Currency Conversion

When traveling out of the country, always choose to be charged in the local currency, and use a credit card that waives all foreign transaction fees.

To stay abreast of the most current conversion rates, download Oanda's Currency Converter app, which tracks the day's rates for more than 190 currencies.

Source: Travel + Leisure, October 2015 issue, page 17.

Check Up On Your Doctor

If you want to check out a doctor, you can go to www.fsmb.org/state-medical-boards/contacts.  You can obtain the following information regarding your current doctor or one that you contemplate using:

• Practice Information
• Insurance
• Specialty Certification
• Legal Actions
• Discipline
• Education
• Professional Activities
• Honors & Awards

This information can be obtained only for doctors in the United States.

Source:  Consumer Reports October 15, 2015, page 9.

Roundup Weed Control Alternative

If you would like to make an environmentally friendly alternative to Roundup to kill weeds, please do the following:

1. Mix one gallon of vinegar
2. 2 cups of Epsom salt
3. 1/4 cup Dawn dish soap

Pour is a sprayer and spray on the weeds.  If this mixture gives you too much product, just cut the amounts in half or some other reduced proportion.

You also could try the Avenger Weed Killer, which meets the strict standards of the Organic Materials Review Institute

Source: Consumer Reports, August 2015, Page 8.

Avoid Airfare Hikes

Ever notice that when you check a flight price online but do not book the flight then, a return visit to the website can show a higher fare for the same flight?  It may be the work of customer-tracking cookies that alert the website that this is a return visit, meaning that you may be eager to buy even at a higher ticket price.  To snag the original price, use a different browser for the second visit to the website.

Source:  AARP newspaper, November 2014

Best Prices

There is a website that lets you create price watches on Amazon products.  You are alerted to price  changes and can browse products with the biggest prices drops.  The website is as follows:

Camelcamelcamel.com

Another smart tool is InvisibleHand, a browser extension you can install on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.  Whenever you land on a page selling a product, it automatically searches the web for the lowest prices on the item.

Source:  Money Magazine, September 2014, Page 26

Cell Phone Coverage

If you would like to check out your cell phone provider performance anywhere in the world, please do the following:

• Log on o Rootmetrics.com
• Click Coverage Map button
• Click Network button to get your provider (Can only do AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon).  You will get a drop down to choose your carrier
• Type in your address in the search box and click the search button

Apps

Here are some interesting apps for cell phones:

• Gas Buddy - Free - Android, iOS, & Windows - Finds the cheapest nearby gas in the U.S. and Canada
• iExit - Free - Android & iOS - Lists food, gas, lodging, and other services at interstate exits and rest areas
• Google Maps - Free - Android, iOS, & Windows - Downloadable maps of 220 countries and territories, transit directions and maps for more than 2,800 cities, live traffic conditions, automatic rerouting, and lane guidance.  You can also search places to eat shop, and play in unfamiliar cities.
• Night Sky Lite - Free - Android & iOS - Point your phone or tablet at the sky, and the app will identify the stars, planets, and galaxies

Source: Consumer Reports, August 2014, Pages 24 & 25

Beyond Credit Reports

Here is how to access the most useful web sites for detecting possible ID theft.

To access them, please follow the path as follows:

• First put in a search for: Beyond Credit Reports Sid Kirchheimer
• From the results listing click on Free Credit Reports Protect You From Identity Theft - AARP
• Then you will be at the article to read titled - Databases Can Help Spot ID Theft

Source:  AARP Bulletin April 2014 Page 30

Better Hotel Room Rates

Here are 5 ways to get a better hotel room rate:

• Know The Market - The web-based price predictor feature on The Suitest forecasts how room prices are expected to fluctuate for the next month - use it to find the right time to buy in any market.  Then cross-check with Deal Angel and Bing's Hotel Rate Indicator - both of them compare quoted rates with a hotel's average cost, telling you which deals are really worthwhile.
• Stay Notified - Sign up for e-mail notification from Yapata, and the booking site will alert you if room prices go down; if you make a reservation with Tingo, they will track your rate and refund you if a cheaper one pops up.
• Book Blind - You can save up to  60% with mystery booking pioneer Hotwire and Travelocity's Top Secret Deals.  The trade off is that they don not tell you where  you are staying until you have paid.  For that, turn to Bidgoggles and HotelDealsRevealed which can help you figure out what property might be behind the curtain.  Better yet, Guestmob offers similar discounts if you let it choose one of four predetermined hotels for you (all in the same part of town).
• Try Your Luck - Priceline's Name Your Price has an auction tool which lets you propose a rate to properties that you are considering.  Equally worthwhile is BackBid which allows you to submit the details of an existing, refundable reservation, and similar hotels  will try to outdo one another on savings.  You can also try to win big with Roomer.  Like Stub Hub for hotels, it is a resale marketplace for nonrefundable bookings - sold here at rock bottom prices.
• Procrastinate - Same-day booking apps such as HotelTonight (free iOS) and BookingTonight.com (free, Android, iOS) yield up to 70% off regular rates, if you are willing to wait until the last minute.  Due to its popularity, there usually is plenty of inventory to choose from daily.  A tip here is that the deepest discounts surface on Sundays, Mondays, Thursdays, and right after holidays.

Source:  

Travel + Leisure March 2014

Car Wiper Blades

Clean the rubber edge of your car's wiper blades with a paper towel dampened with glass cleaner or water and a little dish detergent to extend the life of the wiper blades.

Source:  Consumer Reports, January 2014

Sugar For wound Cure

Buy A Home Or Rent

The following link will help you decide whether you should buy a home or rent instead.  The link includes a sophisticated new calculator that factors in variables such as local real estate forecasts to help you decide.  The link is: www.trulia.com/rent_vs_buy.

The source of this link is Money magazine November, 2013 issue, page 18.

Medical Issues - Sugar & Headaches

This Chicago Tribune article dated October 2, 2013 has tips on how sugar can cure skin issues and how to help cure a headache.

Easy Battery Test

Here is an easy way to test to see whether or not your battery is good.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_m6p99l6ME&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DY_m6p99l

Protect Your Valuable Asset

Your house is one of your most valuable assets.  To prove that you own your house some day (like when you want to sell your house), you need to show your deed of ownership.  If you lose your deed of ownership, this could be a problem.  To help protect yourself in case you lose the original deed document(s), you might want to consider making an electronic copy of your deed document(s) and keep them on a CD, DVD, flash drive, folder on your computer, cloud storage, etc.

If you happen to have your deed document(s) in a safe deposit box, you should know that the safety deposit box is not FDIC insured.  So, if there is a flood in the vault where you safety deposit box resides and ruins your deed document(s), the damage is not insured and you may have a lot of difficulty and expense getting new deed document(s).  So the above mentioned electronic storage options may help you retrieve the deed document(s) more readily and possibly at a lesser cost.

Lost Or Stolen Computers

If you have a lost or stolen computer, you might consider attempting to recover the computer by using the following web site: www.stolencomputers.org

Plants, Trees, Shrubs, Perennials, Annuals, Etc. Finder Best For Your State

If you are looking for a specific types of plants, trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, etc., you might consider looking at www.epa.gov/watersense/.  The site gives you suggested plantings for your state for various different types of plantings.

Source:  Consumer Reports, May 2013

Airline Ticket Purchase Tips

Here are some airline ticket purchasing tips:

• When traveling around July 4th or another busy weekend, start looking for tickets early - about 10 weeks beforehand in most cases.
• For Thanksgiving ticket purchases you may need a month more than that.
• The best time to shop for tickets is Tuesday afternoon since most domestic sales launch late Monday and are soon matched by rivals.  For non-vacation destinations, buy on a weekend.
• For reassurance that your timing is right, take advantage of travel search engines special features such as: Kayak.com's new Price Trend and Bing.travel.com's Price Predictor which will forecast whether fares are headed up or down.

Interresting Tidbits

Here are some ideas that you might consider incorporating:

• In your refrigerator do not put delicate foods like lettuce near the vent, the lettuce might freeze.
• To save money on printing from you printer, avoid the Arial font since it uses more ink than Times/New Roman and other fonts.  Besides using Times New Roman, Calibri and Century Gothic also uses less ink than Arial.  Minimize the use of color ink by printing text in gray scale or use black only mode.
• If you cannot log into your computer, always check that the Cap Lock is not on, which scrambles your password.
• If your printer has a "standby" timeout (most do), leave it on; do not shut it off after each use.  If you leave the printer on, the printer uses only a tiny amount of power that way (about one watt).  It has been found that some inject printers waste more ink getting ready to print when switched on than when left in standby uses.
• If your computer hard drive is more than half full, programs and other disk operations like copying and back up will slow down.  That is a reason to pick a hard drive with more capacity than you think you will need when you buy a new computer.
• Smart phones meed a fresh (re)start.  The phones are actually full-fledged computers and need to be restarted every few days to purge memory reserved by programs no longer running and to fix glitches hat can hinder performance.
• To quickly find information about the new product that you bought, download the manual, then use :Control F" ("Command F") on a Mac to search for a particular word, etc.
• Do not bother using nitrogen in your tires to keep tire pressure.  It seems to be a waste of money.  Air is about 80% nitrogen anyway, and air or nitrogen will leak out of the tires over time.
• Never wash or rinse raw chicken in the sink.  You might splash germs around the kitchen and risk food poisoning. 
• If your gear does not start, unplug it or otherwise reboot it and start over.
• To save money on airfare, shop on line on weekdays, specifically from Monday evening about 8:00 PM EST to Thursday 8:00 PM EST.  Supposedly the best time of all is 3:00 PM EST Tuesday.
• To clean the lens of your smart-phone, use a microfiber cloth.
• To conserve your smart-phone battery, seek strong signals and do not bury the phone in a desk since the phone uses more power trying to access a weak signal.  Turn off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and other wireless access when you are out of range.  Reduce screen brightness.  Cut the number of times you allow updates of news, e-mail, and other network feeds.
• You do not need to pay for high-definition TV calibration.  DIY as follows: 1) Use your typical room lighting 2) From a DVD or DVR video freeze on a frame with a face and some detail 3)Press the menu button on the remote to find picture mode 4) Try the options such as THX mode, Cinema, Movie, and Pro.  See which provides the most natural looking picture.
• Many electronic devices draw power when they are off or in standby mode.  You could save approximately $125 a year by pulling the plug or turning off the power strip they are plugged into.
• Use your Android Power Control widget which lets you turn Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and Sync off and on, and adjust screen brightness.  It does help to save the battery life without having to search through Settings.
• All charged cell phone - even those with expired service contracts - are required by law to be able to make an emergency 911 call.  So do have a cell phone charge at all times.
• Do not use cooking sprays on your nonstick pans.  The spray can build up and actually cause food to stick.  Instead use nonstick pans on low or medium heat without spraying them.
• Synthetic paintbrushes and rollers tend to hold latex-based paints better and apply more evenly that those with natural materials.
• Cut down on your cell phone's data charges by using a W-Fi network.
• To clean your computer screen, put a drop of dish washing liquid on a soft, damp, lint-free cloth and wipe the screen.  Non-ammonia-based glass cleaners are OK also.  Do not use ammonia-based cleaners.
• Do not pay extra for ID-theft protection for your credit card.  If your card is stolen, federal law limits your liability to $50.  If your card number (not the card itself) is stolen, you are not liable for anything.
• Bug repellents that contain deet (25% is best) are excellent repellents.
• If you ever have to tame a runaway car do the following: Press and hold the brakes and shift the transmission into neutral.  Then use your brakes to bring the car to a stop on the side of the road and shut off the engine.  Shift the car into Park.

Source:  Consumer Reports, May 2013, Page 15, Article - 101 Secrets From Our Experts

New Ideas For Household Items

Here are some new ideas for household items:

• Mix cream of tartar with a little water or vinegar to tackle tough stains like that grubby grout in the shower
• Run dryer sheets along your baseboards to repel dust, dirt, and pet hair.  They are also handy for cleaning pet hair off of furniture
• Shave your legs with a thin layer of olive oil.  You will get a closer shave with less razor burn, plus your legs will be silky smooth
• Mix 1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup vinegar in a microwave safe mug or bowl, and heat until it boils.  This combo melts away gross stains and food so that you can easily wipe your dirty microwave clean
• Fill a coffee filter with potpourri or baking soda and close with a twist tie.  Throw these cheap and chemical free air fresheners i in drawers, cars, closets, or wherever
• Remove a tricky splinter by soaking your finger in Epsom salt and water.  Epsom salt forces the splinter to the surface of your skin for quick and painless removal
• Rather than bringing harsh chemicals into your home, sprinkle cinnamon to drive away ants
• Treat blemishes overnight with a dab of honey covered by a bandage. 

Source: Make It Better Magazine March 2013