How to organize those you follow on Twitter with lists

Go ahead, follow anyone and everyone you want to on Twitter. Lists can help you keep them organized.

The trouble with following too many people
In the early days of Twitter, the prevailing wisdom was to not follow more people than follow you. I think the logic was that if you don’t have as many followers as people you follow, then you’re not worth following.

Another reason often given for keeping the number of people you follow on Twitter low was that your feed would be too cluttered if you followed too many people. I admit that after I followed more than a couple hundred people on Twitter, it was hard to keep up with it all.

How Twitter lists help you reduce clutter
Then Twitter lists came along in 2009 and changed all that. A list allows you to group the people you follow by category. Say for instance, you are a baseball fan and like to follow professional baseball players. You can create a list called Baseball.

Once you have created the list, adding people to it is easy. The process varies depending on whether you’re using Twitter on your PC, mobile device or an app on your mobile device so I won’t detail the steps here. Search ‘lists’ in the help menu of the Twitter application you’re using if it’s not plainly evident.

You can add one individual to multiple lists. As an example, I follow @DbacksBaxter – the team mascot for the Arizona Diamondbacks. I added D. Baxter to these lists: Sports, Arizona & Personalities. You don’t have to put everyone you follow on a list. Doing so is not wise in my opinion.

Example
You’ll see the real value of taking the time to set up Twitter lists after you have created a few. Let’s say you’re watching football on a Sunday afternoon. You click on your list called Football or Sports or NFL Fans – whatever you named it – to which you have added the people who play or are interested in football. Next thing you know you’re viewing only the tweets of people on this list who are presumably talking about the game(s). The tweets from others about weather, family or dinner are still out there; you just can’t see them for the time being because you have filtered them out.

Finding worthwhile people for your lists
A good way to find people to follow and add to your lists is to search a key word or hash tag when you know people are tweeting about a particular topic. Want to find other baseball fans to follow? Search #worldseries during the World Series. Try the same for #grammys or #oscars or any particular shows you like to watch. When you see a tweet you like, follow the person that tweeted it and add them to your list for that topic. You can do the same for other areas of interest.

Shortcut: follow other people’s lists
Maybe you think this is all too much work or just don’t have the time to manage one more thing. No problem, you can still take advantage of Twitter lists by following other people’s lists. The quickest way to find lists you might be interested in is to click on ‘Lists’, then ‘Member of’ while logged into Twitter on a PC. (Mobile Twitter apps may not offer this option.) This will show you the lists that others have added you too. Scan the lists and see which ones interest you most. If you like what you see after you click on the name of a list, you can subscribe to it. Now you have a list you can follow without having gone through all the legwork to create or manage it.

Top 100 Twitter lists
If nobody has added you to a list, see what lists some of your favorite people on Twitter have created. Or check out the Top 100 Twitter lists based on number of subscribers. Surely you’ll find a few that interest you.

Don’t let concerns about a little clutter keep you from following more people on Twitter. Instead, follow to your heart’s content and use lists to keep the people you do follow a little more organized.

Don’t let the ninja cactus get you

True story: I went out for a walk this morning well before the sun came up in our suburban Phoenix neighborhood. There is nobody out at this time of day, so I was a little suspicious when I saw someone standing completely still about 8 feet off the path, lurking in the shadows.

Cactus ninja — The Cactus Ninja, courtesy Flickr
All rights reserved by EN AJUSTES

At first I thought the person was waiting for his dog to do its business, but alas – no dog. I got closer and closer and he didn’t so much as move a finger. “Does this guy think he’s a ninja?” I began to wonder. “Should I get ready to defend myself?”

It wasn’t until I was about 15 feet away, that I realized the alleged perpetrator was a cactus, standing just as it had for the past several years. As you were…

Buying health insurance in the Obamacare era

by Paul Fiarkoski

The Affordable Care Act – aka Obamacare – has become a hot political topic as of late. Oddly, this issue has divided even voters registered within the political parties.

From my perspective, much of the talk before the Obama healthcare plan went into effect was rhetoric based on fear. As a result of my insurance training, the notion of having everyone in the U.S. insured would spread risk across a huge pool of people and greatly reduce costs across the board.

