Prayers for Tham Luang

Praying for the Thai soccer coach and his 12 little ”Wild Boars" as the rescue operation proceeds today. 🙏♥️ He's a novice monk and has been helping them survive the ordeal with meditation. #SacredSunday

Be Cautious of Misleading Headlines and Photos

THIS IS A MISLEADING HEADLINE!

Photo from quoted article at Sci-Tech Daily

We all want to stay informed, but we need to be cautious about reading only the headlines and images of articles.

This particular article gives some good information about a study that showed potential problems with some artificial sweeteners. But when you read down through the article and look at the specific sweeteners that were tested you find this quote:

"The team fed different groups of rats diets high in glucose or fructose (kinds of sugar), or aspartame or acesulfame potassium (common zero-calorie artificial sweeteners)."

Note that the packages in this picture under the headline are for various alternative sweeteners, but it is misleading because not all of them have aspartame or acesulfame potassium in them. This makes the photo and headline misleading.

For example, neither Stevia in the Raw nor Truvia have either of those artificial sweeteners in them. So they should not be included in the photo with a headline saying that artificial sweeteners are linked to diabetes and obesity.

Always check your facts!

Have a wonderful #WellnessWednesday!
~JS~ 🌞

Dishonest Son Drains Mom's Accounts - Use Technology to Help Protect Your Money

Did you see the news story about the woman whose account was drained by her credit union to pay off bogus charges made by her son who was addicted to drugs and abusing his power of attorney? It's an outrageous story and was a reminder to me to take advantage of today's technology to keep an eye on my financial accounts, and to remind all of you to do the same!

This woman was living in an assisted care facility and her son had been given what was supposed to be temporary power of attorney years ago. But in her credit union's records, it specifically says that the son had the ability to act as if he was her, as far as their records were concerned. Well unfortunately, he had started doing drugs and being dishonest, and had totally taken advantage of this power, and had started draining his mother's accounts.

You can read all about it here: Credit Union Abuse Story.


It's just a really sad story and very upsetting that someone who was given that trust would abuse his mother in that way. Unfortunately, the credit union did not catch the change in spending behavior for quite some time, which is surprising to me, because I know my bank alerts me regularly. I'll get those little fraud protection alerts if I do things different than my normal spending. You know how it goes, you get the phone call and they'll be like, "Hey, this is your credit union's fraud protection," and they'll have you verify transactions. It's annoying, but also wonderful, because you know your accounts are being protected.

But for whatever reason, in this case, the credit union didn't notice the change in behavior for a long time. When they did finally meet with her to resolve it, they ended up deciding that the charges were not considered fraudulent at all, since her son had been legally given the power to act for her. For all intents and purposes, it was as if she had been making those charges herself.

She was able to revoke the power of attorney at that point, but she was still legally obligated for all the transactions that had happened in the past. This was taken to court by lawyers representing the woman, and the most recent ruling on the case is that really there's not legal thing that the credit union did wrong. So there's nothing she can do to get back these tens of thousands of dollars. Especially because her son is now deceased, complicating things further.

Anyway, it's just a sad reminder to all of us to make sure that we realize that we can't depend on the credit untion or the bank, or anybody else to be checking our accounts and making sure they're being used wisely. While most banks will, in good faith, deal with fraudulent charges, and we have Visa guarantees and things like that, in this case, the charges are not actually considered fraudulent because he had power of attorney.

This case reminded me of the fact that we have the power of today's technology to help us keep an eye on these types of things, and we should be using it to our advantage!

You can set things up to get alerts and reminders when things are different on your account. I would strongly encourage you to take a few minutes to see what technologies are available at your financial institutions. You can get text messages or emails when, for instance, your spending patterns change dramatically, so that you will be notified. This will give you the heads up to go in and check your accounts and make sure everything is okay, and catch things early so that you don't end up in a bad situation like what happened to this woman.

Also, just a reminder: If you have an elderly parent or someone else that you are responsible for, be sure to set these up for them as well. Just double check on things with them and make sure these alerts are in place and that you will be notified to help them as needed. We need to take better care of the elderly who spent their lives doing things for all of us so that we can have the lives we have today.

Have a safe and tech savvy week!
~JS~ 🌞

Jumbled Sunshine Review: The NEW "Inbox by Gmail"

Have you heard about the new "Inbox by Google" email app? It's a whole new way to interact with your email account, and it may revolutionize the way we use email in our everyday lives. If you're afraid of change, no worries, this app works with Gmail, but it doesn't replace it. You can go back and forth between the two or totally ignore it and stick with what you're doing. But if you're brave and like new innovation, I recommend that you check it out! www.google.com/inbox

As I've been looking for answers to various details about inbox, I ran across some articles criticizing the new interface as being too complicated. It's true that it takes a bit of time to get your mind wrapped around it because it's so un-email-like. But that's exactly what makes it's approach so fascinating and why I decided to try it out. Never fear - I have seen positive reviews, too.

So - I thought it would be fun to chime into the conversation with a positive review of my own. Here goes:

I love it!!!! 
(Wait, I think I need a few more exclamation points and loves...)
I Love, Love, Love It!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yep. That's my overall impression after using it for less than 24 hours. There are a few glitches in this first version, and some features that are missing (that are available in Gmail) that I'd like to see in the future. But Google is pretty good at improving and innovating when a program starts to take off with the public, so I guess we'll see how it evolves as time goes on.

In the meantime, here are a few resources to help you understand how Inbox works, and "My Take" on what's so awesome about the new system. (I'm not going into too many details because I want to get back to playing with my new Inbox!)

Pinterest Stress? Really?

So, I came across this article today and was flabbergasted that this is even an issue. Maybe because I've reached a certain age and experience level and I forget that others aren't there too. Not that I'm any smarter or better than anyone else, I am seriously challenged, as you all know by now! But it really saddened me that people are basing their self-esteem on external things like what they perceive others can do that they can't? Honestly, if you think about it, that's just a form of coveting. . . but I jump ahead of myself. How 'bout I share the article? Then you can go read it and see what you think.

Today Show Report:
'Pinterest stress' afflicts nearly half of moms, survey says

http://www.today.com/moms/pinterest-stress-afflicts-nearly-half-moms-survey-says-1C9850275

Here's my grade of this whole line of reasoning: 

I honestly could go on and on about this and re-post the entire thing, and write in my comments after all the little places where these women are saying things that hurt them inside. I feel so sad for them. That said, I do admire the principle that when something affects you negatively, you should remove it from your life. Very true.

But even better, how about remove the cause of the negativity? I don't think it's the website itself, it's the person's perception of what the website is about. It doesn't matter if it's in the form of a website or a magazine, or a church congregation or gym class. Wherever you are, if you spend your time comparing yourself to others and expecting yourself to live up to "being like everyone else", you will most certainly fail. Your job is to be the best YOU that you can be. At least that's how I see it.

I will say that I *love* the idea of "pinterest fail" - to show how *real* projects turn out. Sometimes they are really great, but most of the time, crafts and dinners and other things like that turn out mediocre or good at best. Not picture perfect. And guess what. . . that's okay! That's real life! That's why I posted pictures of my messy home at the end of that one weekend. . . it's just the way it is, my jumbled friends, it's real life, and guess what - it's okay! Be happy anyway!

But why am I going on about this anyway? I already wrote a comment responding to the article on the Today Show website. I hope that it's helpful to someone. I am re-posting it here for your convenience. I'd love to hear what each of you thinks about this topic!

Talk to you soon!
~ JS ~

Read the comment that I left on the Today Show article by clicking "read more" below: