This Week’s Links:
Reading: https://cnn.it/3gp3z1I
Watching: https://bit.ly/3gnn7U8
Tech: https://bit.ly/2Qk5iuE
Legal: https://cnn.it/2PhnILX
Retirement: https://yhoo.it/3twF4TH
Full Transcript Below!
Hey, everybody, welcome back to Five Fact Friday. I’m Victor Medina. This is hosted on the Medina Retirement Planning Channel, where we help you know it so you don’t blow it. And we’ve got a series of five great links for you. But before I jump into that, I wanna let you know about something that we are making free and available to you that I’ve been talking about on my radio show. Yes, that radio show that broadcasts on Saturday mornings at 10 o’clock, on 920 AM, the ESPN channel here in Trenton. So what we did is we created a retirement checklist that is available to you absolutely for free, all you have to do is go to 920checklist.com, enter your information, and we will give you a checklist for you to go through to see if you’re ready for retirement. It’s got about 31 different points on it that are available for you to review, compare to your situation and figure out if you’re ready for retirement. So if you’re interested in that, absolutely is a free resource and we won’t hound you if you download it, we promise, just want to offer something of value. So let’s get into the links for this week.
And the first link is what I’m reading, and it’s actually an article about the first unmanned copter flight thing on another planet. It turns out that NASA flew a helicopter on Mars for a brief period of time, and if you don’t know anything about it, the atmosphere on Mars is less dense than it is here on Earth, meaning that it takes a lot more thrust to get the thing up in the air. It’s an incredible accomplishment. It’s the first time we’ve ever flown something on another planet. Star Trek, watch out.
The next link is what I’m watching, and it’s actually a link to a piece that John Oliver did on his show “This Week Tonight,” which talked about long-term care and specifically nursing homes. Now vulgar language warning, because he does use some saucy language in the clip and I think that’s probably a not particularly balanced view on some of the horrible things that happen, because we have friends in the long-term care community, and most of the facilities that we do business with are really well-run and do the best thing for the client. But there are some fair points that are raised in this piece. It’s a little bit longer than the links that we usually provide in the watching segment, but it’s worth your while if you want to check out sort of the state of long-term care here in the country
The next link is what’s new in tech, and it’s the link that I was referring to in the opening of this video. There’s a series of new Apple products that was launched this week, and one of them is called AirTags, and AirTags are these small button-like devices that include chips inside of them that can help you locate whatever the thing is attached to using their new U1 broadband or wide band chip, meaning that it broadcasts a signal using their Find My software system. So if you ever have an Apple phone and use the Find My, and it could be a device or a person, it’s the same private network to go and locate this thing. So it doesn’t trade any information, and the best thing that I like about these new AirTags is that they use a reusable or an exchangeable battery, much like the battery that we use in our watches. So it means unlike the Tile devices that were used since 2012, the beginning ones of those, once the battery was out, you had to throw the thing away. This one will actually be useful for a number of years, you just have to change the battery, and the thing actually makes an audible beep if you’re looking for it. So it uses a combination of both tracking and the wide band chip, so that when another iPhone is near, not even the one that you’ve registered to it, it registers back to the system to say to the person that’s lost the thing that this thing’s over here. Actually very precise off of it. So as you can tell, I’m excited. They go on sale actually this Friday or the day that this video is launched, and they will be released in the next week after that. I think it’s about $29 each or you can get a set of four for $99. It actually sounds expensive, but it was in line with how the Tile products were priced at when they were released. So I’m excited about the AirTags. I think you should get some.
The next thing is what’s new in legal, and it’s actually a link that studies the connection between sleep and dimentia. It turns out that if you’re not getting enough sleep there’s a 30% chance of increased dementia or Alzheimer’s situation. So another reason why we should be getting our shut eye, sleep, eight hours, and really taking as much as time as we can to rest over the evening. It’s a great link to follow, but it’s really a great habit to have to sleep and get your sleep in on a regular basis. I actually use a device called an Oura Ring, O U R A, and it tracks my sleep, and it tells me in the morning how well I slept because sometimes I don’t remember that I didn’t sleep as well or it tells me that I slept better than I thought. It’s actually a fun device to use but I encourage you to track your sleep and get better at it.
The last link for this week is what’s new in retirement, and it turns out that people’s personal finances have recovered quite a bit post COVID. And so it’s not as grim of a picture as people thought going into it. Now look, that’s not to say that there aren’t people that weren’t negatively affected by COVID and the pandemic and the slow down. There are tons, and we’re still in the process of recovery, but a lot of people’s personal finances, specifically if they were in investments or they had a part of an investment plan that they’ve largely recovered. And we’ve actually seen that for most of our clients as well. While there was a major dip last year in March. Well, most of those accounts have all recovered because that’s essentially what has happened. So smart investing, staying diversified, and staying the course was an important part to that recovery, and it’s all linked to the creation of a plan which is what we do in our office for people that are interested in approaching retirement in a smart manner. We create a make it last checkup plan that covers people’s income investments estate planning, and tax planning, all crucial elements to making a successful retirement.
So let’s go over the links for this week. The first link in what I’m reading, it was the first unmanned copter flight on Mars. The second thing is what I’m watching, was John Oliver’s piece on long-term care. What’s new in tech are AirTags, and what’s new in legal is the connection between the lack of sleep and dementia. And what’s new in retirement is the fact that people’s personal finances didn’t quite take the hit that we thought post COVID, and most of them have recovered. Those are the links for this week. Don’t forget to go to 920checklist.com and download your retirement checklist. Complete the checklist challenge, there’s 31 questions, see how close you are to being ready for retirement, absolutely a free resource available for you. Hope you enjoyed all the links, and we’ll catch you in a couple of weeks. Bye bye.