Archive for February, 2010

You stayed home on Valentine’s Day because of your body shape?

February 16th, 2010

Spend some money and get ready for 2011

You hate jogging, right? Here are some alternatives to get you into shape. All of them are designed to get quick results. According to Nick Hudson, fitness manager for Virgin Active, exercise should also be accessible and enjoyable. “Exercise in general will be less about thinking and more about enjoyment. Effective exercise is no longer about complicated, technical workouts on individual muscles.”

Toning shoes

A host of heirs to the MBT (or Masai Barefoot Technology) throne have pushed toning shoes into the mainstream. Among them are FitFlops, which claim to tighten your bum and work muscles while you walk. The “balance pods” under the heel and forefoot of Reebok’s Easytone shoe promise to give you 28 percent more of a workout.

Rollerski

This is skiing and involves two bits of wood, four wheels and two sticks: no snow required. Your feet clip into the skis at the toes, leaving your heels free to lift, as with cross-country skiing. It uses 90 percent of the body’s muscles, providing a killer all-over workout.

Kranking

Kranking is spinning, but with your arms, a cardo workout from the waist up.

You’ll need a Krankcycle to get started, an “arm bike” if you can imagine such a thing, with hand-pedals instead of handlebars.

Zumba

Zumba combines all the latest hot dance moves. It’s salsa on speed, with a dash of mambo, samba and meringue thrown in for good measure. Classes burn around 700 calories an hour.

ViPR

Grab a giant rubber tube and get going. You can choose your weight, from 4kg to 20kg, and choose what you do with it, from throwing it to stepping on it. ViPR, by the way, stands for Vitality, Performance and Reconditioning.

Hooping

A playground classic making a comeback. First lady Michelle Obama “hooped” with schoolchildren on the White House lawn last year, helping to reignite the craze. Hooping works more than 30 core muscles of the body – and you don’t even need to shell out for an exercise class.

Exergaming

Nintendo rules the roost with its Wii Fit games, but there’s also the EA Sports Active. Your Shape Wii is a bit like having your own personal trainer because it features a camera that gives you instant feedback on your body shape.

Shake Weight

The Shake Weight is a vibrating dumbbell that relies on the unlikely-sounding technology of “dynamic inertia” to tone your arms in just six minutes a day.

Aerial fitness

This involves swinging through the sky on trapeze-style bars to tone up. It’s certainly more fun than your average exercise class. A workout called Jukari: Fit to Fly comes with a Cirque du Soleil seal of approval.

Indo Board

If wobble boards just don’t do it for you, then try investing in an Indo Board. Imagine surfing indoors on a bit of wood balanced on a separate tube and you’ll get the gist.

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My personal finances and designer coffee

February 15th, 2010

Can a Payday Article pay for 2 coffees and pastries?

I sinned this morning. Somewhere in the Bible there is a commandment, a lesser one, perhaps, but nevertheless a commandment, that says, “Thou shalt not forget”. I forgot, so I paid. This morning my wife had a chore in the adjoining town, saw me sitting blankly in front of the computer and asked if I’d like to come along. With a gasp of relief at having an alternative, I grabbed my car keys and off we went. The business was over in a few minutes and as we walked back to the car she said, “how about morning coffee in the mall?” That was the moment of my sin. Now, too late, I remember the last time we had morning coffee in the mall. But things were different then.

The mall

The mall is huge. Two floors of intense shopping, and to my surprise as a Recession Writer, thronged with people. And most of the people were carrying shopping bags, a sure sign that they are buying or exchanging something they bought that doesn’t fit. The other alternative, I think, is that they are all out there operating on Cash Advance Loans which gives them enough money to make a shopping trip.

The coffee shop

The coffee shop is out of a designer handbook. It features the latest in coffee shop architecture and serves designer coffee to designer housewives wheeling little designer babies. The place is busy and the noise drowns out the coffee music.

We order

My wife orders a small cappuccino and a Danish. I order a medium latte with a shot of caramel syrup and a Danish. The Danish arrive on plates with miniature mounds of cinnamon dust on the side. Delicious! Then we got to the finances.

An article writer

I write articles. An article takes me between 40 and 60 minutes to write, read and send. The average article brings in about $25. The coffee bill:

• 1 small cappuccino                                                         4.75
• 1 medium latte with a shot of caramel syrup       5.50
• 2 Danish pastries with cinnamon in the side      10.00
• Tip                                                                                           2.50
• Total                                                                                     22.75

I’m satisfied

I never do exercises like this in case I come out losing. This particular one came out just fine – I’m quite content to devote an article to a coffee morning in pleasant surroundings which make me feel temporarily flush. Dinner, of course would have been a 3 or 4 article affair depending on the menu. Has my financial life been reduced to an “article scale” in personal economics? I don’t think so, but the article writing side of my life definitely affects the daily pattern.

Last time in the mall

I thought back to our last coffee morning in the same coffee shop in the mall. I was newly unemployed and hurting. The bill for the coffee was probably the same but at that time there were no Payday Articles to the rescue. I cried.

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Start panicking – Individual health insurance rates soar in 4 states

February 15th, 2010

Individual health insurance is soaring skywards

Consumers in at least four states who buy their own health insurance are getting hit with premium increases of 15 percent or more, and the other states could see the same thing.

Premiums

Premiums are far more volatile for individual policies than for those bought by employers and other large groups, which have bargaining clout and a sizable pool of people among which to spread risk. As more people have lost jobs, many who are healthy have decided to go without health insurance or get a bare-bone, high-deductible policy, reducing the amount of premiums insurers receive.

Increases

Steep rate hikes in this sector of the insurance market, affecting about 13 million Americans, have popped up sporadically for years. Experts see them becoming increasingly common. “We are going to see rate increases of 20, 25 and 30 percent for individual health policies in the near term,” predicted the chairwoman of the health insurance and managed care committee for the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. In addition, most states don’t have the legal authority to block or reduce health insurance rate increases.

The health care system overhaul

Politicians and even some health insurers are urging a revival of the stalled effort in Congress to overhaul the health care system, arguing everyone needs to be covered by health insurance in order to prevent such premium spikes. In Maine, where Anthem dominates the market, its proposal has several consumer groups planning big rallies at two public hearings on the rates, on Feb. 22 and 24. Under Anthem’s proposal, a family of four could be charged up to $1,876 per month if the proposed rates are allowed to take effect in July.

Wellpoint

WellPoint, based in Indianapolis, has said it needs to raise rates drastically because the weak economy has resulted in fewer people remaining in the individual market in California, and many who do have serious health problems. It says costs of caring for them have been rising due to higher provider prices and more use of diagnostic tests.

Oregon

In Oregon, state insurance officials have concluded that rising costs justify the higher individual premiums, particularly because most insurers cut rates too much in 2006 and then got hit with significant losses. So double-digit increases, some 25 percent or higher, have been approved, or reduced a bit from 2007 to 2010. Insurance Division spokeswoman Cheryl Martinis said the agency has started posting details of all proposed increases on its Webspace site and e-mailing customers when a proposal comes in so they can comment. “People are extraordinarily upset in Oregon, as they are nationwide, about health care costs,” she said.

Never-ending

The spiraling costs of health insurance are linked directly to the spiraling costs of health care. New technologies are astronomically expensive and the health care providers and hospitals want their patients to get the latest treatments and sweep the subject of costs aside. But in the end someone has to pay.

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