Don’t Die Poor

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If your showerhead is clogged with years of build-up from mineral deposits in the water and spurting water, it may need a thorough cleansing. Instead of reaching for harsh chemicals which may damage you and your showerhead, follow these easy steps to find out how to clean your showerhead the eco-friendly way. Using distilled white vinegar is safe, highly effective, and very inexpensive.

Steps

1. Check the showerhead for mineral deposits build-up. There will be obvious discoloration and build-up on a showerhead that has not been cleaned for a while.
2. Fill the saucepan with enough distilled white vinegar to completely submerge the showerhead.
3. Add the showerhead. Remove the showerhead (it should unscrew) and place it in the saucepan.
4. Put the saucepan on the stove. Allow the showerhead to simmer for a few minutes - the amount of time needed depends on the amount of build-up - keep a close eye on it. Do not boil or turn up the heat too high as the showerhead might melt. Also ensure that it is floating in the vinegar and not sitting on the base of the saucepan.
5. Wash the deposits off. When your showerhead has simmered long enough to clean the mineral deposits, remove it from the saucepan, rinse it in water and screw it back on. Turn it on your water to make sure all the mineral deposits have been completely rinsed away.

Tips

• An alternative to using heat is to simply soak the shower head in unheated vinegar for an hour or so. It may take more than an hour to get results, so you may need to soak the showerhead in vinegar overnight.
• Vinegar will dissolve any calcium build-up. It can be used to regularly clean a steam kettle also.
• To avoid removing the shower head, pour vinegar into a small plastic bag. A sandwich sized bag works for most shower heads. Pull the bag over the shower head and fasten with a rubber band. Leave overnight. The next morning the shower head will be as clean as new.

Things You’ll Need

• Distilled white vinegar
• Saucepan
• Stove

Related wikiHows

• How to Prevent and Clean Mold on Plastic Shower Curtains
• How to Fix a Leaking Shower Head
• How to Trim a Shower Curtain Liner
• How to Fix a Torn Shower Curtain Hole
• How to Clean a Shower
• How to Create an Inexpensive Shower Enclosure for an Old Fashioned Bathtub

Sources and Citations

• VideoJug A video demonstration of article. Original source of article; shared with permission and appreciation.

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Clean the Showerhead With Vinegar. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

In an article published on line by Reuters, AOL announces the launch of WalletPop.com. This spin off does not bear the AOL name but has the feel that AOL transcends across its sites.

The site is PACKED with tons of info and is a great one stop shop for a wide variety of financial points including a blog, regular news posts, lots of referals and ads.

Just another great resource to tap into for great financial guidance.

Tropper.

So less that 24 hours after my note about Phishing scams is posted, I receive an E-mail from PayPal Abuse Department asking me to update my personal information. Timing could not have been more perfect.

Here is what the body of the message looked like…

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Dear PayPal ® customer, We recently reviewed your account, and we suspect an unauthorized transaction on your account. Protecting your account is our primary concern. As a preventive measure we have temporary limited your access to sensitive information. Paypal features.To ensure that your account is not compromised, simply hit “Resolution Center” to confirm your identity as member of Paypal. Login to your Paypal with your Paypal username and password. Confirm your identity as a card member of Paypal. Please confirm account information by clicking here Resolution Center and complete the “Steps to Remove Limitations.” *Please do not reply to this message. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered. Copyright © 1999-2008 PayPal. All rights reserved. ============================================================================

If you click the Resolution Center link (which I deactivated) you would be brought to a page that asks for all your personal data.

please be careful and if you are compelled to update your info just goto the site directly and log in.

As a real victim of Identity Theft, I can tell you that it is one of the worst experiences you can possibly go through in your life. You have no control over where your personal information is going, where it has been, or how it is being used. The scary thing is that you only find out AFTER a crime has been committed.

One of the easiest ways to give up your personal information is to be fooled by a phishing e-mail. Essentially, a phishing e-mail is a message claiming that an account of yours like Paypal or Bank Account needs you to update your security data and that data can be accessed by clicking on a link provided in the message. Once you click that link you are sent to another page, which LOOKS legitimate but as soon as you enter the data and submit, you’ve sent your entire arsenal of personal information to a group somewhere far far away!

I know many of you have received these messages and simply deleted them because you don’t have an account with the First Fifth Bank of America - but someone out there does.

Think about it… What if the message goes to 25,000 e-mail addresses… 1% fall for it… 250 Identities stolen. That can accumulate to hundreds of thousands of dollars stolen over the next few years. I haven’t even gone in to the cost of protecting these people. ONLY 1%!!!

The Solution: Here are a few ways you can avoid falling victim to the Phishing schemes.

• Be Aware: Whenever you reply to a message, know to whom the message is being sent. Double check the address; especially if there is personal info involved.
• Don’t Click the Link: If you think the message is accurate, then go to the web site without clicking the link provided in the message and sign in through the main page on a separate browser screen.
• Keep Personal Stuff Personal: Just because a company asked you for your Social Security number does not mean that you are obligated to give it to them. There are alternatives like passwords and ID numbers.
• Better Safe than Sorry: If you’re not sure about who the sender is or whether you really need to reply, THEN DON’T!!

Here are some very helpful Sites with more info about Phishing and Identity Theft

• APWG Consumer Advice
• Window Security
• FTC.Gov

Click here for more information about Identity Theft.

Please share your comments and experiences. More tips are welcome too!

Be Safe. Be Vigilant. Be Aware. and Don’t Die Poor!

Given the obviously dismal status of Social Security, you should be thinking about alternative sources of income for your retirement years. I am not going to get into how we can fix the social security debacle but I do want to shed some light on what is available to those who will be retiring before the well runs dry.

It turns out that the Social Security Administration (SSA) still has money to distribute to retirees over the next twenty years. The key to knowing how you are going to survive in retirement is to know how much you will be earning once you retire. The SSA has put together some useful info to help us calculate our social security income.

You can find the following information at www.ssa.gov.

Social Security benefits are based on earnings averaged over most of a worker’s lifetime. Your actual earnings are first adjusted or “indexed” to account for changes in average wages since the year the earnings were received. Then we calculate your average monthly indexed earnings during the 35 years in which you earned the most. We apply a formula to these earnings and arrive at your basic benefit, or “primary insurance amount” (PIA). This is the amount you would receive at your full retirement age, for most people, age 65. However, beginning with people born in 1938 or later, that age will gradually increase until it reaches 67 for people born after 1959. For more information, see The Full Retirement Age is Increasing.

As you can see from the above, the benefit computation is complex and there are no simple tables that we can present that will tell you how much you will receive. However, there are several ways you can determine an estimate of your retirement benefits:

1. Request a Social Security Statement. Make your request over the Internet and we will mail you a detailed report of your lifetime earnings and an estimate of retirement, disability and dependent benefits.
2. Compute your own benefit estimate using a program that you can download for your PC. A version for the Mac is available.
3. Use our online calculator.
4. See examples of how benefits are computed at Benefit Calculation Examples.