My little advice of the day…

My financial advisor has been on my case about increasing my insurance.  During the process of getting my finances in order, we decided to look at current insurance rates to determine if I’m getting the best deal.  I had been going with State Farm Insurance by default.  I just figured that if they provided my homeowner’s insurance, I must be getting a good deal on everything else.  I’m sure most people think that as well.  That’s not always the case.  So what’s the quickest and easiest way to determine if you’re getting the best deal?  Go ahead and use a free website to get your quotes.  I first tried Progressive because those commercials really stick in your head.  Unfortunately, they couldn’t offer a lower rate.  Surely a mom driving a Toyota Sienna mini-van should be able to get the very best insurance rate out there, right? To check out several different insurance companies without much fuss, I tried CarInsuranceRates.com and entered my information to get free quotes from various companies.  Its quick, easy and you definitely will find better deals.  Check it out.

Now that my kids are older, they all want or need to use a computer.  I sacrificed the computer in my craft room and declared it the official “kid” computer.  The web is like the wild wild West and you don’t want your kids stumbling onto something they shouldn’t see.  For the most part, search engines like Bing offer protection.  By default, Bing’s SafeSearch is set to Moderate which filter’s adult images and videos but not text from your search results.  You can choose to set it to Strict which will then filter adult text, images, and videos from search results. 

Microsoft’s Family Safety
Being a Windows desktop user, I’m partial to Microsoft and of course, anything that is free.  I signed up for Windows Live Family Safety.  The program is basically a website where you can specify how and when your children can use your computer.  Parents can specify what hours children can log on and which sites are safe to visit.   You can also limit their ability to download and install software.  I find this particularly useful since some of these downloads can be malicious.  Its best to limit installs to trusted publishers. 

My kids have gotten used to Family Safety.  If a website hasn’t been allowed on their safe list, they can request permission.  I’ll receive an email where I can update the safe list or I can walk over to their desktop, sign-in and allow the site right there on the spot.  It also prevents them from using the computer during certain hours.  I will warn you that it just locks the desktop so if they are playing a loud game at 8:00 pm and it locks, you’ll end up having to logon with your own account to shut the program down.   Each child can have their own account so you can modify settings based on their age and needs.

Windows Live Family Safety has many more features.  You can read about and download it here.  It’s quick, easy and it’s FREE.  You can’t beat FREE!