well as businesses and education related non-profit organizations.

edX has created a six different programs with specific purposes as follows:

MicroBachelors Program: MicroBachelors programs typically takes 2 to 4 months to complete, although they can be done more quickly or slowly. Successful completion of MicroBachelors programs is rewarded with a certificate of competency. Many employers, especially those companies who are familiar with the edX program, look at these MicroBachelors certificates as indicators of a person’s capability to perform specific tasks using the skills demonstrated in the MicroBachelors degree program. Besides a certificate of completion for courses taken through edX, actual college credit for the program can be obtained. Thomas Edison State University in New Jersey provides credit for most of the edX MicroBachelors programs.

MicroMasters Program: The edX MicroMasters programs go deeper on specific topics than their MicroBachelors programs. They can be used to advance a person’s career by providing a more thorough exposure to topics like data science, sustainable energy, digital marketing, and dozens of others. MicroMasters program completion can be used to get into an actual graduate degree program from a university, and the credits received while pursuing the MicroMasters program certificate can usually be applied to whichever graduate degree program a student is transferring to.

Professional Certificate: edX gas created dozens of specialized certificates designed to help people be more capable in their current occupations. Professional certificates from edX include leadership and management courses as well as advanced technical and business classes with content that can be used right away on the job.

Online Master’s Degree:  These programs give students actual master’s degrees from accredited universities, including Georgia Tech, University of Texas, Indiana University, Purdue University, Arizona State University, and Boston University. There are currently 10 master’s degree programs available from edX, all technology and business related.

Global Freshman Academy: This program is specific to Arizona State University, allowing students from all over the world to take the same classes as offered to freshmen students at ASU. Once the program is completed, credits can be applied to getting a full degree at ASU or they can be transferred to other accredited universities.

XSeries: XSeries courses present highly specialized content on a wider range of subjects, including lots of history and other humanities classes, than what edX offers in most of its micro programs. These courses are taught by experts in their fields. You can simply take an XSeries course, or you can choose to pay to upgrade your experience to be given a certificate of completion.

For anyone wanting to break the traditional educational mold that straps people with too much debt to overcome over a four-year period that includes too much waste and not enough of the good stuff, edX may be the track you’re looking for.

In recent years, the idea of essentialism has become popular among some of the more conscientious members of society as they evaluate all the things that pull at their attention and that don’t provide value consistent with their greatest contribution to life and their families. Applying the concepts of essentialism (seeking ways to use “less, but better” approaches to ) to education, it makes sense to strip away general education credits and other traditional degree requirements that are unnecessary, but that cost time and money. edX seems to be a natural application of the concept of essentialism to education.

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What Types of Insurance Should You Have To Protect Your Family?

Article Summary

Four general types of insurance are recommended to keep you and your family protected from financial hardship, including:

Life Insurance

Disability Insurance

Health Insurance

Property Insurance

Shopping for and setting up these insurance accounts will provide you with a hedge against unexpected issues that could damage your financial stability.

Becoming financially well-off is a goal that is common to most who provide for a family. Most financial management programs, including Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University courses and the LDS Church’s Personal Finances Self-Reliance course, highly recommend getting insurance as a way of hedging against uncertainty. For those of us who have worked hard to ensure that we are feeding, clothing, and sheltering our loved ones, it would be devastating to lose it all or have a major setback to experience a situation wherein we lose a significant portion of our savings and overall net worth because of a loss due to a car accident, a natural disaster, an unexpected job loss, or a major sickness in the family.

Fortunately, the insurance market has made it possible to address those risks of loss in a way that allows us to pay a premium each month so that, in the event that some misfortune finds its way to us, we can be restored financially as much as possible to the standing we had before experiencing an unfortunate loss.

The problem is, life is pretty complicated. It’s hard to anticipate everything that could happen to you and to your family. Between arranging rides to soccer practice, paying the mortgage, working a full-time job, and everything else you have going on, sometimes the matter of figuring out insurance isn’t exactly a top priority. It really doesn’t have to be. As long as you understand what risks exist to your family’s financial well-being and make sure you have your bases covered by taking care of the fundamentals, you can hopefully move on to more interesting aspects of your life.

What types of insurance does the typical family need to protect itself from financial ruin?

Here are the most logical, most common ways of protecting against financial loss through insurance.

Life Insurance

Life insurance is a way to provide a financial payout to beneficiaries of the person who is insured. A life insurance policy is a contract between an insurance provider and the person who is insured. In the event that the insured person dies while the policy is in effect, the insurance company pays out a lump-sum death benefit to the beneficiaries of the person who held the life insurance policy. During the term of the life insurance policy, the person insured pays a monthly premium to keep the policy active.

Anyone who provides in a significant way for a family, especially one with younger children, should have life insurance. The exception to this would be if the parent or guardian of the children has sufficient assets available and a will and estate set up that would provide for his or her children without needing a life insurance policy.

A term life insurance policy, the most common form of life insurance, creates a contract that insures a person for a certain number of years. This type of policy is normally recommended by financial professionals instead of whole life or universal life insurance policy.

Normally, people get term life policies at a younger age, in their 20s. This is normally when they are healthiest, a situation which gives them lower rates on their policies. For young, healthy people, it is common to pay between $20-$30 per month for a standard term life insurance policy. Women typically pay lower premiums than men because they tend to live longer.

For my wife and I, we each have a 20-year term life policy that provides a $500,000 death benefit in case either of us were to pass away. Our monthly premiums are just over $20 per month. In our financial situation, we expect that by the time our policies expire in the next decade or so, most of our children will be close to adult age and able to provide for themselves, and we will have much more than the $1M value of our combined life insurance policies available to support our children should either or both of us pass away. Also, we have set up a robust will and estate plan that puts our seven children in what we consider to be the best possible position should something happen to us.

Whole life insurance or universal life insurance policies are often promoted by life insurance agents because the agents make larger commissions on them. In whole life policies, the premiums and death benefit are mixed in together with investment vehicles. Most objective financial advisors recommend against whole life policies for most people.

The largest providers of life insurance include:

MetLife (Brighthouse Financial)

Northwestern Mutual

New York Life

Prudential

Lincoln National

MassMutual

John Hancock

Transamerica

Disability Insurance

Disability insurance is similar to life insurance, except that instead of protecting against death, it protects against other forms of the insured person being unable to earn an income.

Disability insurance can cover a range of inabilities to work, including everything from total disability to paying for rehabilitation treatments that may be required for an injured person to get back to work. Disability insurance terms are typically limited to nearly the time a person is close to retirement age.

It is recommended that people get enough disability coverage to provide about 50% to 80% of their normal take-home pay so as to allow them to maintain their standard of living should they become incapable of working their normal job. Disability premium rates are typically higher for women due to the data that shows they are disabled (pregnancy and childbirth are contributing factors) more often than men. Typical disability rates for a middle-aged man working a professional career are $100 to $150 per month, whereas for a woman they are $150 to $200 per month.

The largest providers of disability insurance include:

Cigna

Unum

MetLife

The Hartford

Lincoln Financial Group

Prudential

Liberty Mutual

The Standard

Mutual of Omaha

Health Insurance

Health insurance is easily the most complicated of these income and asset protection insurances, and it is the one that should be shopped the most, as premiums and coverage vary greatly. Also, the healthcare system in the United States has become so complicated that it is difficult for most people to understand and predict what they’re paying for and how much it is going to cost. Especially because of how impossible it is to see into your future to know what healthcare services you’ll need, you typically don’t know what

My recommendation regarding health insurance is to find a high-deductible, lower-premium policy that protects you and your family in the event that something catastrophic happens, but that isn’t emptying your pockets through high premiums that are being wasted. Essentially, this is self-insuring as far as possible. A lower-cost healthcare policy combined with plenty of emergency savings and a lifestyle (including diet, exercise, and an ongoing habit of obtaining the knowledge you need to avoid having to rush to the doctor for every sickness that might hit you or your family) in which you take good care of yourself will ultimately be the best scenario for most people.

The alternative, at the other end of the self-government spectrum, is a high-cost, government subsidized policy, a poor diet and bad health habits, along with excessive visits to the doctor to fix problems that could have been avoided had the insured been more careful and self-reliant.

Relying as much as you can on yourself instead of leaning too heavily on health insurance, while still making sure you have adequate coverage to avoid major financial loss, is a more prosperous approach to healthcare.

Some of the largest providers of health insurance include:

UnitedHealth Group

Anthem

Aetna

Cigna

Humana

Molina Healthcare

Wellcare Health Plans

Property Insurance

Property insurance includes automobile insurance and house insurance. In these policies, you pay the insurance provider a premium each month in exchange for them curing any loss that you might have, up to a designated amount. The amount of the insurance coverage is usually capped by the actual value of your property.

Property insurance is required for property that is financed. In addition, for automobiles, states usually require a sufficient amount of liability coverage to ensure that in the event you cause an accident, you don’t cause financial damage to other drivers on the road.

The largest providers of automobile insurance are:

State Farm

GEICO

Progressive

Allstate

USAA

Liberty Mutual

Farmers

Nationwide

Travelers

American Family

The largest providers of home insurance has many of the same companies, but is slightly different:

State Farm

Allstate

Liberty Mutual

USAA

Farmers

Travelers

Nationwide

American Family

Chubb

Erie Insurance

Shopping for Insurance

When shopping for insurance, it’s usually a good idea to get at least two quotes, preferably three. The actuaries who create the insurance rates for the different insurance companies use different sets of data to ensure that their companies’ insurance premiums match up with what their coverage offers to customers. Although the policies are generally comparable, there are often differences that cause one to be more appropriate for your situation than another.

