27 April 2009

Free piece of chicken. But which piece?

UNTHINK
FREE
That's the full-page ad inviting us to eat KFC today—one free piece of grilled chicken. No purchase necessary.

Looks like 2009 will be the year of food-giveaways. Interestingly, this is the 3rd time I have thought long and hard about KFC in this calendar year. That's unusual because in at least 40 previous years of my ilfe I never thought about KFC. It was just there with original, then crispy, chicken. And the cole slaw that admittedly I didn't eat until I was in my 30s. And the mashed potatoes, which always satisfied.

Suddenly, this year, my boomer friends and I are discussing KFC.

A month ago a boomer woman friend actually phoned me to warn that KFC's value menu was slight and not worth driving out of the way for. This was probably in response to my blog about the increased number of value and dollar menus at our drive-through fast food chains.

A week ago I visited a KFC for lunch with another boomer woman friend. I noticed the grilled chicken on the menu and commented that I hadn't tried that. She dismissed it with, "We're not going to eat that today." (And she was right. Neither of us did.)

So, will any of us locate a KFC today (Monday, April 27 only) and ask for a free piece of chicken?

If we were to do that, what piece would we receive?

Well, to paraphrase my friend, it doesn't matter because we're not going to do that today.

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Or education advice. Or marital advice. Or even a tip.

24 April 2009

Play room at the Colorado Welcome Center

Boomers travel. Or if they cannot travel, they wish they could. I'm in the category of having a flexible schedule and the ability to travel (as long as I maintain access to the Internet for work).

Of late, I've been noticing new things in interstate highway rest areas. In 2008, I saw tornado shelters and wireless Internet in Texas roadside stops. In 2009, so far my new find is this children's play area stocked with toys. It's at the Colorado welcome center on I-70 (east side of the state next to Kansas).

The play room is about 20 x 20, which you cannot tell from this corner shot. What you also may not be able to see is the decorative image at the top. It's a cattle drive.

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Or education advice. Or marital advice. Or even a tip.

20 April 2009

Disappearing Brands in the Great Recession

We can/should distrust too many economic predictions especially seeing as how our own investment advisers didn't see the Great Recession coming. Still, when it comes to seeing a list of brands predicted to disappear, I'm drawn to it.

The current list comes from 24/7wallst.com and it covers 12 brands across several categories of goods. Auto, no surprise. Mid-scale clothing stores, um, little surprise. Airlines, well, logical but still a surprise probably because planes are so big and when we are in them we put our trust in them. It's then unbelievable to think something we put trust in (with our lives, after all) cannot stay in business. Purely psychological, of course.

The list is called Twelve Major Brands That Will Disappear.

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Or education advice. Or marital advice. Or even a tip.

17 April 2009

Someone Else's Personal Technology

Another boomer cut the cord this week. My sister-in-law emailed friends and family that she canceled her land-line. That represents a savings of $45/month that used to go to the phone company.

She's part of the growing group of "older" Americans (that's in marketing terms only) who are pushing telephones to the tipping point. If you think 20% is a meaningful percentage, you'll see it as a major part of an expected ripple effect whereby a fifth of Americans cancel home phones and rely on cell phones instead.

Age is important in the equation. In the early 2000s, the people who gave up their land-lines tended to be young and/or poor. As we march through 2009, the proportion of cancelers who are middle-aged and retired will go up and presumably turn the ripple into a wave.

The cancelers are gleeful at reducing their monthly bills. But some will replace that bill with another communication charge. The replacers are more likely to be the boomers, not the young or the poor.

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Or education advice. Or marital advice. Or even a tip.

13 April 2009

Household Pets Doing OK in the Depression

The only thing more amusing than the existence of John Deer Fruit Flavored Snacks is that I almost bought a box of them. Happily, I remembered that I could simply photograph the box in the store and that Sherman (dog) has no need for Fruit Flavored Snacks.

Sherman is in the story because he is sporting a John Deere dog collar. Not because we are John Deere fans but because it was on sale at PetsMart. And it came in handy last week at the dog park when a boxer bit off Sherman's previous collar. I know that sounds unlikely but it happened.

So, what's the real story here? Americans may be budgeting and cutting back—but not on purchases for their pets, at least the house-sized ones. News reports are picking up on horses that cannot be supported but the smaller animals are doing just fine. It seems that humans will cut back on their own groceries in order to continue purchasing specialty dog food and other pet supplies.

And while I make an effort to trim the pet budget (the collar was on sale and I would have purchased it with any other logo on it), I have to admit that I was ready to buy human snack food for a dog based on a logo affinity for which the dog has no awareness. Although I suspect he would have loved the sugar.

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Or education advice. Or marital advice. Or even a tip.

10 April 2009

Depression Talk: 30 Years Later

One week ago, Robert Reich blogged that we are in a Depression. He used a capital D, acknowledged that it's not a Great Depression, but moved away from the milder Mini Depression.

I am a boomer with a specific memory of not knowing what a Depression would mean in concrete terms. It was 1979 and Tom Bold and I were house-hunting. In one realtor's office, Tom and a middle-aged fellow exchanged these words.

Realtor: You want a mortgage that you can handle even in a depression.

Tom Bold: If we're in a depression, a mortgage is the least of my worries.

