The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide

Change the batteries on your smoke detector and CO alarm Sunday

Now that you've figured out Sunday is Daylight Saving Time and you'll be setting your clocks back one hour, it’s a good time to change the batteries in smoke and carbon monoxide alarms.

“Early warning is crucial to getting out of a house fire alive and for surviving CO poisoning,” Robert Adler, acting chair of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, said in an agency blog article. “I encourage everyone to check and change the batteries in their smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. Doing this can save you and your family in a fire or CO emergency.”

The CPSC estimates that in 2016 nearly 352,000 residential structure fires resulted in about 2,410 deaths, 10,370 injuries, and $6.36 billion in property damage in the United States.

Happy Halloween

Just a few hours now until ghosts, goblins, and witches come knocking on your door.

Will you be one of 76 percent or less of Americans spending $50 or less on Halloween this year? One of 32 percent throwing or attending a party? One of 44 percent carving a pumpkin? One of 49 percent decorating their home? One of 47 percent dressing in a costume?

Americans will spent $3.2 billion on costumes this Halloween. Princess, superhero, and witch are the most popular costumes for children, while its witch and vampire for adults. For pets, its pumpkin, hot dog, superhero, and bumble bee.

For more details on today’s fun day, see “Facts and Figures for Halloween 2019.”

Whatever your plans, I hope you have good time. And, make sure those little ones are safe as they make their rounds. Happy Halloween.

Copyright 2019, Rita R. Robison, Consumer and Personal Finance Journalist

Facts and figures for Halloween 2019

Source: WalletHub

 

Copyright 2019, Rita R. Robison, Consumer and Personal Finance Journalist

Baby boomers get ready for Halloween

As Halloween approaches and it gets colder and colder, baby boomers are bundling up, raking leaves, and getting ready to hand out candy. And they’re writing about:

• The tale of a long-held family possession.
• The best way to get inspired is to start working.
• A warning to beware of all the ads and phone calls hyping Medicare Advantage plans during Medicare open enrollment.
• A pitch for online dating for baby boomers.
• A tour of a historic battlefield.
• A spooky dream.

Carol Cassara of Heart•Mind•Soul writes about these articles in the Best of Boomer Blogs #620. Click here to get the links to the articles. And let us know your thoughts. It’s fun to hear from readers.

Copyright 2019, Rita R. Robison, Consumer and Personal Finance Journalist

Eating organic food for a week can reduce pesticide levels in the body, study shows

I’m a big proponent of organic foods. My dad, Minor H. Slingsby, died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He was a farmer. I didn’t know non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma was linked to pesticide exposure when my dad was diagnosed with the disease. None of his doctors in Central Washington state said anything about it. I learned about the connection when listening to a National Public Radio story. It said the children of farmworkers were being diagnosed with high levels of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma because they were in fields sprayed with pesticides with their parents.

I buy most of my food at my local food co-op, with as much as possible of it being organic. I have immune system problems, so organic food is helpful to me.

This recent study adds to the evidence of how organic food benefits people.

A study done at the University of California found that eating organically-grown food for one week can significantly reduce the levels of pesticide in the body. Researchers found the levels of toxins decreased by an average of 60.5 percent after six days of eating organic food.

Developers of ‘stalking’ app settle with FTC

Under a settlement, the Federal Trade Commission has barred the developers of three “stalking” apps from selling apps that monitor consumers’ mobile devices unless they take steps to ensure the apps will only be used for legitimate purposes.

The FTC’s settlement with Retina-X Studios is the agency’s first case against “stalking apps” or “stalkerware.”

Retina-X developed and sold MobileSpy, PhoneSheriff, and TeenShield. These apps shared detailed information about a person’s smartphone activities – such as call history, text messages, photos, GPS locations, and browser history – without the smartphone owner’s knowledge. They were marketed for monitoring children and employees, but if misused, they let abusers track people’s physical movements and online activities.

What you need to know about loot boxes in computer games

Do you play computer games or does someone in your family play them?

More than 164 million adults in the United States play computer games and three-quarters of all Americans have at least one gamer in their household, according to the Entertainment Software Association.

Loot boxes are the containers gamers come across in many games filled with a mix of virtual items players might want: clothes or gear to customize their avatar, or weapons or skills that could give them an advantage over other players in the game. Some of the items are valuable in the game, but many aren’t. And players won’t know what they’re getting until they open the box.

Google-YouTube $170 million settlement for violations of kids’ privacy law too weak, critics say

Google and its subsidiary YouTube agreed to pay a record $170 million Wednesday to settle charges by the Federal Trade Commission and New York Attorney General’s Office that YouTube illegally collected personal information from children without their parents’ consent.

The settlement requires Google and YouTube to pay $136 million to the FTC and $34 million to New York for allegedly violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Rule. The $136 million penalty is the largest amount the FTC has gotten in a COPPA case since the law was enacted in 1998.

In a lawsuit filed against the companies, the agencies allege that YouTube violated the COPPA Rule by collecting personal information – identifiers that track users across the Internet – from viewers of child-directed channels, without notifying parents and getting their consent. YouTube earned millions of dollars by using the identifiers – cookies – to deliver targeted ads to viewers, according to the lawsuit.

Nearly 6 million Contigo kids’ water bottles are being recalled due to choking hazard

Contigo is recalling about 5.7 million kids cleanable water bottles in the United States, 157,000 in Canada, and 28,000 in Mexico.

The water bottle’s clear silicone spout can detach, posing a choking hazard to children.

Contigo has received 149 reports of the spout detaching including 18 spouts found in children’s mouths.

How to reduce the amount of plastic you eat

That’s right, you read it correctly. Humans, like animals, are eating plastic. We’ve all read about dead animals found filled with plastic, but it’s important for humans to realize that they, too, are consuming plastic.

I recently wrote about how to reduce the amount of plastic we use in our lives. A Consumer Reports article, “How to Eat Less Plastic,” alerted me to the fact we need to go a step further and take a look at how much plastic we’re eating.

Research is just beginning on how many tiny particles of plastic people consume. One research review calculated that by eating, drinking, and breathing, the average American ingests 74,000 to 121,000 microplastic particles every year, with even more ingested if bottled water is consumed regularly, according to the article.