I wrote about the demise of Mint a couple of years ago, after Intuit killed it to force users to buy TurboTax or whatever bullshit system they want to charge for. We used it for several years off and on to get on top of our finances, with limited success, but that was mainly because we hadn’t set it up correctly. Recently we engaged the services of a financial planner to get on top of our retirement, and through the process of filling out his intake checklist and our initial meeting we realized we had several major blank spots in our spending. We left that meeting with some homework—mainly, figuring out what is going into those blank spots.
After doing some very basic searching, I was pointed at a service called Monarch through some glowing reviews. Basically, it’s a paid online version of Mint, and from all I’ve seen so far, I’d wager the key brains from Mint went out on their own and re-created that service. I signed up for a trial, started plugging my accounts in, and within about 20 mintes had a rough picture of my accounts and those I share with Jen; after she adds hers in we’ll have a much clearer picture of what’s going in and what’s coming out. I’m glad this exists—I was not looking forward to going through my statements line by line.
Renie gave us her old Apple Watch when I was up there a few weeks ago, as she upgraded to the newest and latest. She figured Finn might like one, but we decided (based on our daughter’s spotty record with expensive electronics) that we should hold off. So I decided I’d swap Renie’s Series 4 for my Series 3. What her watch adds are a bunch of biometric features the Series 3 didn’t have, like comprehensive sleep data and better heart and health monitoring. I’ve been wearing it pretty regularly since I came back, and it’s given me some insights into how much good sleep I’m getting (not as much as I need) and where my heart rate (still lower than a snake’s belly) and exercise numbers (definitely not as good as they should be) are. So I cut my nightly beer out this week to see if that helps with my sleep, and even though it’s getting colder in the mornings, I’m re-committing to walking Hazel as much as possible. Thanks Ren!
Well, that’s just great. United Healthcare, our family insurer, has ended negotiations with Johns Hopkins to renew their contract, which means that Hopkins is now considered out-of-network. According to an email from Hopkins this morning,
This is not about money or small administrative issues. United’s frequent use of pre-authorizations and care denials delays critical treatments, takes away time that Johns Hopkins doctors and nurses should be spending on patient care, and puts patients’ health at risk. We will not sign a contract that allows an insurance company to prioritize their profits over our patients’ health.
I’m much more willing to take Hopkins’ word on this than UH’s, given the stellar reputation insurance companies have these days. However, I would estimate 3/4 of our family’s current doctors are within the Hopkins system, including my cancer team. And my final checkup is scheduled for next April.
We’ve been buying renewable energy for over fifteen years through a program Maryland’s legislature put together, which allows for consumers to choose who their provider is (as long as that provider is part of the program). I just got a letter from our longtime supplier saying they’re withdrawing from the program based on Maryland Senate Bill 1, which imposes stricter regulations on retail energy suppliers to protect consumers from misleading practices in the competitive energy market. So I have to go shopping to see if there’s someone else we can buy clean energy from.
We’ve also gotten several notices from the Johns Hopkins Medicine group, which informed us that as of today they are no longer in UnitedHealthcare’s network, because they “have been unable to get United to agree to a contract that puts patients ahead of profits.” Johns Hopkins took absolutely world-class care of my family and I when I had cancer, and UnitedHealthcare’s coverage came through for us. But that was almost eight years ago, and the world has changed a lot since then. I’ve only got one more checkup scheduled with Hopkins before they cut me loose, but now I’m considering skipping that because I don’t have the money to pay for all of those tests out of pocket. Greatest healthcare in the world, etc. etc.
Tired of dealing with a pair of wired headphones for my work computer, and unwilling to use my AirPods with that machine, I bought a pair of Anker Soundcore P20i headphones from Amazon for $20 a few weeks ago, and I’ve been very happy with their performance. I’ve got a handful of Anker products here, and I have to say I haven’t been disappointed with any of them. As far as inexpensive Chinese brands go, they have had the highest consistent quality.
Richard Benjamin, who now lives in a memory care unit at an assisted living facility, would look forward to the emails and texts, and especially to the ones thanking him for being a true American and patriot when he donated his money. This eventually led him to give about $80,000, leaving him tens of thousands of dollars in debt and his children angry at the campaigns who they say tricked their dad and took advantage of his compromised state of mind.
From CNN: Elderly dementia patients are unwittingly fueling political campaigns. I can confirm this practice firsthand. The day after Election Day, Jen and I are going to work the phones and shut the spigot off for her father.
