Unlocking a Loved One’s Phone After Death—Legal or Just Lucky?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello. [00:00:00] Speaker B: Hello, Hello. All right, I'm going to do one quick thing here. I'm going to do a. I'm going to hit the M just to make sure I get a mark. Awesome. Yeah, that's great. All right, let's get this thing started. [00:00:12] Speaker A: Sure. [00:00:26] Speaker B: So welcome back to Care Tech and Tips with Bobby and Barry. How's it going today? We're here. [00:00:33] Speaker A: We're here. [00:00:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:00:35] Speaker A: Back in Valentine's Day month. [00:00:37] Speaker B: Yeah, we're not too far off on that. About another week and a half, roughly as of recording time. Yeah. So how's your mom? [00:00:48] Speaker A: She's doing okay. She's actually been venturing out of late, so she's had two outings in the last couple of weeks and we had one little incident where we, where she locked the door on our caretaker, so we had to figure that one out. But hey, other than that, you know, if that's the only problem I have, I'll take it. [00:01:09] Speaker B: Well, good. Well, that's all right. And when you're able to unlock it from here, weren't you. [00:01:14] Speaker A: I was able to unlock the deadlock, but the bottom lock we can't do. So we have to figure out how to make that happen. So I'm probably going to be doing some engineering or maybe I'll get my handyman of the family, my wife to go ahead and take the tumbler off the door. We'll, we'll figure it out. [00:01:29] Speaker B: That's cool. That's cool. And how about your, how about your father in law? He's doing all right. [00:01:34] Speaker A: He's, he's enjoying his facility. We just took him to church for the second time I think in a while and so he's, he's, he's having, he actually did a lot better than the first time. So that's, that's going well. How's your loved ones? [00:01:50] Speaker B: They're doing great. My, my, my aunt insisted living is doing good. She just signed up for some PT and some occupational therapy and just because she not, she didn't feel like she's moving around enough so she, she, she got up with folks and they said, yeah, this is great. We can, we can definitely do this and it'll be covered by insurance and that's all good. My dad is still doing his thing. He's, he's doing a little PT himself. He's got some shoulder problems. He's getting worked on. And I actually love it when he goes to physical therapy and he does too when he goes, but it's like in between times he, he, like, he'll do a lot of the exercises that they give him on his own for a little while and then he kind of falls off. I can't say a word. I'm the same way if I have, if I have a problem I need to get worked on and then. Okay, you need to continue doing these exercises at home. Yeah, I don't always do them either, so. But I think it's actually good for him to get some contact with some people he doesn't, he doesn't know or he doesn't see on a regular basis. So I think socialization is one of. [00:02:53] Speaker A: The things you can do for, for them that helps the most. [00:02:56] Speaker B: Oh yeah, man. Big time. Big time. So you were, we were, before we were recording, we were talking a little bit about, about some things we wanted to talk about. And one of the things that came up at one, it was, you were, we were talking about your, your father in law and you said that you ran into some, some technical things with him. So you want to talk. Yeah, about that. [00:03:15] Speaker A: So we had a couple of, I think it was a couple episodes back. We talked about a new mode that you can set your iPhone into that makes it simpler for, for your loved ones to use it. And particularly useful for my father in law since he's got, he had a stroke, so his hands and motions and fine motor detection is not all that great. So we got him a phone and we put on assistive access and that worked great. That's actually doing its job. But guess what? He's a popular guy. And so after a while we got some people calling us saying that, well, they couldn't leave any more voicemail messages. And so we went off assistive mode and discovered that he had quite a bit of phone calls. So a number of voicemail messages, over a thousand phone calls actually in the last couple of months. And guess what? You can't handle the voicemails if they're not in your contacts with assistive mode. So you have to occasionally get out of it, run updates and manage your voicemail. And so we did that and then everything's fine. So keep in mind if you're doing that for a loved one every month or so, I would get out of it update if there are security updates that come down for iPhones and other things too. And got to make sure you do them so it's not just leaving set and forget. You actually have to go back and do a little bit of maintenance, kind. [00:04:47] Speaker B: Of do some maintenance and management. So let me make sure I understand. So like if Somebody called and left a voicemail. If they were in his contact list, then he would see the voicemail, be able to listen to it, but if you're not, then it kind of goes into this limbo state somewhere. [00:05:01] Speaker A: Yeah. So you have to manage it out of the assistive mode to do it, otherwise. So eventually his voicemail would clog up and it wouldn't be able to take any