Grizzly Bears & Humans

A little more than a week ago, an older man was killed by a Grizzly bear near Yellowstone. The man was a local and knew he was going into a trapping area. Small consolation but in the category of we all get to choose the way we go.

What Tom Bold and I saw the same day in the park represents much less thought and conscious choice. We saw 3 Grizzlies that Thursday. One, from a distance across a meadow, was running and romping. We were struck by how large the bear must be, for us to have such a clear view at a distance.

The next sighting was scary. A mother Grizzly and her cub, with humans standing as close as 20 feet. It was a grove-like area with shade, and very near the paved road. (That's why we had a view for about 30 seconds. We dodged cars and people to drive away from the scene.)

What would make about 50 humans (adults and children) gather around a mother and cub? Why would drivers be comfortable pulling half-way off the road and leaving their cars to approach for a better look?

All I can think is that the humans felt safe because there were other humans around. A group of humans? No animal can take on a group of humans.

And technically that's true. Even a Grizzly cannot attack the whole group. But she could surely take out one or two humans.

Tom Bold pointed out the other risk: any movement by the bear would trigger a group exit in which humans would get hurt by humans.

I am very glad I saw the bears. I am very glad we kept moving.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

Personal Technology: Books on iPad

I didn't imagine myself putting children's books on the iPad but I'm pretty delighted with two that have ended up there.

The Cat in the Hat proves that touchpad technology can, indeed, guide children to reading. I really don't want to hear any more about trends in the ways of teaching people how to read. Just put kids on iPads. Reading will follow. (The Dr. Seuss classic costs a few bucks.)

Toy Story is not quite the powerful teaching tool of the Cat but it has two great features. First, it offers a paint bucket for touchpad artistry (erasure is with the etch-a-sketch technique of shaking the iPad). Second, it's free. Yep, a free app.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

Spouse's Best Deal: Worth the Aging

Boomers may not care to disclose their own ages (wide variety of opinions on that), but they almost always enjoy an older spouse's advancement, for the sake of senior discounts. (Other eligibility, such as Social Security and Medicare, may be welcomed, too.)

For me, last week, that was the case as Tom Bold purchased his National Parks Senior Pass. $10. That's for life, now. It's also worth some discounting on other federal lands.

The free/discounted entry to parks/lands extends to anyone riding in the same car. That is, Tom Bold and his Pass must be in the car. Anyone else (me) in the same car is just as free/discounted.

Is this a deal, or what?

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

Personal Technology: Driving while in Overdrive

I mean, literally driving while in Overdrive. Let me clarify, I don't do the driving while in Overdrive. Tom Bold does the driving and I utilize Overdrive (the unit) to access the Internet on a computer or iPad or iPhone (and presumably any other web-based unit).

Here's the plus that I knew but didn't process until recently. With the Overdrive from Sprint, and the iPhone from AT&T, I have lots of coverage, meaning I'm bound to be in a territory for one cellular service or another. Coverage is documented on the cell services' web sites. If I could magically improve one of them, it would be Sprint's map of data service coverage. In today's age of google mapping, it's hard to forgive a clunky, chunky map like Sprint's.

(The AT&T Coverage Viewer looks remarkably similar to the Spring Coverage Tool… but the AT&T version has smoother operation.)

These are the tools of a mobile society. And the specific tools of un-tethered boomers. More on un-tethering later.

Disclosure statement: I have no relationship with any product or company mentioned here and I have not received any compensation or free product for mentioning them. (This blog's only monetary reward comes through google.adsense links, which are selected by Google, not by me.)

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

New Favorite Retirement Calculator

I have a new favorite retirement calculator. It's from an independent, Bud Hebeler. That's in contrast to an investment or brokerage house. Hebeler is a former president of Boeing and an all-around smart person on the subject of personal finance.

His web site is Analyze Now! (the exclamation mark is part of the name but the URL is just www.analyzenow.com] It has a lot of explanations, and a fair number of FAQs, but its real strength is in the calculation programs. The programming is presented in Excel spreadsheets. Don't worry that the programs require knowledge of Excel; they don't. When a spreadsheet opens, you just follow the instructions and plug in numbers in the highlighted cells. Results will appear near the top of the screen, with explanation if it's needed.

Hebeler's guided tour of retirement doesn't have the 4-color pizzazz of the commercial web sites. But in its quieter way, with no sales pitches, it inspires confidence in the major source of information, the user. After all, if I can follow the steps to analysis, surely I can follow the steps to action.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

Personal Technology: SkyDrive

I have a new web app: Microsoft's Office online. A web app (application) runs entirely in a browser. So, you do need Internet access. But you do NOT need Microsoft Office on your computer.

These free Office apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote) are lite—they don't have every feature that the hard-drive version of Office provides. But they are free (and the hard-drive version definitey isn't).

Web apps put us up in a cloud. Cloud computing has been promised for a while but it has come with some clunky apps (at least the free ones). Microsoft's version is not clunky. It is very smooth.

The Microsoft cloud also offers a free SkyDrive. That's 25GB of space for storage. (That's a lot of documents. It's even a lot of Powerpoint slideshows.) The downside is that what you create online must be saved to the SkyDrive and not directly to your hard drive. (Uploads and downloads are handled as separate steps.) For a lot of people, that's not really a disadvantage. They want to keep everything floating high above their hardware.

Right now, you can co-author (and co-edit) works in the online Excel and OneNote. Presumably, the rest of the suite will be share-able soon. That's when the online Office will offer all that Google's web app offers.

As a Gmail user, I like Google Docs because it resides nearby. I just click a link in my Gmail account. To use Microsoft's web apps, I must go to a new web site (office.live.com) and enter a new username and password (my Windows Live ID).

I grumbled when I started. Another user name. Potentially another password to match yet another set of rules for security. When I proposed my user name (an email address), the system replied that it was already in existence. Oh, my. Could it be me? I typed in one of my standard passwords. Yes, it linked. I already had a Windows Live ID. With absolutely no memory of it.

Disclosure statement: I have not received any compensation or free product for mentioning this service. (This blog's only monetary reward comes through google.adsense links, which are selected by Google, not by me.)

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

Foreclosure Insurance... On Holiday

This isn't about insurance for your own foreclosure. Rather, it's about the possibility that your vacation rental could be in foreclosure.

A friend told me that a recently received trip insurance policy had a new clause: protection in case you get to your vacation house and find it boarded up, locked up, or otherwise unaccessible due to a foreclosure action. Notice I said action, not auction, although the prospect of an auction during your stay is pretty darn interesting.

I'm new to travel insurance, myself. In 2010, for the first time, I was booking travel far enough ahead (more than year) to feel uneasy about the possibility of needing to cancel later. (Insurance doesn't cover all cancellations—just the ones you would approve if you were the insurer.)

I attribute this caution to being a boomer. As a boomer, I was compelled to book that trip far in advance; and, as a boomer, I was nervous that I was booking too far in advance.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.

Moving Boomers

What do Las Vegas (Nevada), Bend (Oregon), and Fort Myers (Florida) have in common? All three made it onto two of U.S. News & World Reports' Top 10 lists.

For the full lists, click each of these lines:
10 Cities for Retirement Property Steals
10 Cities Facing a Double Whammy of Default Risks

One way to describe the common set is that 30% of the nation's worst mortgage-foreclosure cities are good places for boomers to relocate to for retirement. And will we? Boomers are more likely to move in retirement years when compared to the previous cohort of retirees. But about 80% want to stay where they are, maintaining their home town ties.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://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.