As you shop for insurance, you’re typically most concerned with the monthly premium you’ll pay, the amount coverage you get for that premium, and the deductible you’re expected to pay before your insurance coverage kicks in and supplements the costs you incur from a claim. For health insurance, as explained before, these costs are somewhat harder to predict, so you should expect to spend more time shopping for the right insurance provider. With the other types of insurance, finding and choosing a policy shouldn’t be nearly as difficult.

Insurance And Your Financial Plan

A significant part of ensuring that your financial plan is solid is to understand how insurance works and spending the time to put into place insurance arrangements that are cost-effective and trustworthy.

Hopefully this article has helped in making insurance decisions.

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Closest Chase Bank to Billings, Montana

Chase Bank is the largest in the United States based on number of branches. Spread from the East Coast to the West are more than 5,100 branch locations accessible to Chase Bank customers. However, Chase’s network of banks has some dead spots, especially in areas that tend to be rural. Montana, Wyoming, New Mexico, the majority of the American Midwest, and other spots in the Northeast don’t have Chase bank branches.

If you’re a Chase customer looking to do some banking in the Billings, Montana area, you’ll have to travel a ways to get to a local branch.

The closest Chase Bank branch to Billings, Montana is in the Idaho Falls, Idaho area, a five and a half hour drive to the southwest of Billings.

That’s long drive. If you need to take care of in-branch banking needs such as getting a cashier’s check or money order, have access to a safe deposit box, or use notary services, or consult with someone in-person, Chase just won’t work for you in that area. If you’re a Chase customer who’s moving to Billings from somewhere else, you’ll likely need to find a new bank to fill those face-to-face banking needs.

Chase Bank Online and Remote Services

For those who are traveling to Billings or who might not need as much interaction with a physical retail branch location, it’s good to know that there are lots of online services offered by Chase Bank that you can use.

Here is a list of things that you can do in Billings, Montana as a Chase customer, which make use of Chase’s online and remote services:

Deposit checks: Chase has a mobile app (available for both Android and iOS phones) that allows you to deposit checks, including an auto-capture feature with which you can login to your online Chase account, select the account into which you want to deposit the check, then take a picture of the front and back of the check (after endorsing it and writing “For electronic deposit at Chase only”) to have the check deposited into your account.

Access money from ATMs: Although Chase doesn’t have any direct ATMs in the Billings area, they provide credits for Chase customers who have certain types of Chase deposit accounts.

Direct Deposit: If you are working for a company in the Billings, Montana area, you can simply have your paycheck deposited directly into your Chase Bank account. Depending upon the size and sophistication of the company you work for, your employer’s HR people should be familiar with how to set this up.

Online Bill Pay: You can pay your bills, mortgage, credit card, and other types of bills using Chase’s online bill pay feature.

Sending Money To and Receiving Money From Individuals: Chase has a QuickPay with Zelle option that you can use to pay almost anyone as long as you have their phone number and email address. Of course, if you need this functionality, you could just as well use PayPal or Venmo.

Transferring Money Between Accounts: You can setup an online login to your Chase account(s), and then transfer money between them without going into a local branch. You simply have to login and use the account transfer feature to move money between checking accounts, savings accounts, and elsewhere, including to pay off Chase credit card balances.

Wire Transfers: You can wire money domestically (within the United States) and internationally using Chase’s online wire transfer functionality.

As you can see, there are many features of Chase banking that you can use without being close to a local branch or ATM.

Alternatives to Chase Bank in Billings, Montana

If you are planning to be in Billings long-term, it’s likely that, at one point or another, you’ll need access to a bank that has a local branch. Here are some of the alternatives to Chase in Billings, Montana that can help you meet those local branch oriented needs.

Wells Fargo, the bank with the most branches in the United States, has several locations in Billings. Because it is a national chain, Wells Fargo offers many services similar to Chase, although their fees and policies differ.

US Bank, another nationwide bank with over, 3000 branches throughout the country, also has several local branches in Billings.

Altana Federal Credit Union is a Montana-based credit union that specializes in helping Montana individuals, businesses, and communities. If you’re going to be living in Montana long-term, this credit union is worth checking out.

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Treating Asthma With Turmeric

With the goal of helping our visitors find natural solutions to health issues and for encouraging health generally, we’ve written more than once about the health benefits of turmeric here on Prosperopedia.com. Turmeric has been used for thousands of years, part of the Ayurvedic medicine holistic healing paradigm that originated in India, as a natural remedy for conditions that include breathing issues, including asthma.

Cucumin, a bright yellow chemical that is found in Curcuma longa (a form of ginger) plants, is the ingredient in turmeric that is believed to give it healing powers. Curcumin has an anti-inflammatory and antioxidant function that is what most likely allows it to be a natural treatment for several conditions.

Having learned about the ability of turmeric to reduce inflammation in the body and learning of its potential to reduce symptoms of asthma, we decided to give it a try. In our family, we’ve had several people who have suffered from asthma, including me. In fact, my oldest son, Spencer, and I have had chronic asthma requiring a nebulizer or inhaler every three to five hours for as long as either of us can remember.

My wife bought some turmeric capsules made by Youtheory, a collagen supplement brand that is apparently one of the largest manufacturers in the US of turmeric. I started taking the capsules last week, following the directions listed on the bottle. Youtheory suggests (for adults) taking two capsules per day of their 1,000mg turmeric extract capsules along with a glass of water.

Youtheory’s 1,000mg turmeric extract product, packaged in 180 vegetarian capsules in my asthma reduction experiment, is labeled as something that “supports healthy inflammation response”, but that claim is followed by an asterisk. The asterisk points to a statement that is required by the FDA to this effect: These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

I’m used to this type of disqualification by the FDA of various products that are actually very well known to do exactly that: treat and cure disease. However, when I’ve talked to several manufacturers of these kinds of products, they make it clear that they are under close watch by the FDA to ensure that their claims don’t cross a line that could destroy their entire companies.

It’s clear that the FDA is very much beholding to pharmaceutical companies, and has a vested interest in ensuring that products that have been proven through experience to work are discredited.

In my case, despite the mandatory FDA disclaimer labeling, the evidence I read online was too convincing. Now that evidence is even more so.

After taking turmeric capsules for close to a week, I have been able to go an entire day without the need of a nebulizer or inhaler.

In short, according to my experience, turmeric is very good at preventing asthma. I’ve recently experienced that for myself, especially over the past few days.

I will continue taking turmeric supplements over the next several weeks to see whether they can get rid of my asthma symptoms altogether. Based on what I’ve seen so far with this amazing health solution, I believe that’s what will happen.

Sources

Evaluation of Efficacy of Curcumin as an Add-on therapy in Patients of Bronchial Asthma: https://ift.tt/2neba8X

Curcumin: A Review of Its’ Effects on Human Health: https://ift.tt/2hGnpWt

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LDS Personal Finances Self-Reliance Budgeting Course

Taking control of your personal finances is one the most important things you can do to experience the blessings of prosperity that are available to those who are willing to obey the principles upon which those blessings are based.

Under the influence and in the grasp of the materialistic society in which we now exist, it can be difficult to choose to be so different as to have your own personal finances in order, saving money and building wealth instead of spending every dollar of every paycheck attempting to keep up with society’s addiction to satisfying their wants, purchasing things that ultimately don’t matter. It is well known that America has a very serious debt problem. Consumer debt continued its rise in 2019, reaching a record $14 trillion as money was spent without enough intention on things like cars, student loans, and unnecessary commodities, in addition to housing and other necessities.

If you’re one who’s ready to jump out of the spending and debt cycle, or if you are just starting out on your financial journey and want to educate yourself on how to map your financial course using principles of financial prosperity, there is lots of help available. If you’ve ever listened to Dave Ramsey’s program on the radio, you know that he offers a nine lesson course on personal financial management called Financial Peace University. Financial Peace University (or FPU) costs $99 to attend the class, which includes nine lessons on financial management, access to an FPU class coordinator, a workbook, and the ability to be part of a local or online support community of like-minded people who are attempting to accomplish goals similar to yours.

By paying $129 per year to Dave Ramsey’s organization, you can get FPU extras, including an account with EveryDollar, the budgeting app designed to work with the FPU course, live stream feeds of Dave Ramsey’s events, financial coaching, and a couple other supplementary courses.

While Financial Peace University is probably the most popular one used by Americans to become financially literate, and while there are lot of others that you can use to accomplish similar results, did you know that there is a free course that’s available likely close to you that will provide you with an experience on par with FPU and other paid personal finance courses.

I’ll explain how the course works, and I’ll review the material that is covered in the course. If you’d like to take a look at the manual that comes with the course, you can pull up the PDF version of the course online.

LDS Church Personal Finance Self-Reliance Course

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church) has built a reputation for promoting principles of thrift, industry, and self-reliance. The pamphlet One for the Money, Guide to Family Finance, which summarizes the core principles of financial management in families, has been published and distributed by the LDS Church since 1975.

In 2016, the LDS Church published a 12-week course designed to help individuals, couples, and families become more capable of avoiding debt, saving money, building wealth, investing, and being charitable. The approach taken by this course is one that presents the temporal concepts associated with managing money in context of the religious and spiritual underpinnings that ultimately serve as the basic foundation of everything else that we do in life. In fact, compared to Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University, the Personal Finance course that’s part of the LDS Church’s Self-Reliance curriculum (there are three other courses offered by the church, including ones that help with starting and growing a business, improving your education, and finding a better job) goes much deeper on the religious motivation for being a wise steward over your temporal possessions an opportunities.

