Today, I’ll be attending the Pacific Northwest Writers Association conference in Seattle.
I’m looking forward to the keynote talk by thriller writer Gayle Lynds. She’s a boomer.
In upcoming posts on The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide, I’ll let you know about interesting boomer writers and books I discover at the conference.
Monday, at the last minute, I decided to go to Sacramento on Tuesday to celebrate an event with my daughter and her family.
Since I’d seen cheap, last-minute tickets on the Web about five years ago, I was hoping such bargains were still available.
I started out by called Alaska Airlines to see what the rate for a next-day ticket would be. A sales representative told me $460, about twice the price if I’d booked in advance. I looked on Alaska’s Web site to see if the cost would be substantially cheaper. Unfortunately, it was $440.
I looked under “Deals” on the Alaska site. No deals were available for traveling to Sacramento.
The Alaska sales representative suggested I try Last Minute Travel.com. No luck there. The price was the same as on the Alaska Web site. No deals to Sacramento were offered.
I tried Expedia.com and Price Line. No luck at either. I tried their Deals sections, too, but nothing turned up for Sacramento.
Since time was running out, I decided to cash in my Alaska Airline miles. I only had 14,921 miles, just 79 miles short of the 15,000 miles required to get a reduced-fare ticket. A customer service representative at the Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan gave me 80 points. Then I could go to the Alaska Web site and sign up for the reduced ticket.
While it took more time than I wanted to spend to get the Web site to issue me the ticket, I finally received it. The price was $233.
I enjoyed my visit, leaving Seattle-Tacoma International Airport at 10:10 a.m. and returning from Sacramento at 8:20 p.m. It was a great celebration.
However, I would have preferred not to use up all my Alaska Mileage Plan miles.
What’s your experience? Have you been able to find a low-priced, last-minute airline ticket lately?
I love raspberries. I was pleased to return from my vacation and find my raspberry patch in full production.
It’s such a great time of year in the Pacific Northwest. Berries do well here, and we’ll have these healthy fruits well into fall.
Raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries contain phytonutrients – plant nutrients – that promote good health.
So, it’s a good time of year to eat these wonderful fruits.
Scientists are interested in the potential health benefits of flavonoids, how raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, and certain other phtytonutrients are classified, according to the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University.
Higher intakes of flavonoid-rich foods are associated with reductions in cardiovascular disease risk, the institute reports.
Flavonoids may protect against lung cancer by stopping the development of blood vessels that tumors need to grow and spread, according to an article in the June issue of Cancer.
Now that her twins are four years old and better travelers, my daughter, who lives in Miami Beach, decided to arrange a home exchange vacation in Seattle. She wanted to visit her friends there and save the costs of a large hotel bill.
Since I live 60 miles to the south, in Olympia, I could visit, join the vacation activities, and baby sit when she and her husband wanted to go out with their friends.
My daughter paid $65 on a home exchange Web site and listed her home. She found a home in Seattle that looked promising whose owners were interested in going to Miami Beach. She contacted the owners to see if mutually acceptable dates could be worked out to exchange their homes.
They were able to work out the dates, so for two weeks I was able to enjoy having my twin grandchildren nearby.
We had a great time. The twins were very comfortable in the home setting and enjoyed playing with all the “new” toys and the family cat.
My oldest daughter and her family came to Seattle, too.
We visited the Space Needle, Children’s Museum, Woodland Park Zoo, Experience Music Project, Seattle Aquarium, Pacific Science Center, and the Museum of Flight. The twins liked the zoo and the Museum of Flight best.
We also enjoyed Seattle parks, cards games, a Bingo-like game called Zingo, and fireworks from the balcony on the Fourth of July.
I loved the home exchange. It seemed like a fantastic way to have a vacation.
What did my daughter think? Would she do it again?
Although she loved visiting her friends and had looked forward to it for four years, she said it was exhausting to pack for the trip, get her house ready for guests, and then set up a new household in Seattle.
Although I helped her clean the house throughout the vacation and the day before she and the twins left, she said next time she might hire cleaners so we could enjoy ourselves on the last day of the vacation rather spend the time cleaning.
The Independent Traveler has these tips for home exchanges:
Problems with home exchanges are rare, according to the Independent Traveler article. You can report serious problems to home exchanging organization. Although these organizations don’t accept responsibility for damages occurring during an exchange, a person’s membership could be revoked.
