US Cellular rating

I used US cellular some years ago and in the last 6 months I got a pay by the month sort of like a track-phone.  The customer service is very good and the actual phone service is good and always was good. The latest phone includes unlimited phone calls and 1 G of internet with unlimited service. After 1 gigabit the data is "throttled" or slowed. I use about 1.5 per month and it doesnt effect Etrade much but the applications are slowed down and some internet searches will not load or load real slow. I can still access e-mails.I can browse Ebay somewhat after 1 gig. Necedah Wisconsin has a problem with accessibility with a lot of services. Many phone plans, telephone landline plans and other internet landline providers which are available in the next town are not available here. This is also the case with health insurance- see my comments on Humana done a few days ago. We do have service with US cellular- I tried other track phones some available at Walmart but they do not work. US cellular works but the service is not consistent and sometimes for brief periods there is no service even though I am within eye shot of the cell tower in Necedah. I will get the exclamation point and messages no service or no internet. Consumer Cellular claims to have strong service here but I have not yet tried them. Their plan is not unlimited- if you go over the data limit you can get an overage- they will offer you the next level above the one you have though. The telephone minutes are also not unlimited which means the calls you get as well as outgoing come off your minutes. The price is about the same though. if the problem with US Cellular internet gets worse I may have to switch- for now I will live with it.

Charities

Charities

Some religious or Christian charities proselytize, I think these charities should be avoided. Some do not do this in the USA but do a lot in foreign countries especially where people are poor. They can be very aggressive. They often are called missionaries and this is not a good use of our money which we work so hard for. I see a lot of Salvation Army commercials on TV. keep in mind they do proselytize and the money you donate has to pay for the commercials. They do do a lot of charity work but it is imperfect. Amma.org is a good alternative, they try to get the 3 big religions to work together. See
http://amma.org/http://amma.org/

Sleep Number Bed

Over all i am pretty happy with the Sleep Number Bed. I had tried some traditional mattresses and one was to soft and the other to firm and you can not return them after a month or two. You can set the firmness at whatever you want because it is an air-bed with a pump. I do recommend a mattress foam topper. The drawbacks is the bed feels like a hammock on lower settings and the sleep number is not stable it seems. They should make the edge of the bed smaller. There is a regular foam barrier on the edge- it makes the air part of the bed smaller. The foam topper I got was a less expensive one on Ebay and it is working fine- some of the accessories you can buy from Sleep Number seem kind of expensive. Generally I get a good sleep on the bed; I got mine on sale in the fall of the year, it came in a box and they left it on my porch- cost around $700- cant remember the exact amount but they gave me free 0% interest to buy and make payments on it.

Humana health insurance.

What these people may tell you or your doctor on the phone is unreliable. They tell you things are covered or doctors are in network then you could take the service only to find out that you are out of network and will get nothing. often you find out to late and the procedure is already done and you end up with a big bill. This happened to me twice in the last year or so. One transaction cost me $440 and the other around $200 more than I was told. I actually bought dental insurance from Humana for $30 a month only to find it covered only $20 worth of my root canal. They specifically told me my dentist was covered. They even said I won the case over the phone because the call was recorded but then they mysteriously changed their mind and gave me the run around and changed their mind. Humana is all that is available here in Juneau co. Wisconsin so there are no other options.

Do not buy the dental saving cards. The dentist gets nothing but you pay the company who owns the card. It is a legal scam done by real insurance companies, I will mention more on this later but you pay for the card and it claims to give you a significant discount on dental care.  my dentist did honor it but they get nothing back from the company and they do not have to honor it- they did me a favor because they already knew I was taken for a ride by Humana on my coverage.

The amount of money i paid was not as much. I did send the issue to the States Attorney and the Better Business Bureau to no effect but the real question is how are poor and ill people dealing with this and are their bills coming up a lot higher? This is abuse and we need to find a way to stop it. I literally spent hours on the phone trying to fix this to no effect- they even admitted I was right and said i won but will not even send me the $30 I spent per month for a few months back for useless insurance.

Morningstar meat replacements

Unless these are labeled GMO free they have GMOs in them. For the price paid for this there should be no GMOs in the products at all. The mark up has to be quite high.  They are good tasting- the regular sausage patties are the best. The mock ground meat can replace hamburger. for the ground product I replaced it with Quorn which is soy free and GMO free.- comes in 12 oz. package though the price is kind of high.

Good or bad deal?

1.  Fabric softener                                        No        Has chemicals that are not good for you

2. Wild Rice from Minnesota                      Yes       very nutritious, alkaline for body

3.  Energy drinks like Red bull                    No        this may be OK occassionally but they are being

                                                                                  marketed in an unhealthy way. This is a drug.

4.  Quinoa                                                    Yes       healthy and alkaline for body

5.  Alumawallet ( on TV)                            No        Idea is good but business parts made of cheap 

                                                                                  plastic- not durable for daily use. I bought one.