A Few Tips, Tricks And Hacks That Will Make Your Life A Whole Lot Easier (2) | Lifehack

If you are examining nursing homes to place a loved one, look at the fingernails of the residents living there at the moment. Long fingernails (especially on men) would likely indicate that the home is either understaffed or does not care enough to do such a small task. Also stick around for awhile. Ask for an activity calendar and peek in on some activities. I’m an activity director and healthcare says very little about the quality of life offered. Of course being comfortable physically is very important, but if residents sit in their room all day, their risk of depression skyrockets, simply because they have no engagement. No matter cognitive or physical level, a decent activity program should offer engagement to each and every resident- social, sensory, intellectual, physical, and religious.

If your company offers 401k matching, do it. That’s an instant 100% return on investment. That’s better than any stock, bond, mutual fund, etc in existence. What is a 401k? The US government wants to encourage you to save for retirement. So they created the 401k as a special kind of savings account: You can deposit up to $18K/year. This is $18K in pre-tax dollars, so in a way you can consider it the same as if you put roughly $22K into a normal saving account. Lots of employers match up to a portion of salary. As a typical example, say you make $100K and your employer offers 100% match up to 3% of your salary. That’s an additional $3K you get, for free. You can keep the money in your 401k account in cash, or choose among several mutual and bond funds that your employer’s 401k brokerage offers. Very popular (and decent) right now are target year funds. These will have names like Fidelity 2040. The 2040 represents the year you hope to retire. They are considered safe, no-brainer funds because they are automatically balanced as you get older (less risk as you approach retirement). You can literally set and forget for the next 20 years. Your money grows in the 401k tax free. When you retire, you are taxed on whatever you withdraw each year. The thinking is that you will be in a much lower tax bracket at retirement, so 401ks provide a significant tax advantage (reduce your taxes in step 1, and money grows tax free in step 4). Even though you contribute through your employer, 401ks belong to you. So if you leave a job, the 401k stays with you. You could have a situation where you 10 jobs over your career with 10 different 401ks. Although most people just roll 401ks into their current job for ease of management (there’s a tax-free way of doing this). I don’t recommend this, but you can borrow from your 401k for special cases: first time home purchase or expensive illness. You can also borrow for other reasons, but you get hit with a decent penalty. I don’t recommend this because it’s easy to borrow, very hard to put back. And this is your retirement we’re talking about – it should be the ultimate “emergency fund”. In short, 401ks are the easiest, most surefire way that an average person can retire as a millionaire.

When you have no cell service (multiple bars of service but nothing works) at a crowded event, turn off LTE in cellular settings. Phone will revert to a slower, but less crowded, 3G signal. Carriers use multiple completely different frequencies for different generations of cellular technology. Since the vast majority of people have phones that support LTE (the fastest available now) this network will get clogged first, but the legacy network on different spectrum is indifferent to congestion on the LTE network.

Even if you’re pretty sure a friend can’t go to an event, invite them anyway. Your friend will greatly appreciate you thinking of them, and may also be able to clear their schedule to allow them to go. This also prevents said friend from feeling left out, and they can’t be angry for not being invited, should someone post things on social media or them just find out in general.

Don’t buy a house near a school until you’ve visited the property at both 8am and 3pm on weekday I live across the street from a elementary school. Literally where the bus line starts lining up 30 minutes before kids get out. Its a nightmare. The other side of the school is for parent pickup and by the time kids get out there are 50 cars running down the whole road that have been lined up for just as long blocking traffic. And this is on small side street city roads. You can’t get in or out. And it’s not just buses & parking. There are hours of screaming children at lunches and recess. Imagine groups of 50 in shifts running wide open and venting like a tea pot. It’s not a place to buy if you work a 3rd shift job or want retire in quiet. And I would extend that time to 5pm. After school care & sports programs.