Realtor: Well, that's true.

And I just quietly filed that away. I was sure we'd never be in a depression because, after all, the Great Depression was something our grand-parents dealt with. It wasn't anything a modern society would allow to happen again. (You know, the same way we count on wars to never be repeated.)

But I still filed it away in memory. I was probably focused on the idea that Tom Bold had an opinion about priorities in a depression and I had no earthly idea what that might mean.

I mean I really filed it away. Tom was standing. The realtor was sitting. Tom had short hair (first year on the job). The realtor's was even shorter. They both wore white shirts and dark pants (1979, remember).

I am certain that in the next several years (early 1980s with their own impressive unemployment figures) I did not relate the conversation to personal finances. Other people might be unemployed but Tom was at the start of his career with options that included job choices and salary jumps.

Today? I am relating the conversation to personal finances. It's not the mortgage per se, as we've consistently lived beneath our means since 1979. Our housing is not a problem. But we certainly are touched by the current Depression, just as Reich describes his own and most Americans' situation. Retirement savings took a hit. Employment has been altered (Tom's lay-off). We're avoiding debt, just as Reich predicts. We see enough changes to make us cautious, expecting to hunker down for a couple of years.

With humility, we appreciate what we have and we sympathize with people who better fit what Tom described to that realtor. People for whom the mortgage is the least of their worries. In a Depression, the worst worries are much worse than making the mortgage.

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Or education advice. Or marital advice. Or even a tip.

06 April 2009

Readiness for PHR, Personal Health Record

A few months ago, I commented on this blog that I wasn't ready to create a personal and electronic health record on the web. Yesterday, I found a change in my thinking and went so far as to log-in to an established Patient Center under the auspices of MinuteClinic. (That's the walk-in health facility housed in many CVS Pharmacies.)

PHRs (personal health records) will be a commonplace item in just a few years, largely due to the federal administration's inclusion of the technology in stimulus funding. Has the national discourse on health care and PHRs influenced my thinking? Assuredly. What was a vague idea a few months ago is now a likelihood for me and millions of others.

What prompted my new action, though? It was a second visit to MinuteClinic (minor ailment) in which the sign-in screen (all electronic at this efficient work station) asked me to permit a default option of follow-up email about a web-based health record. I simply let the default checkmark stand—and then entered my email address via the touchscreen. But the time I reached home, my inbox displayed a message with a link to the online Patient Center.

The self-service sign-in desk at MinuteClinic also carried a small, print flyer about the online option of health records. I took one of those. I didn't actually learn anything from it that I didn't already know. But that small piece of paper contributed to my willingness to follow the link that would soon be in my inbox.

I followed the email link to the Patient Center, where I "registered" with a few factoids and a password. I clicked through my records there. Two visits to MinuteClinic, 5 months apart. The records were identical to the print reports I was given during the appointments.

But I didn't proceed with the next step. That would be the optional "export" of the MinuteClinic records to a PHR at either Google Health or Microsoft HealthVault. Both of those free services carry the word Beta in their logos. That's fair: they would have to be beta at this point.

News reports assure that we'll see a lot of changes between now and 2014 (target year for PHRs). I cannot imagine if the Google and Microsoft repositories will be in place 5 years from now, or what system I may use. Will I choose? Will my insurance provider dictate? Will networks of physicians lead me to a choice? I'm mainly just interested in my half-step yesterday. I think it might be classfied as readiness.

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Or education advice. Or marital advice. Or even a tip.

03 April 2009

Personal Technology: Air Card for Internet Access

Air cards are getting smaller and not so card-like anymore. Last month, I picked up a USB air card. Slight contradiction in terms there. This non-card slips into a USB port to provide Internet access for a computer. The technology adds a dedicated cell phone to your computer for use on the 3G network, assuring faster-than-dial-up web access.

With Internet everywhere, why would anyone pay for another route to the web? Here are my reasons:

1 - About half the time that I log into networks at Starbucks and Panera, either the connection fails or is not available at all.

2 - WiFi sounds attractive at airports but the hourly/daily charges ($6 - $12 seems to be my range) add up.

3 - Subscriptions to WiFi services become too hidden on the monthly credit card bill so that I'm not irritated enough at the number of places I cannot find the service. (FYI, I ended my $30/month service and that pays for 2/3 of my new air card charge.)

4 - Hotel charges for WiFi are the most irritating of all ($10 - $15 is the typical range I find). I applaud the hotels and motels that provide free Internet access. Of course, when the connections are weak or don't work, my applause quiets.

5 - iPhone web access is fine for a lot of things, but not everything.

6 - The great outdoors beckons, even though my friends and colleagues doubt that. But I have computed at dog parks. So, there.

7 -
The USB unit can plug into any of my 3 laptops (includes a Mac). It may be the first thing I've plugged into the Vista machine that hasn't given me fits.

8 -
My AARP discount from AT&T brings down the monthly charge to 40-something dollars.

9 - I have two client locations where using their networks is problematic. I can now create my own connection without fuss.

10 - I can download 6,000 songs per month without reaching the account limit.

© 2009 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (www.marybold.com, www.boldproductions.com, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Or education advice. Or marital advice. Or even a tip.