Some organizations offering home exchange Web sites:
InterVac
HomeLink International
HomeExchange.com
Digsville
Home Base Holidays
Only in America Home Exchange
Retail stores receiving meat and poultry products involved in Class I recalls – those with the most serious health consequences – will soon be listed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to an announcement from the department.
The identity of retail stores with recalled meat and poultry from their suppliers has been a missing piece of information for the public during a recall. With this information, people can be on the lookout for recalled meat and poultry at their local store.
A list of retail stores that receive food subject to Class I recalls will be posted on the USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service Web site within about three to ten business days of a recall release. The list also will be shared with state and local public health officials.
A Class I recall is one that involves a reasonable probability of serious health consequences or death for those with weakened immune systems.
MoneyGram Payment Services has agreed to a multi-state agreement intended to help prevent U.S. residents from becoming victims of wire transfer scams.
MoneyGram will pay $1.1 million to fund a national peer-counseling program to be overseen by the AARP Foundation. The company also agreed to print an attention-grabbing warning on its form used to send money and provide enhanced training to branch agents.
Attorneys general in 44 states and the District of Columbia reached the out-of-court agreement with MoneyGram on July 2, 2008. The case was initiated because 10 states had concerns about the use of MoneyGram’s wire transfer services by scammers. The states reached a similar agreement in 2005 with Western Union.
Con artists prefer wire transfers because they are fast, there are transfer agents in most communities, and funds can be picked up in multiple locations.
Consumers have been tricked by fake employment ads, bogus loan offers, sham foreign lotteries, and schemers who pretend to be interesting in buying or selling something from you. In most cases, the victim is sent a counterfeit check and told to keep a portion of the money and wire the rest. The check ultimately bounces, sometimes weeks after the funds initially appeared in the victim’s account. Victims who have already wired or spent the money are sometimes hit with overdraft fees and seldom recover what they lost.
A survey by seven states found that telemarketing fraud was a factor in more than 29 percent of Western Union transfers in excess of $300 that were sent from the U.S. to Canada in 2002. In addition, fraud-induced transfers represented 58 percent of the total dollars wired during the survey period. The states projected that consumers nationwide lost an estimated $113 million because of these scams.
Under the agreement, MoneyGram will:
MoneyGram offers wire transfer services at more than 125,000 locations in the U.S. and an additional 100,000 worldwide. Its agents are independent contractors.
The following states participated in the agreement: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming and the District of Columbia.
In these tough money times, figuring out how to reduce your spending by $500 a month would cause excitement in most households.
“Cut Your Spending by $500 Per Month,” an article in the August issue of Consumer Reports, offers six tips to find savings in everyday spending. The tips include:
The article offers details on how to carry out each strategy.
What should you do with the savings? Consumer Reports suggests you put more into your 401(k), IRA, or other tax-deferred retirement account.
Copyright 2008, Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist
For one family, it was a messy mudroom. For another, their kitchen was a dumping ground. For a third family, their home office wasn’t working.
Other problems included a laundry room that wasn’t providing a space for exercising, a dining room that had to double as an office, and a daughter’s bedroom that was a disaster.
These six clutter problems from throughout the United States were tackled by a team led by Chip Cordelli, interior design consultant, for an article in Real Simple magazine.
See “America Gets Organized: Six Families Conquer Their Biggest Clutter Challenges,” which appeared in the October 2007 issue of the magazine.
When you get ready to deal with your clutter, having the tools you need will help you get the job done. The link above shows the storage containers, organizers, furniture, shelving, and other items that helped to organize these six problem rooms.
Check your local library for Real Simple's October 2007 magazine.
Copyright 2008, Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist
“In (Desperately) Seeking a Clutter Cure,” which appeared in the February 2008 issue of Domino magazine, Cynthia Kling, a self-professed thing-aholic, took a humorous look at clutter books.
The prime motivator of clutter books is guilt, Kling said, who reviewed more than 30 books on the topic for the article. Some of the books she took a look at include:
Kling closes her article with a list of Clutter-Control Wisdom of the Ages:
If you’re unable to get your clutter under control, you can hire an organizer to help you from the National Association of Professional Organizers.
When we were getting ready for our Fourth of July party, I thought of two lists I’d read on the Co-op America Web site: Ten Things You Should Never Buy Again and Five More Things to Never Buy Again.
Avoiding the purchase of these items will help the environment, according to Co-op America. For each item on both lists, an explanation is given on why it’s harmful to you and/or the environment. Alternatives are given for each listing, along with the best option.
Ten Things You Should Never Buy Again
Five More Things You Should Never Buy Again
Click on the links above to learn more about the environment and health problems associated with these products.
