Reining In Your Smartphone-Induced Anxiety

Reining In Your Smartphone-Induced Anxiety

How much time do you spend staring at your phone each day? More and more studies reveal the detrimental effects of smartphone usage on the human brain. In a recent article published by The New York Times, author Catherine Price takes a look at how extended use of a smartphone impacts the brain on a chemical level. 

Studies reveal that smartphone usage results in an increase in cortisol, the body’s primary fight-or-flight hormone. With the average American spending four hours on their smartphone each day, these cortisol spikes are becoming more and more frequent. Researchers have found that even just having your phone nearby, or imagining that you hear a notification, can lead to a stress response. Smartphone users feel “a constant sense of obligation, generating unintended personal stress.” 

The detrimental effects of cortisol increases stemming from smartphone usage include: 

  • -Increased anxiety, presenting physiologically as elevated blood pressure, heart rate, and blood sugar (reactions that are helpful in the event of a physical threat, but not in every-day life)
  • -Increased risk of major health problems, including depression, obesity, dementia, and more
  • -Exacerbation of existing chronic diseases
  • -A negative impact on the prefrontal cortex‚Äîthe decision-making center of the brain‚Äîleading to decreased self-control
  • -Insufficient sleep, and the health conditions to which it contributes¬†

So what can you do to counter and alleviate the damage of smartphone usage? The key is to break the cycle, to retrain our brains. Price offers the following tips: 

  1. Disable all unnecessary notifications
  2. Pay attention to which apps contribute to your anxiety, and consider hiding or deleting them
  3. Try to notice if particular apps impact you detrimentally on a physical level, and consider hiding or deleting them
  4. Take regular breaks from your smartphone—consider implementing a periodic “digital detox”
  5. Identify when you are feeling a craving for your phone, and learn not to give in to it immediately 

For more details, read the article in full at The New York Times. 

Tips for Choosing the Appropriate Liability Insurance for Your Business

Tips for Choosing the Appropriate Liability Insurance for Your Business

When it comes to liability insurance, the saying “you can never be too prepared” is certainly apt. While business owners cannot predict what happens day to day or year to year, they can look into purchasing business liability insurance in order to give themselves peace of mind. The first step is to understand why it‚Äôs so important.¬†

The Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association reports that more than one in two home-based business owners lack sufficient insurance coverage. Furthermore, the Independent Insurance Agents of America (IIAA) found that 4 of 10 respondents do not have enough coverage because they believe their homeowners policy covers commercial liability. As you can see, education on this matter is essential. Here are descriptions of several different types of liability insurance from the U.S. Small Business Administration. 

General Liability

One of the most common types of liability insurance for businesses is general liability. If the business is a grocery store or restaurant, general liability usually covers customers looking to have their doctor and hospital bills, damaged property or lost wages paid for because they claim they were somehow affected in the course of business operations. General liability also can protect businesses against claims if a third party believes their reputation has been tarnished by written or spoken materials from the company.  

Product Liability Insurance

Whether a business makes a product, is a wholesaler or a distributor of a product, or sells the product directly to customers, product liability insurance protects a business against monetary losses if said product is defective and harms the user. Examples of a defective products include a swing with a cracked chain or an over-the-counter medication with a harmful ingredient. The key is that the defective product is determined to have caused the harm. 

Professional Liability Insurance

This type of insurance, also known as errors and omissions, protects business owners who provide professional advice or services if they make a mistake or unintended omission in the course of delivery of said services. Examples of this can include a radiologist or one of their subordinates failing to deliver and communicate results of initial and final reports, especially if a medical condition diagnosis has been changed to indicate a more serious problem, and that failure to fully communicate all information leads to preventable medical problems for the patient. 

Other examples can include engineers miscalculating combinations of traffic loads on a bridge. If engineers miscalculate the maximum load levels and use incorrect materials and anchors, it could lead to construction delays and/or additional costs to use different materials if a stronger bridge is necessary. 

Commercial Property Insurance

When it comes to protecting one's company against damages to their business' assets, this type of insurance can reduce the potential financial impact. Policies can and do cover the business owners' structure from occurences such as fires, hail and wind events, along with property damage due to criminal activity. This type of insurance may cover business assets as well, such as computers, furniture and inventory. 