Now that Obamacare has been in place for about a year, I’d like to share my family’s recent experience with the health insurance buying process.

Want the conclusion? Here’s mine: Obamacare is sorely needed in today’s economy.

Background
Due to a new career path I decided to take, my wife and I recently (July 2012) found ourselves in the market for health insurance for our family of four. I gave up the group insurance I had for the last twelve years and decided to pay out of pocket for a high-deductible individual policy. We have two tween-aged daughters. The company we dealt with is Aetna. That’s who I had the group policy with and who I applied for the individual policy with.

I thought it would make things simpler to stick with them since every one of our health insurance claims went through Aetna for more than a decade. I couldn’t have been more wrong. We still had to document for them every doctor visit, illness, etc. over the past ten years. When I suggested that they look up our claims and base their decision of whether or not to insure us based on their records, the representative said they couldn’t do that due to privacy laws. Right from the script!

Playing by the insurance company’s rules
Really? Privacy laws prevent me from giving my own insurance company access to their own files containing information about my health. I didn’t like that answer but played along since I really didn’t want my family to be uninsured.

As it turned out, my wife was denied coverage completely. And not just for me misstating her height and weight. It was that, combined with something that was not discovered in the physical but that my wife mentioned to the doctor, who logged it in her notes to the insurance company. We paid out of pocket to have the doctor treat the other matter, then appealed Aetna’s decision knowing in our minds that my wife would likely not be able to get coverage with another company now since one of the key questions on a new application is “Have you ever been denied coverage by any insurance company?”

I was issued a policy but with a 40% higher premium than I was originally quoted. Even though the bloodwork that I paid out of pocket for revealed that I’m in better health than I was five years ago, they rated me for “pre-diabetes,” likely because I mentioned on the application that a family member has diabetes. Great, now I’m paying more for revealing information that is none of Aetna’s business and they would have otherwise had no access to. Both of my kiddos were issued policies but one of them was rated higher due to an injury she sustained at gymnastics practice six months earlier.

At that point I couldn’t help but wondering if I had not mentioned the gymnastics injury, or my family member’s diabetes, or if I had been accurate with my wife’s height and weight, would we be having any of this trouble. Would Aetna have detected omissions on the application by checking our claim history? Call me a cynic, but my hunch is that yes they would.

Light at the end of the tunnel
Currently I and my two kids are insured. My wife is still uninsured as we await the outcome of the appeal. In the meantime, thanks to a tidbit I found in small print on Aetna’s denial letter, my wife will be eligible to apply for a “no pre-existing conditions” policy in early 2013. Prior to Obamacare this option would not have existed. I have already checked the premiums and the cost is about 30% higher than what Aetna originally quoted us. Chances are that even if Aetna does decide to cover her, it will be at an increased rate.

Regardless of the outcome, it is good to know that thanks to Obamacare we have the ability to get insurance for my wife. We just need to pray that she remains healthy until her insurance kicks in.

Option for people who have been denied health insurance
Apply for insurance under the Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan made possible by the Affordable Care Act. Get details at www.pcip.gov

As for the runaround and rated policies we received from Aetna, I don’t attribute that to Obamacare. Having dealt with them for the last twelve years for my group policy, I have become wise to their archaic infrastructure and tendency to stonewall when it comes to paying out benefits.

Lessons learned
Here are some tips I would offer to anyone thinking about applying for an individual (not group) health insurance policy:

Don’t guess when completing the application. I guessed my wife is 5’8′ and 120. Although I scored big points with her for that one, Aetna said she was too thin to be considered for coverage.
Don’t overshare. Since insurance companies are allgedly prevented from obtaining health information about your relatives, don’t reveal anything. Make them insure you based on your health.
Apply to more than one company about three months before you need the coverage. That’s about how long it can take to get insurance from the time you apply. This way you can go with the company that offers you the best overall package (price, service, efficiency) and tell the other(s) you won’t be needing them.
Keep detailed records of medical treatments you and your family members receive. It will save you a lot of grief if you ever have to apply for individual health insurance.