If you’d like to participate in the Personal Finance course I’ll be discussing here, you can learn more about how the groups work by going to the church’s description of how group members participate. You can also contact your local LDS Church by entering your address into their meetinghouse locator to find a church close to you. The course is operating in what the church refers to as a “self-reliance group”, which is a fancy way of saying

If you need help finding a class to attend, feel free to contact me, and I can help you get connected with a group.

Although the religious aspects of this course are highly focused on the doctrines and teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, non-members of the church often take the courses and find benefit from the religious teachings in addition to the practical education and opportunity for financial accountability.

How LDS Self-Reliance Groups Function

This Personal Finance self-reliance course is normally operated within what are called by the LDS Church “self-reliance groups.” These groups consist of a person who’s called a “facilitator”, which means that he or she is responsible for organizing the group and being the point of contact person for the group. The facilitator isn’t necessarily a teacher, because the groups are intended to be operated by people whose input and interaction are intended to be equal and dynamic.

Self-reliance groups are formed on a regular basis. Even when they’re not scheduled to be formed, local LDS Church leaders monitor the need for people who want to participate, creating a new group and starting a new class on an on-demand basis.

When a self-reliance group is formed, the group goes through the 12-week program with the intention of changing the habits of group members and establishing improved patterns of managing their finances. A significant aspect of being part of the group is having an action partner and being accountable to that action partner for accomplishing goals and objectives throughout the week. The purpose of having an action partner is to motivate both people to complete what they each have committed to do.

Also, each of the members of the group is held accountable to the group for completing homework throughout the course. At the first of each group meeting, members of the group grade themselves on how well they kept their commitments from the previous week, and they share their successes and failures with the rest of the group as a means of receiving support and feedback they can use to help them do better throughout the next week.

Each of the 12 class sessions is expected to last two hours or less. In fact, the sections of each lesson provide for a timed review of principles and discussion so that the sessions don’t go too long.

As mentioned earlier, the personal finance class operated by the LDS Church focuses much more on the spiritual aspects of managing your money, sometimes using terminology that may not be as familiar to those who are not members of the church. However, this spiritual approach to such a temporal subject provides even deeper motivation for succeeding.

With that context, I will review each of the 12 individual lessons included in the course.

Becoming a Wise and Faithful Steward

In this section, members of the group are introduced to the concept of money and finances being an earthly stewardship. The parable of the talents as taught by Jesus Christ is used to convey the idea that God expects each of his children to be devoted to improving, including in the way that they earn money, use their money and other resources, and understand their obligation to be charitable.

This section introduces the importance of being thoughtful, prayerful, and counseling with God to receive guidance on how to be a better steward over managing income, expenses, and other aspects of temporal planning.

This section also introduces what’s called the Financial Stewardship Success Map, which is a visual depiction of religiously based financial concepts, which are portrayed together as a house built on three principles: faith in Jesus Christ, unity with spouse, and commitment to self-reliance.

The Financial Stewardship Success Map incorporates income (work) and spending (budget) and a progress chart that starts with paying tithing and offerings, a Judeo-Christian principle that comes with a promise of receiving the opening of “the windows of heaven” (see Malachi 3:10) and its associated financial benefits. The map then proceeds through topics similar to what’s found in Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University, including protecting your family from hardship with an emergency fund, savings for three to six months’ worth of expenditures, and securing adequate insurance. Next comes eliminating debt. Then there’s long-term saving money and investing. Finally, as a financially stable and even wealthy person, there’s the obligation to give back an help other people.

In this section of the course, there is an introduction to tracking expenses, which naturally becomes the first skill to be developed when starting on the journey to financial independence.

Becoming Unified In Our Approach to Finances

This section discusses the importance of families, couples, and individuals being unified in their efforts to manage their finances and become self-reliant. The overarching theme in this part of the course is that the process of becoming self-reliant through management of personal finances and related topics gets rid of entitlement and helps people overcome the negative consequences of the habit of relying upon others, including government programs, church, and even family members for personal financial needs.

In this part of the class, the objective is to get class members to be unified with loved ones, especially a spouse for those who are married, in tackling the issues that could prevent them from succeeding. Financial discord, wherein each individual in the couple relationship has a very different idea about how to manage (or not manage usually) finances, in a marriage is one of the major causes of unhappy homes.

The information contained in this chapter of the course manual is designed to help class members understand how to get their spouse, their children, or whoever they are most closely associated with on a day to day basis to be aligned with them in taking on the challenges involved with being a good steward over finances.

Paying Tithes and Offerings

The principle of paying tithing and giving other offerings, religiously based contributions to those who are less fortunate, dates back to the ancient Hebrews.

In this chapter of the Personal Finances course, the bridge between faith and taking care of temporal needs is built through the payment of tithes and offerings. The idea here is to demonstrate obedience to a God-given principle, with the expectation that you will be rewarded because of your commitment.

This is a principle that I and my family have learned over the years. Regardless of how well-off or not we have been, my wife and I have always been committed to paying tithing. As we have continued with that practice, we have seen blessings in our lives that have made us wonder where they came from and why they were given to us. We’ve been able to go from a poor, somewhat in-debt, newly-married couple to a station in which we’ve accumulated somewhat significant wealth, which allows us to give back even more.

Some may consider it strange that the payment of tithing and offerings is the first priority in the Financial Stewardship Success Map, but that’s not by accident. Ultimately, prioritizing faith above other things is expected to set a context for everything you do, and it acts as a way of humbly recognizing one’s dependence upon God for everything, spiritual and temporal.

Creating a Budget

In this section of the course, you learn how to create a budget. Similar to how FPU and other financial management programs do it, you’re encouraged to list out your expected income, your anticipated expenses (you’ve already begun tracking expenses in a previous class), and a goal for allocating money, including saving some, and paying off debt if you have it.

This class section allows you to start getting serious about changing habits. You are expected to find a mechanism, usually a program like EveryDollar or some other digital budgeting software, but it can be simply a physical budget ledger or journal, to start keeping track of income versus expenditures.

As you start budgeting, you begin to see areas where you are wasting money or not spending it according to what your vision is for your life. This class allows you to begin to fix that problem and hold yourself accountable to the other members of the class for doing so.

Sticking to a Budget

After initially creating a budget, many people find it difficult to maintain it. It’s likely that you’ve underestimated some costs or your ability to reduce those costs. It’s possible that your first shot at a budget turned out to be quite inaccurate.

In this section of the Personal Finances course, you learn how to iterate on your budget, fixing your estimates and doubling down on your commitment to be disciplined. Here you begin to develop your budgeting habits more completely as you’ve had some time to do trial and error on expense and income tracking and planning.

At this point in the course, you will be (if you haven’t already) figuring out a system for handling your budget. In the program that my wife and I attended, most people chose EveryDollar. Others decided to that spreadsheets fit their preferences better.

One of the benefits of this section of the course is the focus on setting and achieving realistic financial goals that keep you motivated to make some marginal, some major improvements to your overall well-being.

Having had a chance to dig into your budget and having set some financial goals for yourself and your family, you may have also found motivation to increase your income at this point. There are lots of different ways to earn more money, including doing some freelancer work or possibly working a part-time job outside of your full-time employment.

Regardless of what changes you’re making at this stage of the course, it’s encouraging to experience the empowerment that comes with trying, assessing, and trying again.

Protecting Your Family From Hardship

This section of the course focuses on putting in place means for keeping your family prepared to deal with any unforeseen situations that could set you back financially.

The two methods of protecting your family from hardship are these:

Create a one-month emergency fund

Purchase insurance appropriate for your situation

One-Month Emergency Fund

At this point in the course, you should have been tracking your expenses and planning a budget such that you understand what your expenses should look like for a month’s period. The next step in the course is to save (preferably into a separate bank account) enough to cover those expenses. This saved, set aside money is referred to as an emergency fund, and it allows you to handle unexpected events (like a car breaking down, a surprise visit to the doctor or hospital, or something else) without having to finance them with a credit card or some other more expensive method of payment.

Insurance

This aspect of protecting your family involves having property insurance, automobile insurance, disability and life insurance, health insurance, and any other type of insurance that you might need according to your lifestyle.

Property and automobile insurance protect your most financially valuable assets from loss in the event of a catastrophe. Considering that your belongings, including your house itself, can be worth tens of thousands of dollars or even more, property insurance allows you to not be susceptible to losing that value through misfortune. Automobile insurance specifically keeps you from being susceptible to a major financial setback in the highly possible event you are involved in a car crash.

Health insurance protects you from incurring the potentially high cost of needing medical treatment, which tends to get expensive very quickly.

Disability and life insurance protects your loved ones in the event that you, as the provider for the family, suffer a debilitating setback or untimely death such that you’re not able to provide for your family anymore.

Understanding how these various types of insurance work and making a good decision, getting adequate coverage without wasting money on plans that are overkill, is critical to your financial success.

This section of the course explains how insurance works, including explaining premiums (monthly payments) required to secure insurance coverage, deductibles (an amount of money that has to be paid for an insurance claim before the insurance company will pay its share), and how to do a cost-benefit analysis of an insurance plan.

Having a solid, updated education on how insurance works is critical for raising a family these days. Decisions you make in this aspect of your life often have impact on your life in the thousands, tens of thousands, and possibly more in the course of a year’s time.

Understanding Debt

This section of the program allows you to dig into how debt works so that you can clear up any debt you might have and avoid unnecessary debt in the future.

Counsel has been given to Latter-day Saints and to the world generally to avoid the crippling effect of debt. The leader of the church just over a decade ago, Gordon B. Hinckley, made this statement regarding debt:

[R]easonable debt for the purchase of an affordable home and perhaps for a few other necessary things is acceptable. But from where I sit, I see in a very vivid way the terrible tragedies of many who have unwisely borrowed for things they really do not need.

This class is designed to help you understand how debt works, how to avoid habits that cause you to get into debt, and commits you to get out of debt if you have any.

One of the most troubling social issues of our day is the tendency to be impulsive in our spending habits, thinking only about what’s happening now and satisfying temporary wants instead of looking at the long-term. This class allows you to do some self-reflection and understand your own impulsive and emotional spending habits so that you can become more disciplined about overcoming them.

Getting Out of Debt

In this section of the program, you reinforce the teachings from the previous class and establish a plan to get out of debt if you have it.

This class discusses the need to stop incurring debt through bad spending habits, and then extend yourself beyond stopping the damage from being done by repairing the damage that has been done through habits you’ve had in the past.

Developing a plan to get out of debt is described in these four steps:

Decide to pay extra toward your debts.

Decide where to pay extra.

Use the rollover method.

Take additional steps as needed.

In paying extra toward your debts, there are two strategies that are discussed: paying extra towards the debt with the highest interest rate, and paying down the debt with the largest balance. Both of these approaches are good ones, and each has its advantages and disadvantages compared to the other.

The rollover method involves taking the money you’ve been spending to pay off a debt and applying it to another debt once the first one is gone.

Getting out of debt is a struggle for the majority of Americans, who have been accustomed to car payments, student loans, buying gifts for Christmas and other occasions using credit cards, and generally getting what they want now at the expense of becoming a slave to their financial future. This section of the program should help you change your attitude towards debt and give you the motivation to, as Dave Ramsey often words it, “live like nobody else [disciplined in spending] so that in your future you can live like nobody else [debt free and wealthy]”.

When my wife and I took this Personal Finances course, we had no debt, including living in a paid-off house. However, we still felt very strongly that we benefitted from the classes that discussed understanding and eliminating debt, especially a certain degree of paradigm shifting regarding purchasing impulsively and without intention.

Managing Financial Crises

This section of the course prepares you to be more resilient against potential financial crises than what was expected during the Protect Your Family from Hardship class. In this class, you make plans to double down on an emergency fund, extending it to a 3-6 month plan.

This class also prepares you to respond in the event of a potential financial crises, including dealing with your insurance company, assessing your situation carefully and prayerfully, and making good decisions during a difficult time of your life, should that time arise.

Financial crises discussed in this class include losing a job unexpectedly, having a medical emergency, responding to a natural disaster, and other occurrences that could seriously jeopardize your financial security.

The LDS Church has for a long time been a strong advocate for emergency preparedness, including having a storage of food and other essentials that can be used to get through a difficult time, including situations where there is no income, food, power, medical attention, or other things available that we often take for granted. For more information outside of this class discussion on the topic of emergency preparedness, visit the LDS Church’s emergency preparedness resource site.

Investing for the Future (Part 1)

This section of the Personal Finances course discusses the fun part of self-reliance: living in abundance, and working to maintain that abundance through efforts that have you financially in the black.

Having gotten out of debt and started saving money, the next step is to start investing your money and time into things that will bring calculated returns on investment.

This class deals with creating a life’s mission and evaluating where you want your life to be in the years ahead. It encourages you to ponder what you’ll need to be able to achieve the vision you have for your life, including finding a mentor, getting an appropriate education required to achieve your goals, and going through the process of setting goals.

This section of the course invites you to consider home ownership, buying a reasonable home that increases in value, and paying off the mortgage as soon as possible.

Although investing as it’s most commonly thought of (putting money into stocks, mutual funds, and other retirement instruments) is not part of this chapter (those types of things are discussed in the next one), it’s useful to think about investing in terms of developing your skills and other aspects of your personality. Also, setting context for investing by considering what you want your future life to look like as a self-reliant person, couple, or family is highly useful for determining what financial instruments you might be interested in investing in.

Investing for the Future (Part 2)

This class follows up the previous one by helping you determine what you need to do to ultimately retire with enough financial ability to move on to the next phase of your life as one who has graduated from the ranks of the working class as you enter old age.

Concepts of the time value of money and compound interest are taught in this chapter. Also, evaluating risk and return on investment are considered.

The concepts taught in this section of the program help you make decisions about how to get involved in investments, considering investment principles like compound interest, risk versus return, fixed versus variable rates of return, and diversification. Also, tax implications of the various investments are brought up and discussed since that has such a significant effect on ultimately how much actual return on a financial investment is realized.

The ultimate objective of this class is to help a person or couple begin saving and investing for retirement, putting themselves in a situation to enjoy abundance such that they can provide more than adequately for their own lifestyle and goals, but also to give back and help others.

Continuing to Give and Bless Others

The last section of the LDS Church’s Personal Finance course addresses the spiritual need and obligation for those who have been fortunate enough to become self-reliant and to have their financials well-controlled to give back.

One of my favorite quotes that addresses this topic, the haves and their responsibilities towards the have-nots, is included in this section of the course. Marion G Romney, a leader of the LDS Church in the 1970s and 1980s, made this observation about becoming wealthy and using that wealth to bless others.

There is an interdependence between those who have and those who have not. The process of giving exalts the poor and humbles the rich. In the process, both are sanctified. The poor, released from the bondage and limitations of poverty, are enabled as free men to rise to their full potential, both temporally and spiritually. [Those who have more], by imparting of their surplus, participate in the eternal principle of giving. Once a person has been made whole, or self-reliant, he reaches out to aid others, and the cycle repeats itself.

I have seen this cycle of interdependence be a benefit to myself. I’ve never been in complete poverty, but I grew up in a large family in a fairly meager household where resources were often limited. Because of what I’ve learned growing up and since becoming an adult about self-reliance, I’ve been able to make use of the additional resources I’ve been blessed with to help my family and to help others who wouldn’t have otherwise would have been worse off.

My Experience with the LDS Personal Finances Self-Reliance Course

My wife and I attended this class together two years ago, spending two hours each Sunday together with a group of ten or so others.

The class was a great experience for us and for the others who took the course with us. Although my wife and I were already financially in a good position before we took the class, it was still highly valuable for us, especially since it helped us to get back into budgeting, a habit we hadn’t been doing for years, since our businesses started giving us a large enough income to not feel like we had to be careful about every dollar we spent. Taking this personal finance class helped us understand better than even when we’re in good financial shape, it’s important to have a stewardship mentality towards money and stay in the habit of spending intentionally, even if our spending is on what would fall more into the wants category than in the essential needs.

I highly recommend taking this course to both those who are struggling and looking for help financially as well as for those who are well on their way to retirement, Despite the fact that the underlying teachings are highly geared towards Latter-day Saint teachings, the course will benefit anyone who’s willing to have an open mind and who is religiously or spiritually inclined, since the course is based upon a spiritual foundation and not so much a strictly secular one.

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Trump’s Healthcare Pricing Transparency Executive Order

My wife recently gave birth to our seventh child. Just a few months before he was born, we moved from Utah to Tennessee. Our plan was to have the delivery done by a group of midwives at a birthing center close to Vanderbilt University, but those plans were changed by the birthing center midwives just a few days before the delivery date. Instead, we were told we’d need to have an induction at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Looking back, we should have gotten a second opinion. Here’s why.

As small business owners who handle our own insurance policies, we typically pay cash for everything we consume in terms of healthcare. In our pregnancy experience for our previous six children, we’d never paid more than seven thousand dollars for the entire pregnancy, including doctor visits leading up to it (usually about $2,000 total) and the hospital stay itself, which normally costs us about $4,500 to check in, deliver the baby (without and epidural; my wife is a tough woman), and head home the next day.

We naively expected something similar in terms of costs from Vanderbilt, but there was no way to know what the total bill would be until after it was far too late.

Over the three months following our little guy’s delivery, we received a total of nearly $22,000 from Vanderbilt. To make things worse, our insurance (which supposedly included maternity coverage) paid very little towards that bill. Ultimately, the experience of having a child at Vanderbilt in Tennessee ended up costing us more than three times what it cost us for any of our previous six pregnancies and deliveries.

Was there a difference in the quality at Vanderbilt versus hospitals like the American Fork Hospital in American Fork, Utah or Mountain Point Medical Center in Lehi, Utah?

Yes, a huge difference!

Vanderbilt was an absolute dive compared to the Utah hospitals we’d experienced before. The delivery unit at Vanderbilt was very run down and unwelcoming. When my wife and I went through the worse-than-sketchy emergency room as we had been  scheduled to at 10pm on a Friday night, passing through the security detail that looked like it was run by the TSA, we were a bit surprised. When we arrived at the Vanderbilt labor and delivery waiting room, I noticed just in time that the chair I nearly sat down in was covered in old, dried up blood.

Signs posted on the walls in the halls of both the labor and delivery area and in the postpartum section reassured that the long-neglected part of the hospital where babies enter the world would soon to be renovated, but that didn’t help much while we were there. Thankfully our little guy was born healthy and without complications.

But the unnecessarily huge bill for our use of old and dirty facilities made the experience unpleasant, to say the least.

