02/07/2015
Freeze! It's for your own good.
Last Wednesday it became known that all personal information of roughly 12% of the entire population of the USA had been stolen by some Chinese hackers, because one big, powerful, rich insurance company carelessly neglected to encrypt and protect their database.
The insurance company said they will notify all affected customers, and offer them free credit repair and identity protection services - but it will take weeks, or months, before this happens; and then the "protection" will likely only be offered for one year.
If you are one of the victims, or even if you got lucky this time, you are not completely helpless, though. There is one powerful tool available to you to protect your credit: place a security freeze on your consumer credit report. You have to do that with all three credit reporting agencies - Equifax, Experian, and Transunion. It is free in many States, and costs $5 to $10 in some other States.
After that, you have the peace of mind that nobody can abuse your personal information to obtain credit without your knowledge. The freeze will slow you down a little bit, in case you want to get new credit in the future, because you would have to "thaw" your account temporarily, or for a specific lender, but for me that is well worth it!
13:13 Posted in 07, Set-backs, Frustrations and Losses | Permalink | Comments (0)
01/25/2015
Private Sauna
One big part of my life in Munich was the weekly visit to a nearby public swimming pool where I would spend at least an hour in the sauna for two rounds of sweating, swimming a few laps in between.
26% of Germans fourteen and older visit one of the 2,300 public saunas, or 5,400 hotel saunas, or 3,800 fitness center saunas, or 1.7 million saunas in private homes, once a week or more.
While there are some public saunas in Fort Wayne, those really aren't enough to cover my wellness needs. The temperature is too low; they force you to wear textiles (or at least wrap yourself in a towel); space is very limited, and the wood is dirty from years of abuse in most cases.
People walk into those places fully clothed, some with gym shoes on; they sit on the benches wearing dripping wet bathing suits, without putting a towel underneath; they apply conditioner to their damp hair, rub lotion all over their body, or even change into their street clothes in the sauna.
After years of talking about putting a sauna in our house, we finally got around to doing that.
Life is good!
16:21 Posted in 05, Getting settled | Permalink | Comments (0)