I’ve been reading a couple of stories about large American companies over the last couple of weeks and seeing some broad similarities repeating themselves.
Boeing, a successful company, merged with McDonnell-Douglas, a failing company, in 1997—and somehow the MDD leadership wound up running Boeing. They immediately changed from an engineering-led manufacturer to a company run by financiers chasing stock prices. They started outsourcing everything, quality dropped, and now their decades-old reputation has been torpedoed.
There’s a new article about Google out this week, in which the author pins down the exact day they decided to make their search worse in order to increase their ad revenue. The similarity: a guy formerly from Yahoo, who ran their search division into the ground for seven years, forced out the guy who built Google’s search into the powerhouse we remember, and kicked down the wall between search and ads. Have you enjoyed using Google search for the last five years? It’s a piece of shit.
Meanwhile, roughly half the country is primed to re-elect a grifter who uses inflated stock prices to prop up failing businesses and avoid paying taxes, because he’s “good at business” or something.
Apparently Goldman Sachs is rethinking their banking partnership with Apple; apparently they didn’t understand that consumer banking was hard, and stuff. There’s no telling how they’re going to exit the partnership, or who is going to take it over from here, but all of the executives who were originally in charge of it have bailed out, according to the WSJ. I’ve been nothing but happy with my Apple Card, and paying it is easier than checking Instagram. My savings account keyed to this card is earning 4.15% APR, which is better than any other bank account I’ve had in my life. I really hope they’re able to keep it running smoothly; as of August they had over $10B in deposits.
Following up on my post about Mint closing down, The Verge did an article about alternative financial planning services; some are apps, some are superpowers spreadsheets, and some are online services. I don’t know if I trust anyone to steward my financial information anymore, but I figure everyone has already mined that information for all the money possible anyway.
I’ve been an on-again, off-again user of Mint since it first started, and I found it really helpful for providing an overall picture of how well our spending/saving/debt picture looked as a household. They made it easy to hook into the APIs of each banking institution, bypassing all of the platform-specific stuff and presenting the information in a clear interface. They got bought by Intuit a while back—you know, the company that makes tax preparation software falsely advertised as free and actively lobbying to stop Americans being able to file taxes for free—who have now announced they’re shutting it down. They’re pushing people to some new paid service called Credit Karma, which I’m sure will offer half the services and suck really badly. The enshittification continues.
While we were waiting in the TSA screening line in Puerto Rico, I noticed a sign that mentioned fliers could use a digital ID on their phone in place of a physical card, and remembered that Apple was offering this service through the Wallet app. I’d tried to set it up months ago but got stuck in a loop, so I made a note to set it up when we returned home.
The process was pretty simple; you shoot a photo of the front and back of your ID and send it through their system for verification, and a few days later get an email that notifies you of approval. Apparently you can bring the ID up and tap it on a smart device to verify your identity. I’d imagine the number of these smart devices is small, but my guess is that this is another look into the future.
On a somewhat related subject, I used my Apple Card to pay for all of the charges for the trip and this new laptop, and through the cash back feature of that account, I’m seeing the balance in my savings account there slowly creep upwards. I’m going to experiment with adding some additional cash into that savings account, as it’s the highest yield account I have (fuck off, Bank of America) and see how things go.
I get infrequent updates from the Maryland 529 Plan about Finn’s college fund, usually in the form of an email that contains a link to a “secure” PDF I have to download to read. I’m still puzzling over this farkakte security strategy; the school district does the same thing. It’s sort of like hitching a team of oxen up to your car to drive out to the store. Anyway, there has been a bunch of controversy over the earnings rate of Prepaid Trust accounts, which is what we set up for Finn. Somehow the administration of the accounts got all fucked up and they’re in the middle of sorting that mess out, and have predictably been doing an abysmal job of communicating about it, going so far as to re-hiring the guy who oversaw the train wreck to continue overseeing it. The message I got yesterday from the state treasurer was attached to a 40-page document outlining the beginnings of the program, a timeline of issues, decisions, and events that led up to the current situation, and a not-so-intuitive explanation of what they’re doing moving forward. I’m still processing all the information to try and make an informed decision as to what we’ll do with Finn’s account (keep it in the Prepaid plan, or roll it over into a standard 529 plan), and I requested a manual calculation of our current balance with interest based on this new number.