The Broken US Healthcare System

The healthcare system in the United States has been broken for far too long. I can think of no other market where you’re expected to receive the product or service without being able to make any judgment about how much it will cost and whether you need this or that feature or option beforehand. When you go to a hospital or to many doctor offices, it seems that nobody understand the true value of what’s being provided.

Just a couple weeks ago, my oldest son was referred by his primary care doctor, whose front desk went ahead and scheduled the appointment, to go see a pulmonary specialist to have a breathing test done. My wife took my son to the appointment. A breathing test was given, but there was no specialist to look at the test and make a determination about what it meant. The staff at the facility told my wife that the pulmonary specialist provider normally there wasn’t having his contract renewed, and he wasn’t available to read the test or give any medical advice about what the test results meant.

Soon after the appointment a bill arrived. There had been no follow-up call from a doctor as had been promised. My wife called the billing department and told them that there had been no value provided by the appointment, and that there was nothing yet to pay for, since this pulmonary specialist had not completed what should be required to receive payment: essentially providing a medical service that matched what it was supposed to be in the first place.

Between several phone calls to our primary provider and the pulmonary specialist they are contracted to make referrals to, my wife finally received an attempt at providing value. “Your son has asthma,” was the feedback.

“Duh. We’ve known that for about 10 years! Feel free to tell us something useful.”

The next interaction with them was receiving a bill from the for over $1,200.

For a half-hour breathing test at TriStar Centennial Medical Center, with no review by an actual doctor, no useful purpose, the cost is $1,200?

Sounds messed up, doesn’t it?

But that’s how our healthcare system has turned into. People who rely upon the miracles of modern medicine (who pay for it themselves) often find themselves caught in a cloud of confusion between healthcare providers and insurance companies. The ones left holding the brunt of a dysfunctional system is ultimately the customer of both the insurance companies and the medical providers.

I can’t think of any other industry where that type of situation exists.

If I were going to buy a laptop, I can look at competing models, determine what I want and what wasn’t worth paying for, understand the ultimate price (even adding tax onto the total), and make a good decision about whether I want to buy one and which one I want to buy.

The same concept applies if I want to buy a vehicle, or a house, or pretty much anything else.

But healthcare? With most things related to healthcare, you end up buying some nebulous product or service that you’re not sure whether you do or don’t need, then you find out how much it cost you (including how much your insurance provider, to whom you’ve been paying a substantial premium to make sure you don’t have to overpay for unexpected healthcare needs) afterwards. The sticker shock can be dramatic. The whole experience doesn’t feel very much like something that fits the model of capitalism, where informed consumers and principles of supply and demand hold suppliers in check, that has made the US and the rest of the world wealthy over the past two hundred years.

Donald Trump’s Healthcare Pricing Transparency Executive Order

An executive order released on June 24, 2019 from the White House entitled Executive Order on Improving Price and Quality Transparency in American Healthcare to Put Patients First seems like a good step in the direction of helping patients make better decisions about healthcare and increasing competitiveness among hospitals and medical providers in a way that allows the healthcare market to become more efficient, more affordable.

The major points of Trump’s healthcare pricing transparency executive order are these:

A recognition by the federal government that in our current healthcare system, “patients often lack access to useful price and quality information and the incentives to find low-cost, high-quality care.”

A commitment by the federal government to policies designed to improve price and quality transparency and to address the current problems of surprise billing, a condition where patients receive unexpectedly high bills for services after not having adequate information to make decisions before the service was provided. The two cases I described fit into this surprise billing category.

A proposal of a regulation by Health and Human Services (HHS) to require hospitals to publicly post their prices for standard services so that patients can easily understand and make choices and compare pricing between hospitals.

A directive requiring departments of the federal government, including HHS, the US Attorney General, and the Federal Trade Commission to figure out what things the federal government is doing to impede competition in the healthcare industry and to remove those impediments.

A requirement by the HHS together with the Treasury, Defense, Labor, and Veteran’s Affairs Departments to provide to the public access to claims from taxpayer-funded healthcare programs so that tools can be developed to better empower patients and others to reduce inefficiencies in the healthcare market.

Directives to the Secretary of the Treasury to expand insurance options for the public, allowing opportunities for people to choose high-deductible plans and use them together with healthcare savings accounts; these directives also give more flexibility for writing off expenses related to healthcare ministries and also asks for efforts to increase the year to year carry over flexibility of flexible spending accounts.

As consumers of healthcare services, any progress toward making healthcare expenses shoppable is good news. In the meantime, my family’s approach to healthcare is to be much more conscious of taking care of our own health through good habits and using the assistance of doctors and medical offices as little as possible.

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7 Lies About Thomas Jefferson, Bible-Believing Christian

The Founding Fathers of the United States of America have long been remembered as some of the most inspired people to inhabit this planet. Their commitment to freedom and the ideas they came together to shape into the Declaration of Independence and later the Constitution has carried the principles of fundamental human rights and the proper role of government in preserving while not interfering with those rights in one degree or another to most of the countries throughout the world.

But over the period of time since they lived their lives, gave their contributions, and have been gone from this world, unable to defend their character and unable to explain to contemporary society the motivation behind what they accomplished, there have arisen those who would cast doubt on the Founding Fathers.

Thomas Jefferson was one of the most prominent and influential men in the creation of this country. However, even in its citation of him as one of the 20 Most Influential Americans of All Time, Time Magazine points out his “inconsistencies” while admitting that he “has fared the worst of at the hands of revisionists.”

If you believe the Biblical precept taught by Jesus, “by their fruits shall ye know them”, it’s hard to understand how Thomas Jefferson could be a man as lacking in consistent character as recent historians have made him out to be while having been one of the biggest advocates of all time for equality, morality, freedom, and other noble concepts. Although it’s understood that nobody is perfect outside of the Savior himself, the idea that Thomas Jefferson was such a hypocrite as what historians have made him out to be simply doesn’t seem to line up with everything that he accomplished in his life to further the opportunities for everyone to be granted “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” How can this be so?

They’re lying!

Revisionist historians, whose own lack of character causes them to cast aspersions at a man (similar to others of the founders, like Benjamin Franklin) they simply can’t understand. Rather than attempt to elevate themselves to be able to empathize with a man of the standing of Thomas Jefferson, it’s easier to simply attempt to pull him down to their level.

When David Barton published his book, The Jefferson Lies: Exposing Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson in 2011, it was promptly attacked with possibly as much vigor as Jefferson himself had been. Barton presents seven lies that have been made up about Thomas Jefferson and handed down over the years as facts intended to undermine the divine founding of the country by chopping down one of its main pillars, making him out to be a severely flawed hypocrite.

Here are the seven most notorious lies about Thomas Jefferson as presented by David Barton:

Thomas Jefferson had sexual relationships with his slave, Sally Hemmings, and fathered children by her.

Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia as a secular institution because he was antireligious.

Thomas Jefferson didn’t like the Bible, so he created his own version of it, what’s known as the “Jefferson Bible”.

Thomas Jefferson was racist, and didn’t consider black people to be equal to whites.

Thomas Jefferson’s idea of separating church and state meant that only secular ideas should be used in public discussion.

Thomas Jefferson was against organized religion and hated religious clergy.

Thomas Jefferson was an anti-Christian atheist.

I will summarize the evidence that Barton uses to disprove these lies. If you’d like to dig deeper into the evidence, feel free to hop on over to Amazon and pick up the book or listen to it on Audible.

Thomas Jefferson Fathered Children by Sally Hemmings

Three categories of evidence are used by revisionist historians to accuse Thomas Jefferson of having a sexual relationship with Sally Hemmings, a black slave girl owned by Jefferson as part of his Monticello plantation.

The first type of evidence presented by those who argue for Jefferson’s role with Sally Hemmings is DNA based. The second is oral tradition (Thomas Woodson was said to be the son of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings ) that was actually disproved by DNA testing, which showed that Woodson didn’t have any Jefferson blood in him. The third category of evidence came from several newspaper articles written by James Callendar, an unpredictable journalist with a history of stirring up trouble by writing spurious and inflammatory accusations that made him guilty of violating the federal Sedition Law. Callendar’s accusations against Jefferson as having an immoral relationship with Hemmings were clearly part of his attempt to seek revenge on Jefferson.

Despite conclusive-sounding headlines from newspapers such as the USA Today, US News and World Report, the Washington Post, and the New York Times in 1998 asserting that DNA evidence proved that Thomas Jefferson was the father of some of Sally Hemmings children, the evidence is anything but conclusive. The closest that DNA testing could come to establishing a sexual relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings was that “some Jefferson male – and there were twenty-six Jefferson males living in the area at the time – had a relationship with Sally Hemmings that resulted in the birth of Eston”. (Eston was Hemmings youngest son.)

Based upon several pieces of evidence that vindicate Thomas Jefferson, it was much more likely that Randolph Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson’s younger brother, would have had a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings than that Thomas Jefferson would have.

It turned out that the “smoking gun” of DNA evidence presented in 1998 and promoted as part of a political statement to justify Bill Clinton’s sexual misconduct was anything but a smoking gun. The DNA-based accusation was later retracted, but none of the media outlets bothered to correct their mistake. Tthe damage to Jefferson’s reputation had been done. After the whole fiasco, the Wall Street Journal mentioned of the unreported DNA evidence retraction that it, “comes a little late to change the hundreds of headlines fingering Jefferson.”

