This is basically my recommendations page for things I use often in my day to day life. Feel free to ask me more detailed questions about anything below. I plan on updating the page with new things/changes over time.
Financials
- Mint – Mint is how I keep basic track of all my accounts and finances. They also offer a credit score check every quarter. This is the actual score, not the free credit pulls you get from the gov’t every year. Where Mint tends to fail is in the Investment area. It seems to track my stocks incorrectly.
- Wealthfront – Sign up here to get $15000 managed for free. Wealthfront is great because they offer low cost index funds and advanced tax loss harvesting with a deposit of only $500. At higher tiers they offer tax optimization portfolios.
Lifestyle
- Uber – Sign up here for $15 off your first ride. Within cities and on holiday I’m a big fan of Uber. There are competitors like Lyft and Sidecar, but I’ve found Uber to be the most prolific and pricing tends to be competitive.
- Spotify – There are lots of music pay as you play things out there nowadays. I particularly like Spotify because their mobile app has a Running feature that plays songs based on bpm when I want to keep a certain cadence.
- Steam – Keeping things on the cloud Steam is where I prefer to keep my games. There are a few other ones, but the only other game service I use is battle.net
- Battle.net – The other game service I use
- Netflix – I’m a binge watcher…
- Amazon Prime – It’s Prime. Things come fast. You’ll also find it in the baby page because babies use stuff haha.
- Amazon Paperwhite – My E-reader of choice. I tried an iPad before, but e-ink is just so much nicer on the eyes. The page transitions can annoy some folks, but the reading experience is superior. Also the battery life and backlighting are great.
Health and Fitness
- Back Buddy – Slightly more knobs than the old school Thera Cane, but so great to nudge points
- Trigger Point GRID Foam Roller – I have the mini as well as the longer version. I like them more than traditional foam rollers because they’re harder…no pain no gain?
- Body fat monitor – I got the Omron due to its price point and ease of use. Just remember that it’s probably not super accurate. The important thing using this is to note trend.
- 23 and me – Long time user of this. It’s mostly for fun, but could be useful for those that are interested in knowing if they stand to have a higher chance of certain issues. The choice is ultimately up to you to decide if you want to know, you can always stick to just knowing the fun stuff.
- NeilMed Sinus Rinse -It’s basically a Neti Pot in squeeze bottle form for easier use. Seems really weird and feels gimmicky, but I use it when I’m stuffed up or have allergies. It feels really weird at first. Like when you’re at the pool and get water up somewhere, but I swear I feel clearer afterwards.
- Kettlebells – My home gym is basically just a few kettlebells at this time. I got mine from Rogue, but I assume you can find them elsewhere too. I prefer the matte finish vs a smooth one. Wait for a sale and you can get a little above $1 a pound. Start off with the 16 kg/35 lb one if you’re only getting one, a 24 kg/53 lb one as a second.
- Garmin Forerunner 305 – For my runs/bike rides I’m still using the Forerunner 305 w/ the heart rate monitor strap. Apparently they don’t make them anymore so here’s Amazon’s top choice: the Forerunner 230. It also seems to review well on a few other sites (Wirecutter included).
Learning
- Duolingo – Started and stopped this a long time ago. Using it to regain some of my rusty Spanish and hopefully push into other languages. Gamifies the experience and the mobile app is very well done.
- Memrise – Another language app that’s fun to use and has more languages than Duolingo. I’d use them together.
Misc Stuff
- Lasko Ceramic Heater – It’s cheap and small and heats a single room pretty well. It’s also quiet. Downsides is there can be a smell at first and there’s no auto off timer. It’s so good I bought 2.
- Wool Dryer Balls – We initially got them for the kid, but they’re also great for general use. They’re more natural than dryer sheets and fluff your stuff up like when you toss in tennis balls in with your comforter. Supposedly they help things dry faster and they do remove static cling.
- Home Cams – We currently use a Nest and a Foscam, but I’ll likely switch to different cams based on their relative weaknesses. Update: Added a Logitech Circle
- The Nest is super easy to set up and is good quality, but it does cost more and isn’t able to rotate. The wide view might be ok if you have a good location to place it. The other downside is and I has a subscription service. We use it mainly for kiddo monitoring and it would be severely hamstrung without the subscription service…womp womp. The app is pretty nice to scroll through, but offer at least 1 day of free video…if you’re part of the Nest eco-system might be worth getting.
- Foscam is still pretty easy to set up, but it’s less intuitive. It also doesn’t quite have the build quality of the Nest. I’ve had one after a few years of use. It does rotate and can be set up to do stuff like email a photo when it detects motion. It’s pretty rough motion detection though, but if you just want to peek in once in a while this works. I’d probably spend more and use one of the two cams below when this one goes.
- I’ve recently added the Logitech Circle to the list of cameras we’re using. So far I think it’s a really good midpoint between something like a Foscam and a Nest. It does have a subscription service, but I’ve found the normal 1 day history just fine. The app isn’t quite as nice as Nest and history scrolling is a bit clunkier…but it’s also free. I’ve found 1 day to be just fine too.