What I’m Reading: Winter is Here Edition

Here’s the honest truth- I’ve lived in Seattle for 10 years now. Roughly every other year we get a major winter storm. It makes no sense to me why we are so ill-prepared every time it happens.

Fun fact: Washoe County, NV (where Reno is) has more snow plows than the entire state of WA. And most of WA’s plows are in the central and eastern parts of the state, not the western edge.

For the first time, since I’ve lived here, though, my house actually lost power for a relevant amount of time (by this I mean over 12 hours). We were without power for 34.5 hours- from noon on Thursday until 10:30pm Friday night. We used the fireplace and then used our propane powered deep fryer to make chicken (3 uses and counting since we bought it for Thanksgiving). The house got down to about 45 degrees, but even that’s not bad with blankets, doggies, and good company.

 

But even with the power outage, I’ve had some time to read a few blogs this week, so here are a few of my favorite posts.

 

We no longer actively invest in Prosper, though we do still have money there. I love to see how other people are doing with their adventures in Peer to Peer lending, so was thrilled to see that Beating Broke is still going strong in their Lending Club Returns Update

I’m afraid I’m often a downer for Derek over at Creating a Passive Income, as I seem to always point out the downside of his ideas. This week he wrote about Creating a Passive Income with Writing– something I’m trying to do, so I was excited to see that. AND My brother is starting out on a passive income adventure that I’ll be writing about this week, keeping Derek in mind while I do so.

I’ve made no secret here that I work in health insurance. I work for a company that is a combination Managed Care Organization (MCO) and Health Maintenance Organization (HMO). I believe in the work we do and the reasons behind why we do it the way we do. Still, insurance is tricky. HMO plans cost a little less for a reason. And sometimes, they have some rules that are hard to understand. Over at Buck Inspire, they ran into this problem with their new HMO plan/nightmare. My best advice- it is your job to know how your insurance works, not the doctor’s office. And if you don’t know, call your insurance company. You’ll see that once Buck and his wife were working with an insurance company representative- someone whose entire job is to help people like them transition successfully onto the plan, things started going quite smoothly.

I want to be an actual investor. I do. It just doesn’t seem like we have the money to do so right now. (I know, that’s an excuse, and one I’m working on getting past.) I love reading what Dr. Stock has to say over at Invest in the Markets, because he shares good information that is relevant to new investors (or wanna be investors), like this post on how to diversify a small portfolio.

Money Beagle’s dishwasher started to leak, so now they’re in the process of buying a new one. I’m jealous. My tub is not draining properly, but instead of buying a new tub, I have to hire a plumber. (Not the same thing at all, but I covet new appliances and major household upgrades, so I am still jealous.)

The Happy Homeowner is one busy gal- so busy that she’s afraid of burning herself out in the next couple of months, so she’s put together a list of goals to maintain her balancing act.

 

That’s it for today. See you again tomorrow when I reveal how much money we spent to survive Seattle’s “snowpocalypse”