Instead of being intellectually honest about the fact that there is no link between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings, modern society continues to insist on believing the lie.

Thomas Jefferson Founded A Secular University Of Virginia

Thomas Jefferson, an ardent supporter of education, founded the University of Virginia. Historians who have made it their ambition to turn him into a secularist, have taken the approach that his founding of the University of Virginia demonstrates his commitment to keeping Christianity out of public education.

The truth is that Jefferson himself was educated with a highly Christian upbringing, trained under what’s called the Scottish Common Sense educational philosophy, which includes tenets that reinforce a belief in God, that he has given everyone a conscience that helps them make moral decisions, that law, government, education, and other aspects of temporal life are governed by God’s first principles, and that there is no conflict between man’s reason and the revelation he is entitled to from God. Jefferson never went away from the educational training he was given as a youth. In fact, he recruited religious leaders as teachers for schools he managed, and he fully expected them to teach secular subjects in context of religious observations.

Prior to founding the University of Virginia, there is clear evidence that Thomas Jefferson’s other academic endeavors were clearly based on a Christian foundation. Rather than founding the University of Virginia on a particular denomination, as Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, William and Mary, Princeton, and others were, Jefferson’s university was to be transdenominational, capable of serving students from a range of religious sects.

It is clear that Jefferson’s intentions with the University of Virginia weren’t to have a non-religious public university. Instead, his intent was to have a university that could serve the needs of people of varying religious beliefs.

Thomas Jefferson Didn’t Like the Bible

This lie about Thomas Jefferson is yet another inconsistency that historians have introduced, but which they’ve been successful at promoting among American educators. Jefferson used the Bible frequently in his own writings, and often handed out Bibles as gifts. He was also a lifelong member of the Virginia Bible Society.

There are plenty of other pieces of evidence that Thomas Jefferson loved the Bible and valued it as the foundation of his moral belief system.

Where does this lie come from, that Jefferson didn’t like the Bible, so he invented his own version?

Wikipedia’s description of the Jefferson Bible currently promotes the idea that Jefferson’s heavily edited compilation of the Bible is “consistent with his naturalistic outlook and intent”, and that his version of the Bible “reject[s] the resurrection of Jesus.” Jefferson’s own words about the purpose of his Bible abridgment, to be a “digest of Jesus’ moral doctrines, extracted in His own words from the Evangelists” give clear context what he was doing. Historians who would argue to the contrary still face the fact that Jefferson did include miracles in his Bible abridgment, including the raising of Jarius daughter from the dead, the healing of the woman who had a hemorrhage, and the healing of two blind men, all supernatural occurrences recorded in Matthew 9. Jefferson’s Bible abridgment also includes Jesus’ declaration that he was the Son of God in Mark 14, his teaching about hell in Matthew 10, and his teaching about eternal life in Matthew 19.

Those who would argue Jefferson denied Jesus’ claim to divinity, including his resurrection, use as their rationale the fact that Jefferson’s abridgment concludes with the end of John 19, which records Jesus’ burial in a sepulcher after his death. However, argument doesn’t hold up in consideration of the other passages, including about the resurrection, that comprise the Jefferson Bible.

Indeed, secularist historians try too hard to make Jefferson one of their own, when it was clear that he wasn’t. He was a highly religious man. The unrevised evidence shows that believed in the teachings of the Bible, including ones that are miraculous. There really is no Jefferson Bible as produced by Thomas Jefferson himself. Instead, as one historian concluded:

Unfortunately, all those who have published the “Jefferson Bible” since 1903 have been almost universally either Unitarian or rationalist and secular in their approach, and their introductions to the book have…misrepresented Jefferson’s motivations and beliefs to conform to their own theological assumptions or agendas.

Thomas Jefferson Was Racist

Civil rights leaders of past generations have looked to Thomas Jefferson as one who sought for equality among the races, starting with emancipation from slavery.

Jefferson’s own words and actions demonstrate that he was not a racist as modern historians make him out to be. He sought for emancipation of slaves in Virginia, where the process tended to be much more complicated than in the states further north.

Jefferson inherited about 20 slaves as a fourteen year old, and was made owner of 135 more slaves when he married Martha Skelton. Freeing his slaves required, by Virginia law, a substantial financial investment to provide a livelihood for them. Jefferson was unable to do so, because of his financial limitations, which came from the debt he incurred from his father-in-law, from the financial obligations of the Revolutionary War, and by his generosity to the slaves who worked on his Monticello plantation.

From his own words and his interactions with black people during his lifetime (his documented correspondence with Benjamin Banneker, a black mathematician and producer of almanacs is one great example), it is clear that Jefferson was ahead of his time in believing that blacks are equal to whites.

Thomas Jefferson on Separation of Church and State

You’ll often hear about “the separation of church and state” as reasoning for disallowing any sign of religious conviction to be presented in public forums, including at public schools and in other venues. This idea of keeping religion out of the public forum is often said to have originated with Thomas Jefferson, but he never taught that idea.

Instead, the evidence is completely to the contrary. Jefferson quite often used and encouraged religious observance in public events. For instance, along with others who were concerned about the British intention to cripple the American economy after the Boston Tea Party, Jefferson called for a public day of fasting and prayer “devoutly to implore the Divine interposition in behalf of an injured and oppressed people.”

Jefferson also introduced a set of bills that would punish disturbers of religious worship and sabbath breakers, that would appoint days of public fasting and thanksgiving, and that would promote other religious values among the public.

The assertion that Thomas Jefferson wanted religion out of the public is simply an intentional misunderstanding of his insistence that no one religious leaning should be favored over another in matters of public acceptance.

Thomas Jefferson Versus Organized Religion

The idea that Jefferson was against organized religion likely originated with the presidential election of 1800, when Federalist’s backing John Adams attacked Jefferson’s character by painting him as anti-religious and lacking in morals. In several instances surrounding that election, in which bitter campaigning was done especially by the anti-Jefferson Federalists, many Christian ministers in the North, including specific instances in Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts, who were political foes of Thomas Jefferson used the election as a chance to paint Jefferson as anti-Christian and opposed to their various religious organizations.

In reality, Thomas Jefferson supported organized religion. He had lots of healthy relationships with ministers of many different Christian religions. He often wrote letters or recommendation for ministers, including one for the Reverend James Fontaine to become the chaplain in the Virginia state government. Jefferson had a particularly strong relationship with Reverend Charles Clay of the Calvinistic Reformed Church, whose language in reference to divinity often leaned on terms like “Providence” to describe God. It is from Jefferson’s use of those terms that modernist historians feel they have evidence that Jefferson was a deist. However, the fact that he copied the language of Christian ministers, who were certainly not deists, does nothing to put Jefferson in that category.

Indeed, there is more than sufficient evidence to show that Thomas Jefferson was a supporter of Christian churches in general.

Thomas Jefferson Was An Anti-Christian Non-believer

Thomas Jefferson is said by modernist historians as a Freethinker, which they typically quate with being atheist. However, there is no evidence to support that assertion. Instead, the evidence is quite the opposite. From his own words and actions that he took, it is clear that Thomas Jefferson was a believer in God, more specifically a Christian.

Jefferson’s life met with several tragedies that apparently shook his faith to some extent. He witnessed the burial of five of his six children, and his beloved wife of ten years passed away, leaving him uncertain and questioning, as tragedies can do to even the most religious of Christians.

Recalling what her mother conveyed to her about Thomas Jefferson’s reaction the death of one of his only two remaining daughters, his granddaughter said:

My mother has told me that on the day of her sister’s death, she left her father alone for some hours. He then sent for her, and she found him with the Bible in his hands. He who has been so often and so harshly accused of unbelief, he, in his hour of intense affliction, sought and found consolation in the Sacred Volume.

In his later years, Jefferson continued to express his belief in the Bible and his faith in the Christian religion, although it is clear that he hoped that there would be a restoration of the church to its primitive form during the time of Christ through a restoration of that church. Jefferson no doubt saw the weaknesses that existed in many of the Christian churches of his time, but he certainly didn’t doubt the validity of the religion itself, nor or the beliefs put forth in the Bible.

Why The Lies Then?

I have presented some of the evidence provided by David Barton in his book, The Jefferson Lies, along with other evidence that Thomas Jefferson was a devout, Bible-believing Christian.

Why would modern historians lie about Jefferson and his character and intentions?

Since the founding of the United States, one of the greatest miracles in history, there has been a consistent effort to discredit all that has been brought about by the setting up of the beacon of freedom that it has become.

Generations of people who find it impossible to be at the level of character, integrity, and maturity as the Founding Fathers seem to want to have company in their own miserable failures, and they tend to drag people of integrity like Thomas Jefferson into the mud with them.

If you want to understand the mission and purpose of the United States of America as it was originally inspired to be, don’t believe the lies. Question with boldness instead.

The post 7 Lies About Thomas Jefferson, Bible-Believing Christian appeared first on The Handbook for Happiness, and Success, and Prosperity Prosperopedia.

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How to Delete Your Twitter Account

Twitter can be a great social media outlet for businesses, public personalities, professionals, and even just regular people, but it’s certainly not for everyone.

If you’re one of those people who’s had enough of Twitter, and you’re ready to move on with your life, you can delete your Twitter account.

Here’s how to do it.

Click on the Home link in the top left of your Twitter page. You’ll need to be logged in to your account to follow these steps.

From the menu below the Home link, you’ll see a More… option. Clicking on that link will bring up the menu shown below.