How to save over $6,000 a year with your dishwasher

Not just a dishwasher.
Think of it as a money saving machine.
Photo courtesy of lifehacker.com

Nobody in my family of four likes washing dishes. Especially not me. But we still take turns getting them done. Our system for determining whose turn it is works a little like the game of “Not it!”

As with any modern family, washing the dishes at our house means getting the scraps into the trash or disposal then placing them into the dishwasher. Not that hard, but we still despise it.

Inevitably my turn comes up at least once a week. I’ve been on this ‘Financial Peace’ kick inspired by Dave Ramsey, so I’ve adopted a little mind game to make doing the dishes a little more bearable.

I tell myself that for every load of dishes we wash we’re saving about $30. It’s not a precise calculation, but here’s the rationale: Typically we drop around $50 every time we go out to eat as a family. I guesstimate that we spend about $10 to $15 on groceries when we cook a meal at home. Add to that another $3 to $5 for water, electricity and dishwasher detergent. If you’re an accountant, you can factor in depreciation of the plates, silverware and dishwasher itself, but I prefer to keep things simple. So basically, we spend $20 for a meal at home instead of $50 at a restaurant. Voila – $30 savings.

Consider how this example can play out over a year’s time. We run the dishwasher four to five times per week. Cha-ching! I estimate: we’re saving $120 a week by washing dishes at home. Multiply that by 52 weeks in a year. That’s a savings of $6,240 over the course of year. Now that’s something I can get excited about.

Economics of running the dishwasher:

$30 savings per load versus not dining out
$120 saved per week at 4 loads per week
x 52 weeks
$6,240 potential savings per year

Okay sure, nobody eats out 100% of the time; I get that. The point here is for me to find reasons to overcome my dislike for doing the dishes. And I’m telling you that the belief that I’m saving $6,240 a year does it for me.

The takeaway: If your family hates doing dishes as much as ours, calculate the cost of the alternative – dining out – or use my numbers. Once you have convinced yourself that washing dishes at home more often is better than dining out, it will give you the will to step up and wash dishes a little more frequently. That goes a long way in boosting your credibility when you assign the task to others in the household.

Ever wonder what happened to waterbeds? This explanation may surprise you.

By @PaulFiarkoski

Shortly after relocating from Denver to Phoenix in the summer of 2012 my wife and I were in the market for a new bed. In the process, we met a furniture store owner who has been in the business for over 30 years. Saying he knows his stuff would be a gross understatement. This guy can school anyone in the business, regardless of their experience level.

Needless to say, he earned utmost credibility with me in just a few minutes. He also knows a lot about backs, especially bad backs. After all, he has helped many people over the years who had come to him because they just can’t get a good night’s sleep with their back/mattress combination. He even has a bad back himself.

Since my wife has back issues, I found it natural to ask the question: What kind of mattress do you sleep on? A waterbed was his answer, followed by a quick dissertation on flotation being the most natural fit for any body.

My look surely went from convert to disbeliever as I scanned the showroom looking for a waterbed.

“I don’t sell them. They don’t make waterbeds anymore,” he said.

The explanation
He went on to tell me that back in the 90s, the three S’s of the mattress industry (Simmons, Sealy & Serta) pooled together to buy out all the remaining waterbed manufacturing plants under the stated intention of modernizing the facilities. They ended up shutting them down altogether and in effect killed off an entire industry, leaving consumers with only their high margin spring-loaded and new age foam models to choose from.

Sounds like a far-fetched conspiracy theory, I know. But it’s not the first time I’ve heard of companies playing hardball to eliminate threats to their profits.

Makes me wonder if the three S’s are buying up landfills too. Have you tried to dispose of a mattress lately? The cost is outrageous.

Incidentally, we had to exchange the high-end memory foam mattress we initially bought for a moderately priced coil and pillow top model. That’s just what feels best on my wife’s back.

The moral? Higher cost doesn’t always equal better. And you can’t trust companies that start with the letter ‘S’.

Based in Phoenix, AZ | 303.241.1990 | campfiar@yahoo.com

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