Home-Based Business Insurance

For business owners who run operations from their home, this type of policy can become part of a homeowner's existing policy. This type of coverage can protect home-based business owners by covering limited amounts of equipment, such as computers, phones and cameras. It also may provide liability coverage for the homeowner if, for example, a client visits and is injured by slipping on steps or tripping over a box. 

No matter what insurance policy a business needs, the best way to protect against loss is to reduce risk in the first place. Along with training employees to follow workplace safety procedures, reducing hazards for customers and workers, and reducing the likelihood of accidents, finding the right mix of liability insurance lets business owners focus on growing their business.

Sources

http://www.rmiia.org/business/home_business_insurance.asp

https://www.sba.gov/business-guide/launch-your-business/get-business-insurance

New Proposals for Government Programs

New Proposals for Government Programs

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act delivered a wealth of benefits for taxpayers at every income level, but none more so than for the very rich. The net result of huge tax breaks for both high-income and corporate taxpayers is that the government now faces reduced tax revenues coming in to help pay for government programs. It comes as no surprise, then, that prior to the November 2018 midterm elections, Republican leaders in Congress were calling for cuts to government “entitlement” programs, such as Medicare and Social Security. 

While the word “entitlement” has adopted a negative connotation, it is an accurate description of these programs. In other words, workers pay into the Medicare and Social Security systems through an automatic payroll (FICA) tax throughout their careers. Therefore, when they retire, they are entitled to benefits paid out by those programs. 

Given that cutting benefits or raising the federal retirement age are not popular solutions – particularly among the large (voting) baby boomers population that is in or on the cusp of retirement, other proposals have been suggested to help protect benefits and even provide new ones for the nation’s taxpayers. 

Social Security Lump Sum Benefit

Researchers at the Wharton Business School have come up with a proposal that they say will help the government better fund the Social Security program at its current level of benefits without changing the minimum or full retirement age. The proposal features two key components: 1) incentives to encourage workers to delay retirement and, 2) a method for paying out the increased benefit in a different manner. 

Presently, a retiree who waits to begin drawing benefits at some point beyond age 62 will increase his monthly benefit when he does begin taking them. However, the Wharton proposal suggests that instead of increasing the monthly payout later, the value of that increase would be calculated to determine how much he would receive over his lifetime, and then be paid out as a lump sum when he first begins drawing benefits. He would also receive the same monthly benefit he would have received had he started drawing benefits at age 62. 

For example, let’s say a beneficiary is eligible for $1,500 a month at age 62. Instead of retiring, he delays starting benefits until age 67. At that point, he begins taking his $1,500 a month, but he also gets a one-time, lump-sum benefit of $178,000. The $178,000 is a calculation of his lifetime accrued value of the increased benefit earned by waiting until age 67, only he receives that value in one lump sum in his first benefit check. 

According to the Wharton team, while retirees see an obvious advantage to receiving a lump-sum benefit, what’s interesting is that the new proposal would help prevent the Social Security program from experiencing any additional solvency issues. 

Medicare for All

Both the media and some politicians have referred to a program to provide universal health care to all Americans as “Medicare For All.” While this concept is not popular among conservatives, it’s worth pointing out that we already have a form of this “socialist” styled program – it is the military health care program. Both active duty members of the military and veterans receive medical services from providers and facilities that are owned, trained and paid for by the U.S. government. 

It’s also worth noting that, conversely, the current Medicare system is not a form of socialized medicine. Its services are provided by private physician practices, hospitals and large health care systems, while drugs and medical equipment are developed by private entities. It’s also worth noting that Medicare is not only considered a well-run program with low overhead, it is very popular among beneficiaries. 

For this reason, universal health care based on the Medicare model is not such a far-fetched idea. The primary issue is that it would require all working residents to contribute to funding the program via higher FICA payroll taxes. While workers might not appreciate having more money coming out of their paychecks, they would pay lower out-of-pocket medical expenses for health insurance premiums, co-pays, deductibles and coinsurance. 

Currently, the United States is the only developed country that does not employ a universal health care system. In many countries, health care is offered through a combination of private sector insurers and providers that are paid by the government, much like our current Medicare program.