From this menu, you need to click on the Settings and privacy link. That link will bring you to a page that allows you to configure the various settings for your Twitter account, including your username, contact information, password, and other options.

At the bottom of this page on the right side is a link that says, “Deactivate your account”. Click on this link to proceed with deleting your Twitter profile.

    After you have clicked on the account deactivation link, you’ll be taken to a page that describes the process for deactivating your account, which also deletes your Twitter profile.

This profile deactivation page includes some information about the implications of deactivating your account, including that your public profile will no longer appear on Twitter.com or on the Twitter mobile apps for iOS or for Android. To the public, your Twitter account will disappear.

However, after you have deactivated your Twitter account, you have 30 days to bring your Twitter account back to life. Also, it’s important to know that deleting your Twitter account won’t necessarily erase from the internet all of the things that have been posted there. Search engines like Google and Bing may have indexed tweets that came from your account. Those tweets will likely still be indexed after your account has been deleted.

There are also Twitter syndicator sites that often pick up and replicate information that’s posted on Twitter.

You can usually expect that any tweets from your Twitter account that were indexed by search engines will eventually disappear. However, it will be trickier to have that information removed from sites that syndicate Twitter content. Essentially, any information you’ve published on Twitter that’s been accessible publicly is potentially out on the internet to stay.

If you’re ready to proceed with the deletion of your Twitter account, go ahead and click the Deactivate link.

That’s it. You’re done with Twitter, except for hearing daily in the news about what Donald Trump has had to say on there recently.

As mentioned, you have 30 days to decide whether to want to bring your Twitter account back.

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How to Register a Trademark

Article Summary

For entrepreneurs and other business owners, having a registered trademark helps you to protect the intellectual property you’ve worked hard to create.

The process of registering a trademark usually takes a year or longer, and typically cost about from $1,000 to $5,000 using a trademark attorney. The ultimate cost depends upon how difficult it is to register the specific trademark you want to protect.

What is a Trademark?

The word trademark refers to a collection of many different things, including words, names, symbols, images, designs, or anything else that can identify your business or something about your business and its products. Trademarks include brand names, logos, and other kinds of identifies.

Trademarks in the United States are governed by the US Patent Trade Office (USPTO), which defines a trademark specifically as follows:

A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol, and/or design that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those of others.

It should be noted that trademarks are used to identify the source of physical goods, although the word trademark has been historically used to denote physical goods as well as services offered by a business.

Technically, items used to identify physical products are referred to as trademarks, whereas similar concepts applied to services are known as service marks.

The USPTO defines a service mark this way:

A service mark is a word, phrase, symbol, and/or design that identifies and distinguishes the source of a service rather than goods.

For convenience, when referring to intellectual property involving either things that fall under the technical trademark designation or those things that are technically identified as service marks, the word trademark is used for either.

Register or Common Law?

You don’t necessarily have to officially register a trademark in order to actually have one. There are what’s called “common law” rights associated with trademarks that protect businesses whose trademark-qualified intellectual property can be demonstrated as having been used in the past. Unregistered trademarks are identified with the TM symbol. Unregistered service marks are identified using the SM symbol.

Common law trademark rights can only be enforced in the geographical area to which your business pertains. Because it’s difficult to prove when a trademark was first used, common law trademarks are difficult to enforce, although they do provide you some protection against the possibility of a similar trademark that was put into use after yours to limit your ability to use the trademark.

Registering a trademark gives you several advantages over the common law version of a trademark. Those advantages include:

A registered trademark gives it and your company more visibility

A registered trademark give the owner sole legal, clear ownership over the trademark.

A registered trademark dissuades others from using it.

In the case that someone infringes on a registered trademark, legal action can be taken to stop them.

Registering a trademark gives it monetary value.

Registered trademarks can be sold or licensed for others to use for a fee.

How Long Does It Take to Get a Registered Trademark?

The process for obtaining a registered trademark involves some back and forth between you (or your attorney) and the USPTO. Here’s how that process works

Trademark Application: If you’re confident that nobody else has the rights to the trademark you want to register, you can file an application with the USPTO to begin the registration process. There are three different application forms (TEAS Plus, TEAS RF, and TEAS Regular) that can be used to apply for a registered trademark. The cost and application requirements for these three types of applications vary. Choosing a specific application type depends upon your specific registration needs.

Ensuring that your application is done correctly can shorten the next step of the process, when your application is reviewed by the USPTO.

USPTO Review: Once you’ve submitted your trademark application to the USPTO, they will review the application to determine whether your trademark meets their criteria for official registration. Depending upon the workload being handled by the USPTO, their review can take up to six months, but can sometimes be faster.

Applicant Response: If the application doesn’t provide enough information for the USPTO to make a decision about whether it qualifies for registration, the USPTO will request more information or clarification from the applicant. Submitting a response that the USPTO can review can add another six months onto the timeline. If you’re in a hurry to have your trademark registered, it’s best to be thorough on the initial application form and to choose the correct form.

Trademark Publication: Intellectual property law requires a potential trademark to be published for opposition (allowing the public to know about the trademark and giving the opportunity to challenge it) in an official newspaper. This period can take three months.

Certificate of Registration: After publication of your trademark for opposition, you’ll want to allow another three months for the USPTO to create a certificate of registration, which officially indicates that you have a registered trademark, which is now on file wit the USPTO

Cost of Trademark Registration

Because trademark registration usually involves hiring an attorney (unless you know enough about the process yourself), it can be expensive, especially in cases where the trademark is not as clear or if it is challenged by someone whose existing trademark is similar.

The minimum that is normally charged by attorneys to file a trademark application is about $1,000. In addition to that fee, you’ll need to pay the USPTO application fee, which ranges from $225 to $400, depending upon the type of trademark registration you’re after.

If your trademark application is complicated, you’ll likely end up spending much more than the $1,200 or so involved in the simplest of trademark filings. Trademark attorneys normally charge somewhere in the hundreds of dollars per hour to handle responses and challenges to publications of trademarks.

If you feel like your trademark is simple enough that you don’t need to hire an attorney, if you already know enough about the application process, or if your trademark isn’t such a critical part of your business that you need the expensive type of attorney  for assistance,  you could use one of the discount trademark application processes like LegalZoom, whose trademark registration filings start at $199. Small businesses whose legal budget is limited often opt to go this route instead of hiring an attorney.

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How to Cancel Your Hulu Account

If you’ve signed up for a Hulu subscription, you know having access to all the live television, streaming channels, movies, and all the extras available their most popular plans doesn’t come cheaply. Hulu’s current set of plans include their ad supported basic package of streaming movies for $5.99 per month and their ad supported Hulu + Live TV package that starts at $54.99 per month. Both of those plans have ad-free (mostly) counterparts that are $6 more per month.

If you’re trying to save money and build your financial future, the expenses from Hulu and other non-essential extras, non to mention the time wasted watching too much television, tend to act against your plan.

If you’ve come to the realization that you just don’t need Hulu in your life, or if you’re one of those who signed up for one of Hulu’s trials just to see how it works or to watch the one-off game that you didn’t have access to otherwise, you have to cancel your subscription. As you likely know, monthly subscription companies like Hulu don’t come back asking you month after month whether you’d like to continue. If fact, just the opposite, they tend to make it not so obvious how to to cancel your account. Whether you’re using the service or not, most subscription companies are happy to continue charging you month after month until you cancel.

That’s one of the big reasons I highly recommend doing a monthly review of your expenses, looking over your credit card statement and other places where your money might be flowing out, and making an assertive decision about which of those you can do without so you can cancel them and save yourself some money.

In this case, we’ll talk about Hulu being on the chopping block.

Cancel Hulu Using Your Online Account

The easiest way to cancel your Hulu account is to login to your online Hulu account using the username and password that you used to sign up.

One you’re logged in to your Hulu account, click on your name (or whichever name you used to set up the account) in the top right corner of the page, and select the Account link.

Once you’re on your account page, you’ll need to scroll past the sections that have your upcoming charges, your account plan information, and other account details, down to the bottom of the account page.

If you’d like to simply pause your Hulu account rather than canceling the subscription altogether, you have that option. However, if you’re ready to put your relationship with Hulu in the past, go ahead and click on the Cancel link to the right of the section entitled Cancel Your Subscription.

Once you click on the Cancel link, Hulu will require you to enter the password that you use to login to the account. This is a security step they use to make sure that it’s the actual account owner making the changes, but it also is a way for them to add in another step that might deter you from canceling your account.

Cancel Your Hulu Account By Phone

If you’d rather call Hulu to cancel, you can use their customer support number: (888) 265-6650. If you choose this option to cancel, be prepared for some effort by whoever answers the call to try to keep you, even offers to give you a promotional to get you to stay.

Cancel Your Hulu Account by Email

You can also email Hulu’s customer support team at support@hulu.com, and ask them to cancel your account. You’ll likely need to send the email from the email account you used to sign up for Hulu, and you’ll likely be required to verify that the request came from you.

  The post How to Cancel Your Hulu Account appeared first on The Handbook for Happiness, and Success, and Prosperity Prosperopedia.

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Contracted Earnings Signs of US Recession

Going into 2020, the United States economy has experienced the longest period of economic expansion in its history. After the Great Recession of 2007-2009, we’ve seen growth starting in June of 2009, a period that has lasted more than ten and a half years. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the average period of time for economic expansions, 11 of them, in the US during recent history (post WWII until now) has been 59 months. The expansion we’re experiencing currently has lasted more than twice that length

By many accounts, there are clear signs that a recession is coming.

Sean Williams, in his article The Hidden Recession That Everyone is Overlooking, describes several of the indicators that the economy may already be contracting again. Recessions tend to follow aggressive periods of growth and act as natural way of tempering potential runaway expansion.

In 2019, the S&P 500 Index gained about 29%, four times its historical average of 7%. Gains like that over a short period of time tend to be inspired by speculation, which ultimately has a shelf life.

One of the most predictable signs of a recession is an inversion of the yield-curve of the 2-year and 10-year US Treasury notes. In August of 2019, 2-year US Treasury notes had higher yields than 10-year notes for a brief period. The last time that has happened was in 2007, and it served as a warning of the previous recession. Other inversions of short-term versus long-term US Treasury notes that happened in 2019 give further evidence that the economy may be preparing to retrench.

Another indicator of an impending recession is data released by FactSet Research Systems, which reported that there were earnings contractions among the S&P 500 Index companies, which experienced collective year-over-year earnings per share decline in all four quarters of 2019. Those numbers could indicate that the over all gross domestic product (GDP) in the US has been in decline or will be in decline for two consecutive quarters, which is the technical requirement for a recession.

Although there have been regulations on the real estate and mortgage financing industries that have been put in place in response to the 2008 housing crisis, there are other factors that exist in the current economy that can complicate an economic slowdown. The Federal Reserve interest rate is already close to the lowest level it’s ever been. There’s not much room for interest rates to be cut, which is a move that’s often used to stimulate the economy.

Also, the increase in personal debt over the past decade ultimately makes it difficult for most people to have money to spend to keep the economy moving. Probably the most concerning aspect of that debt is the dramatic increase in student loans that has taken place since the last recession. Student loan debt levels a decade ago were in the $600 billion range. As of the start of 2019, they’re risen to almost $1.5 trillion, more than double the amount they were at when the last recession happened.

How to Weather the Recession

Recessions tend to take out their aggression the most on people who are financially vulnerable. Living paycheck to paycheck can only last so long when companies start to contract their workforce and layoffs happen.

Learning how to reduce spending, spending it much more on needs versus wants and being much more intentional about spending will help a person or family be better prepared for a situation where unemployment rises and access to income is tight. Although it’s not a perfect insurance policy against a major economic catastrophe (at least we’re not socialists like Venezuela yet, and our currency isn’t likely to experience hyperinflation), having money in the bank to cover your mortgage, pay for utilities and groceries, and take care of other living essentials puts you in a much better position that then 59% of the US population that might be crippled if they didn’t get their next paychecks.

At Prosperopedia.com, we consistently discuss ways to weather economic hard times, including using these periods of contraction to become disciplined in your finances through programs that help you pay down your debt, save money, and build wealth. Now, with a recession essentially knocking on the door, might be a good time to start tracking and managing your expenses, planning a budget, and becoming a wiser financial steward. It’s also a good time to see whether you can’t develop skills or improve your work efficiency to increase your ability to provide for yourself and your family.

Now might be a good time to review the principles of self-reliance that will allow you to get through the next period of economic contraction without too much difficulty and be prepared to prosper even more when the next expansion takes place.

The post Contracted Earnings Signs of US Recession appeared first on The Handbook for Happiness, and Success, and Prosperity Prosperopedia.

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Starting a Budget: Tracking Expenses

Several years ago when I was just starting college, it was my first experience being away from home in a situation where I was expected to pay all my own expenses (including rent now that I was not living with my parents) from funds I earned by working. The whole experience was an abrupt exposure to learning what it is to be a responsible adult.

Previous to moving out of my parents’ home, I had some exposure to budgeting and had even set goals as a younger kid to save money for a specific purpose. However, being once and for all out the nest and on your own brings with it the realization that the world is not as simple as it was when you were shielded by all the complexity that comes with figuring out how to make more money than you spend, especially when you are suddenly responsible for paying for car insurance, gas, food, even a place to live. The adjustment to that environment can be daunting.

During my first year of attending Snow College, I took a religious class that was focused on helping people prepare for marriage. A significant portion of the class centered on managing finances. This introduction to managing my money got me started on the right foot and has stuck with me through my married life, which didn’t start until several years after taking the class.

Planning a Budget Can Be Daunting

During the marriage prep class I took my first year at Snow College, I was impressed that the introduction to budgeting that we were given was a simplified approach, which made it much more practical. We were given the assignment of simply writing down or entering into a spreadsheet every dime we spent over the course of thirty days. Nothing more was expected from the assignment than simply documenting every time we spent something and how much we spent over the course of a month’s time.

I learned a ton about spending habits from that assignment, including the realization that humans (at least this one, but I’ve seen evidence that most others have the tendency as well) tend to spend

There are lots of personal finance programs that present various forms of budgeting to make it practical. Over the past few years, my wife and I have used Dave Ramsey’s EveryDollar budgeting app with varying degrees of success. We’re very familiar with Ramsey’s 7 baby steps for financial planning. We’ve also taken a 12-week course at our church that walks through all the aspects of personal finances for self-reliance, including creating a budget and sticking to a budget to eliminate debt and to build wealth.

Despite our familiarity with the many different reasons for budgeting and our repeated exposure to programs and systems that exist to help people budget more assertively, creating and maintaining a budget can be a lot of work, especially when you’re not in the habit of doing it. After all, a large part of budgeting involves forecasting, creating a plan that balances both income and expenses. One of the main reasons so many people are hesitant to get into budgeting is that it seems too complicated to essentially create a virtual version of the next month of their lives. Especially for those whose income varies, such as people who are paid by commission, whose work hours vary, or who are business owners that don’t have a set regular payment amount, estimating income from month to month can be a real challenge. That obstacle often stops people from budgeting altogether.

So, if you’re not ready to roll out a complete budget solution for yourself or for your family, is there no middle ground? Does budgeting have to be all or nothing?

Not really. In fact, there is a lot of value in simply keeping track of each time you spend money.

A large part of taking control of your finances is simply understanding how much you’re spending and what types of things you’re spending it on. You should get into the habit of taking a look at that data on a regular basis, at least monthly. Doing this one simple part of budgeting allows you to step back from being in the spending trenches and evaluate how your spending activities align with your life vision, your goals, your priorities.

This is the question that I always have in the back of my mind. It’s one that too many people, couples, families don’t know the answer to: How much money are we spending each month, and what things are we spending it on?

How much money are we spending each month, and what things are we spending it on? 

Answering that question can be done in a variety different ways, whether you prefer writing down each expense in a notebook or using one of more popular digital approaches, including listing the expenses in a spreadsheet or entering them into an application that you share access to with your spouse and anyone else who might have access to household expenditures.

EveryDollar Budgeting App

My wife and I have used the EveryDollar budgeting app published by Dave Ramsey to handle our budgeting. The app is designed to help you estimate and evaluate both income and expenses, but it can be used just as well to simply track expenses. To start using EveryDollar, you can go to their website and create an account, or you can download their app from Google Play  if you use an Android based phone or the Apple App Store if you use an iOS based phone.

EveryDollar is meant to be used in context of Dave Ramsey’s financial management program, so the app likes to try to push you to have a budget in place before you begin entering in transactions. You don’t really have to have your budget set up though in order to track expenses. You can skip past the projected income and budget section and just start entering in your expenses as you incur them.

As you can see below, entering expenses is as simple as putting in the amount, selecting the date (it defaults to today’s date), and adding a note about where you spent the money.

As you continue entering expenses on EveryDollar, they are kept in a digital ledger that you can scroll through and review to see where your money’s going.

This is what the expense transaction ledger looks like.

EveryDollar’s interface is fairly simple. With regard to expenses, there doesn’t seem to be a straight forward way to group the expenses and see any kind of reports that group expenses into the categories you create for them except in context of how your spending compared to your budget and your earning. Even with this limitation, EveryDollar is a free, it’s simple, and it works on computers as well as on iPhones and Android devices, which makes it convenient to use for multiple people from the same household.

Using an application like EveryDollar, which has been developed with the bigger picture in mind of tracking expenses in the context of using a budget, can be good for those who want to simply start out simply by tracking expenses, but who are open to transitioning into habits of more comprehensive budgeting. If you use EveryDollar to track your expenses, then later decide to use the full features to the app, you’ll already have a good idea of how the software works, which will make it easier to make the transition.

EveryDollar has a premium version that allows you to connect your accounts so that transactions are imported automatically. The premium version is a reasonable $99 per year.

Another option instead of EveryDollar is Mint.com. Mint.com has a limited free option that you can use to track expenses for free. If you choose to use the full Mint.com feature set, it will cost you $16.99 per month.

If you’re looking for software that is more specifically made for entering expenses and focusing strictly on those without the budget elements, you can find lots of free spreadsheet templates online. Google Sheets actually has a useful, simple, and convenient free Monthly Budget template that has one tab for entering expense transactions, a list of categories for classifying those expenses, and a summary sheet that lets you see that information compiled in an easy to digest way.

There are several other free expense tracking apps that have functionality similar to EveryDollar, but in some cases they have better reporting tools. A good place to look for alternatives to EveryDollar and spreadsheet templates is to look at other pieces of software on the AlternativeTo.net EveryDollar page.

Start Tracking Expenses, The Sooner The Better

If you’re serious about getting control over your finances, but you’re not quite ready to start estimating monthly expenditures and matching them up with your projected income to create a comprehensive budget, at least you can give expense tracking a try for the next thirty days. The sooner you get started, the sooner you’ll be in control of your finances.

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