Audible transforms commutes, walks, more

A desire to learn more about nutrition 4 years ago took me to Topeka’s good library not far from work.  While there, I discovered their significant collection of books on CD and which transformed my daily commute from Lawrence to Topeka. After a couple of years, I began to have a more difficulty time finding books of interest and desired to listen to books on my two walks a day with our dogs. The answer: Audible.

David vacuuming and listening to Audible
David vacuuming and listening to Audible

While there are a number of way to get free book recordings, esp. of classic literature, Audible deliveries a great variety of classics and current best-sellers via purchase/subscription, conveniently and simply. Many of these recordings are excellent performances. For example I thoroughly enjoyed listening to an excellent rendition of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, a book I likely would not have been able to get through by reading.

The Basics

  • The most common way to use Audible is as a subscription service. The basic subscription if $15 per month. With it you get one credit per month, which is in essence, one  book per month. But this also allows you to buy any other book for a minimum of 30% off and to have access to other sales and specials (see more below)
  • Audible’s app is available for your smart phone, tablet, and computers. You can switch between devices and it keeps track of where you are.
  • As Audible allows you to have up to three phones or tablets connected to an account (as well a few PCs), you can share an account with other family members. I share my account with my wife and mom; I also pay for an account that my three daughters share.

Getting the most of your money

  • You can save 20% by paying annually rather than monthly ($150/year rather than $180 if you pay $15/month).
  • Sign up for their “daily special” email where once a day they deeply discount a particular book for 24 hours, typically at a price of $3 or $4.
  • I take time to read the reviews to see what others think of the book, both its content and the performance of it, to help me insure I am getting books I will enjoy.  Many of the classics are inexpensive and there are often multiple options.
  • If you buy a book that you end up not enjoying, return it. Audible allows you to return books you are not satisfied with for any reason for up to a year. .
  • Keep a wish list. Audible will let you know if any of these are on sale.

Getting the most of your time.

  • I listen on my commutes and my walks with the dogs.
  • I also listen when I mow the yard and vacuum the house. How? I use ear buds and the ear protection I wear when I mow the yard.
  • We equipped both of our cars with a mount to hold our phone (approx. $20) and an FM tuner/phone charger to allow you to listen to the book through the cars speakers (another $20).
  • We also spend $30 on a small Bluetooth speaker that allows her to conveniently listen to books which in the kitchen.

Hints:

  • Listen to a variety of genres. See some examples of our listening below
  • Don’t let listening dominate your thought life. We all need some in our lives where we are “processing”. If you fill every moment of every day with work, talking, TV, etc., etc., this important processing does not happen.

Our listening, starting with David:

  • Sci-Fi: Dune, Foundation, Ender’s Game and others by Asimov , Heinlein, Clarke, and more.
  • Classics: Hobbit, Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, Mark Twain’s Prince and the Pauper and Huckleberry Finn (read by Elisha Wood), Sherlock Holmes. I am reading Don Quixote now (40 hours)
  • Health: several titles.
  • Christian: CS Lewis’ Space Trilogy, and more; Lawhead.
  • History/Biographies: John Adams, Bonhoeffer
  • Self-help: Now Habit and more.

Cathy loves Jane Austin and has listening to some of her book club choices when time was short.

Obamacare ACA information

Researching ObamaCare (the Affordable Care Act)

Please send me helpful articles on the subject.  No politically-motivated articles, flaming  articles, etc. I want to understand how it will work so I can advise others who ask and determine what I can do to encourage its reform. I think we need healthcare reform. But it is apparent that the ACA has major problems. However, ut we need to work toward solutions, not excuses or political stonewalling.

Here are a couple articles that I have come across the help me understand ACA:

  1. http://www.kitces.com/blog/how-the-premium-assistance-tax-credit-for-health-insurance-impacts-the-marginal-tax-rate/

The article discusses the tax implications of ObamaCare.  Hopefully most of you understand marginal tax rates. As you make more money, you pay a higher % of tax on the additional income you make.  The first $17,400 of taxable income is taxed at 10%, the next $53,000 is taxed at 15%, and so forth.  Your marginal tax rate is the rate you pay for the last dollars of additional income you make. The higher your marginal tax rate, the more likely you are to look for tax breaks.

Under ACA, insurance coverage is subsidized for many Americans on a sliding scale via the premium assistance tax credit. As you make more money, the tax credit goes down.   The effect is to increase the marginal tax rate. See the article for more clarify and examples.

  1. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/11/11/want-to-know-how-the-obamacare-site-should-work-three-programmers-made-a-functioning-version-in-days-at-no-cost-to-taxpayers/

    You have heard a lot about the problems with the health.gov web site. In this article and the link below, there is information on how 3 young people built a functioning web site to allow individuals to find out their options under the ACA,  how much it would cost, etc.  Here is a link to the site they built:
    http://www.thehealthsherpa.com/. The web site is nice, the premiums are not (but that is the cost of the American system).

Building websites

Here are tips on building your own web sites from my experience (there are many options; these work for me).

  • Define your purpose. It will shape many of the decisions that follow.
    • A personal blog. There are lots of free options (wordpress.com; blogger.com and more)
    • A web site designed around a topic of interest. For example, I am preparing to launching one on what I have learned on health.  So I am going to get a domain name and have a hosted site.
    • A business web site. Here you will likely want to go elsewhere for more help.

Note: The rest of what is belong explains my experience in the second choice above.

  • Get started
    • Decide on a domain name (e.g. dbarfield.org).
      • Give it some thought.  Unless it is really unique (like my personal domain, dbarfield.org) you may have to get creative in the name as there are a lot of domains already taken. In some cases, people register names to sell.
      • Is it available?  I have my domains registered at godaddy.com and they allow you to determine if your domain is available and if not, they offer alternatives that are.
      • For my health web site, I am going to register both a .org (as I am starting off with the idea of just sharing information, a non-profit reason) as well as the same name .com. There are two reasons: 1) who knows, some day I might want to use it for commercial reasons, and 2) many people might try the .com name when looking for my site; I want to keep someone else from taking it.
    • Register your domain name and find a host for the site.
      • These are separate tasks but I am listing them under one step as I do them both at the same place: godaddy.com.
      • Registering your domain. It usually costs about $15/year. Or if you do a .org and .com, it will cost you more like $30/year.
      • Hosting your domain .  With godaddy, I can host mulitple domains for about $50/year. Note you need one domain to be your hosting domain. Addiitonal domains are created as addin domains for purposes of hosting the files, but they will be viewed by the world as completely separate.
        • Web site Administration: I use cpanel. Godaddy has a simpler alternative. ….
    • Choose and install your web development environment. For hosted domains, I use WordPress.org, which godaddy allows you to install on its servers.
      • Installing.
      • Creating the user name and password for your WordPress site work (this is separate from the hosting above; once you set things up,  most of your work will be in worepress)
    • Start building your site (to come)