more voicemails. [00:05:12] Speaker B: Or. [00:05:14] Speaker A: You can run into other problems too. And then it could be bugs. Right. So I think iPhones are of 18:3 or something like that. And we hadn't updated this phone in a while and there have been lots of updates since then and eventually you have to do that too. So. Yeah. So every month or so you need to go out, get out of the mode, handle those kind of updates and then put it back. [00:05:37] Speaker B: There you go. So I got a question for you. So is your father in law a voicemail deleter or a voicemail? He will keep him around forever. [00:05:48] Speaker A: He's probably a voicemail deleter because we noticed that he didn't have any voicemails for the people in his contacts. It was only the ones that were out of context. So we got a lot of spam calls. [00:06:01] Speaker B: What about, what about text messages? Does he delete his text messages or does he leave him around? [00:06:06] Speaker A: He doesn't get that many text messages. But. But text messages aren't the issue because they don't, they don't stop other text messages from coming in voicemail. If you had 40 voicemails that were outside of it, and so that filled up the voicemail quota and it wouldn't take anymore. [00:06:22] Speaker B: Wow. Wow. [00:06:23] Speaker A: So. And I'm sure different characters have different voicemail limits, but what really was, was something we didn't think of is there were people who he would want to talk to. We need to add them to our contacts, but they would leave voicemail messages and they wouldn't be able to see them. [00:06:42] Speaker B: Gotcha. [00:06:43] Speaker A: So you have to add those people he wanted. So we added a few more people who called, who should be calling, and then there were lots of people who he doesn't need to talk to. We just need to delete them. [00:06:52] Speaker B: Yep. [00:06:53] Speaker A: So. [00:06:53] Speaker B: And. Or block them. [00:06:54] Speaker A: You know, all Apple's listening to our podcast, they need to put a feature in, it says automatically delete messages after a certain amount. [00:07:03] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a really good point. Good. Only reason I ask about that is my dad is a. Is a voicemail deleter and a text deleter. He will, he will swipe left on those things so fast and get, get them out of there and maybe think about it. I was talking to him today about something and he asked me about a particular vendor that I had sent him a link for months ago. And I'm like, wow, I don't know where it's at. So I went and looked around at my stuff and I have changed phones since the last time I did that and got rid of some of my old ones, like Nami. I don't. I don't have it. So let me go check on his phone. Maybe he still has it hidden back in my. In the messages for me. And I saw that I didn't have anything in there. He didn't have anything for me since last week. So I'm like, he's. He's deleting everything he gets whenever they come in. Yeah, I'm a keeper. [00:07:50] Speaker A: I can. I use it as an archive. [00:07:51] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, me too. I go back, I've got stuff that goes back years on lots of people. So, yeah, it's funny how I guess, you know, that's really kind of an older habit with, with older phones, you really didn't want to fill your voicemail up. Especially like in his case, he was a business owner, he wanted to make sure all that was cleared out and that. That he could. He could get more voicemails. So, you know, one of those things. So that extended the texting for him too, when it came along. Well, that's interesting. So assistive access needs a little bit of management and. But you know, I kind of like though that it's a sort of a thrott new contacts. It gives you. Gives you a way to see who needs to be there and who doesn't. So, yeah, that's really good point. [00:08:30] Speaker A: I wish you could manage it from the, from a web page. Like you could log in, but it doesn't let you do that. You have to be on the phone to manage the voicemail. [00:08:40] Speaker B: That is interesting for sure. So, gosh, let's see here. I got a funny story. It's a little sensitive, but I'm going to tell it anyway. That goes. But I was talking to a friend of mine this week and unfortunately, it's funny, but it's not at the same time. But the thing was, is his wife's father, his stepfather actually had passed away this past week and they lived fairly close to the stepfather and he was nearby and it was all good. He was a pretty vibrant member of the community of that kind of thing. But he. They didn't really have Never had had the talk. They don't, they didn't have any access to any of his accounts or any of that kind of stuff. This was kind of, I think it was kind of sudden that he passed away. But. But what they found out that they needed to do is they really needed to get into his account, to his accounts to try to find out what the state of his finances were. And they weren't sure how to do that, but they had access to his phone. And when I say had access to his phone, they had physical access to his phone, but they didn't have cred to get into the phone. And so. Okay, what do you do? Well, I gotta applaud this from Plot em for ingenuity, and I think it's still ingenuity plus luck worked out for them. So it was a phone from several years back that still had touch id. So where it was, it was an iPhone, but it didn't have face id, but it had the thumbprint identification on it. They were able to call the mortuary, go by the mortuary with the phone and be able to use her father stepfather's thumb to get into the phone once they had access to the phone. I'm paraphrasing at this point because I don't know all of the details, but once they had it, I assume that they were able to go and do reset password things on a lot of accounts that he had which would send a text message to the phone which would give you a security code and let you get back into the accounts. So it actually worked out for them. They were able to get into everything. They, to quote my friend, he said found out his finances were a lot better than he thought and it was all good. So they were able to get some things done. But it's a cautionary tale because I did a little look and I think he did too later on. He said, yeah, I don't believe they were really supposed to let me do that, but it was a Hail Mary and it worked. So I think legally that's probably not a thing that most places would do. So maybe if you knew the new the mortuary and they knew the folks running the place. But I thought that was super interesting and it just kind of goes to show. And a lot of people think, well, you know, why am I worried about the security on my phone? That's the reason right there, is that we have credentials on our phones for a reason, because they are tied to so many things, especially resetting passwords for accounts. And you can't, you can't. You really can't ignore the whole credentialing thing and making sure you got good credentials and you make sure you have good passwords and all of that, it's just something to pay attention to. It also reinforces having to talk. You know, at a certain age you got to have a talk about, here's my stuff, here's where my accounts are. If I'm not here, who's going to be able to help take care of this kind of stuff? So it's one of those things. [00:12:11] Speaker A: Yeah. This brings it back to the idea that you can't put this off. If you do put it off, you can cause yourself some pain. And it's so easy to have some of these conversations. I know it's not easy to have, but if you have just a conversation or two about what their preferences are and where you can do things and even just some of the tools that are available now, like the ability, I think we talked about last week's ability for some of your accounts to allow access to your loved ones if you grant it in certain ways, in certain protocols. I think we talked about Facebook, but I know Apple has that too. I know Android has it. So take the time to do that because it will make your life better. [00:12:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we ought to do a small bonus episode sometime about just doing that, like how to set that up, where to go for Apple, for Android, for Facebook, for any of those kinds of things. And we may put that one on the list for later on and get it out as a bonus episode sometime soon. So that makes me think, how are you Got anything on your spam and scam list this week? [00:13:24] Speaker A: You know, I was actually thinking about that. So I know last week we had a conversation about Medicare and health scams and the last two, if I recall right, I'm sure we maybe doubled dipping a little bit here. The last two were online shopping scams and, and romance scams, so. [00:13:52] Speaker B: Oh, really? [00:13:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So the online shopping scams, that's fake websites and ads selling products that don't exist, crediting or debiting card details and collecting card detail, credit card details says the elderly particularly fall for this kind of scam. One of the things to make sure you do as avoidance, only shop from trusted sites, verify URLs. I think we. That is a common theme for all these scams is making sure the URL you're at. Because if you can have a conversation with your loved one, if they're still able to be able to tell them, you know, look for misspelled words in the domain. Make sure it says.com and not gmail.com, because no company does that. And use secure methods to pay for things like credit cards. And actually you have some credit card protection on some of your items where they can refund things if you, if you get scanned for items. So I know that things like American Express and some of the credit cards do that. I'm not sure debits do, but you can talk to your bank about that information. So there's a lot of good things to avoid there. And that's usually seasonal. [00:15:00] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. Like I was gonna say, it's kind of like one of those things where if you, if you're looking for a particular item and you can't find it on Amazon, it's out of stock, or you can't find it at Walmart and it's out of stock, or if it's, you know, particular branded thing and you go to their site and it's out of stock and then you Google for it again. Then all of a sudden you see this, this, this new site pop up and it's in. Not only is it in stock, but it's a super good price. You might want to check yourself at that point before you do it. Yeah. Because there's a good, good chance that, that that site is just, just there to harvest your details and then you're never going to get anything in mail from it. [00:15:42] Speaker A: Yeah. And, you know, you need to do a search on the site itself and see if you can gather some reputation. There are usually people who will talk about it. So if you do a search on them, you might be able to find some reviews that will tell you one way or the other. Yet the hidden way to do that on for some searches is I add scam to the end of that list to see if there are people out there reporting a scam for a particular company and usually gets that to show up too. So, you know, do a little due diligence and don't always buy things straight off. Do a little research on what you have and who's out there. Okay. So the other one was romance scams. And I have not personally seen this happen to ones in my family, but I've heard of others who have fallen for this particular ones. And I've seen a lot of these ones in, in fictional writing too, so. But apparently they do exist. Those are scammers who fake relationships online, often through dating sites, to gain trust and exploit victims emotionally and financially. This got long term Scams. You need to be really cautious when you're on dating platforms. Avoid sending money or sharing sensitive information, especially for people you just met. But even the ones that, if you haven't met them in person, be skeptical, be the skeptic, and if you're a love caretaker, remind your loved one that if they run into these kinds of issues, don't be afraid to contact you and have a conversation about it. Because you and Barry and I have been in it for a while. And you know, some of the stuff that you. You look at, you go, okay, this is obviously a scam because you've seen it enough. I'm on enough email addresses that the same messages get sent to my same, you know, multiple email ones. And if you can, you'll see those kinds of things over and over again. You start to recognize them. The ones I'm starting to recognize now are the ones that tell you that your icloud account are out there or your Netflix description is dead. But I'm on multiple ones, and I see that dozens of times. And you start to pick up the pattern, oh, okay, they're starting this game now. So all the messages at one time. So the key thing here is make sure your loved ones know that they can call you and ask that question. They're not annoying you. It's not taking your time out. It can save them money, time, effort, embarrassment. Just have the conversation. And most of the time, when you or I hear that kind of thing, even some of our users who are of our age, we listen to that. And it's just like the African prince who's asking you for $1 to do this. You can pick up on it, but it's harder for the people of an older generation to see that. So encourage them to talk to you. Make sure you have that. If you're not sure, don't do it. Call me up. Let's have a conversation. Let me look at it. Let me do a search for it, that kind of thing. So they can trust you on that. So you have to build that kind of trust up. So those are the last two on my list. So we actually did five over the last three episodes. So just keep in mind, again, common themes. Trust and verify. Never share your important information with people who come in unsolicited. And then make sure you set up that trust relationship, that if they're not sure, they can call you and ask. [00:19:09] Speaker B: There you go. That's good advice all around. [00:19:12] Speaker A: Yeah, and so that's one of the reasons why I think it's important to know those remedies and so that you can. Because a lot of the remedies are common to all these scams. And so I think we'll have a couple more in our next episode where we'll end up and we'll talk a few about a couple more types of scams. So we'll be finishing up, so we'll be doing scams and all four of the episodes we've done, so. [00:19:38] Speaker B: Awesome. Awesome. So I think earlier too we were talking about you had one other thing that you ran into with your. With your father in law's tech. Some do a storage. [00:19:47] Speaker A: Yes. So one of the things you have to be careful about, of course, for me in particular, he takes a lot of pictures. [00:19:58] Speaker B: Okay. [00:19:59] Speaker A: And when he takes a lot of pictures, we discovered he didn't back up those pictures with something like Google Photos or Photos and Apple. But keep in mind when you do that, you can run out of space on your account. So one of the things you want to do is monitor that account to make sure you're not storing things that you don't really care about. And you can mostly do that by going into your settings on an iPhone. And I think there's a similar way to do it on Android as well and just monitoring how much storage space you have on there. There are actually some software products out there and we can talk about a few of them maybe in the show notes where you can do that remotely. But it's not as good as grabbing their phone and doing that maintenance. So along with doing the maintenance that we're doing with assistive mode, make sure you check to see how much storage they have left. Because it's much easier to deal with a storage problem before it happens. Oh, it's at 10% than to wait till it's under 1% and have to deal with it. That's. [00:21:00] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:21:01] Speaker A: Then it becomes immediate. Then you have to deal with what, what do you throw away? So that kind of monthly look for the, for those kind of things is really important to do. Maybe have some other things about storage that you want to add. [00:21:14] Speaker B: Well, my thoughts on those two are, you know, a lot of folks I think get a phone and they have whatever they're paying per month and they think, you know, I just need this as a phone and I don't need all that fancy stuff is what I always hear. Well, you know, when you start taking pictures and you really like, like what you're doing there, like you said, you can fill up your stories pretty quick. And I've had some relatives that ask about that. You know, what do I do? My phone says it's not backing up, that I'm out of storage. And so in the Apple case, usually that's the case is that when you buy an Apple phone, by default, when you create an icloud account with a thing, I think you get 5 gigabytes of storage in Apple's cloud and that's a pitiful amount of storage for a trillion dollar company. I just, I'm going to go out there to say that for what you. [00:22:05] Speaker A: Pay for 3 trillion. [00:22:07] Speaker B: Yeah, for what you pay for these things. And it's really good hardware and they have great services but that's, that's paltry. But they do have some plans where you can pay. I mean you can pay as little as like a buck a month and have multiple multiples of that five gig it is. You know, I've had relatives say I am not paying them anything more for this thing. And I'm thinking, well, do you want to keep all your stuff? Do you want to make sure you got a big backup of it? It's a buck a month. Yeah, that's not bad. So I highly recommend that, I think for 12 bucks a year or even if it's even double that, it's well worth it to just make sure that it's out there backed up in the cloud. If your phone breaks in half, it's still easy to go back and get that stuff. So forget the one more charge. Just think about would you rather have your photos and your information back in hand if your phone dies or not? That's something to think about, but to each his own. And again, there's the same similar situation with Google products with Android devices. There's really affordable backup plans and I think it's well worth doing on that for either one of them. [00:23:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I think you can get 100 gig for something like $5 a month. Something silly and it's worth it, especially if you take pictures, if you do things that take space up. And backing up your phone is a smart thing to do because you never know what happens. You could drop it in a pool or do like I did two years ago and forget it's in your pocket and walk in water and then you got no phone. But the thing that saved me is I had backups I could restore from things and so I could go online and buy a phone and restore it and so, you know, think about that kind of stuff. It's important to think about something like that. [00:24:02] Speaker B: I think so too. All right, so let's move on from that one. And next on my list is I've had a friend of the show come and make a recommendation for something to talk about. And it's having to do with assisted living facilities and skilled nursing and rehab facilities. And it comes around talking about finances and talking about money. And what she wanted us to point out to a lot of folks is the need up front. If you're thinking about helping your loved one get into one of these facilities and you're talking with the administrators there ahead of time, figuring out amenities and cost and things like that, one good question to ask is say I'm coming in with, you know, my loved one and we're going. We either have insurance, like long term care insurance or private pay. We're, we're, we're paying for whatever it is and it's X dollars a month. So the question to ask is, say, all right, if we get in and my loved one's in, we just, we sign the paperwork and they're in for, you know, a year and say a year out. If we run out of insurance money, benefit or we run out of cash, you have to ask these folks what will happen. Usually in the case when you run out of insurance money and you run out of cash, Medicaid kicks in a certain amount. But not all of these facilities have Medicaid beds. And in her case, she got lucky. She found a place that said that, listen, if you're here for over a year, you've paid in, paid your lease for a year or so and something like that happens, we will not, you know, move your loved one out. We will not kick them out. They will have a place here. They might not have as nice a room as they had before, but they'll stay in the facility and still have the same services that they had. So I promised her that I would mention that. I think it probably varies by state and by county about how that works. And I'm sure it varies with facilities. So chances are you may not get a good a deal as she got just everywhere that you go. But you should at least have that conversation and find out what, what the, what the plan is and get it in writing at the time. So important, very important. [00:26:36] Speaker A: Even if you get an email that says something like that that you can refer back to is important enough to do that kind of thing. And, and I'll be honest with you, most insurance has limitations on durations of stay. Some, some of them, even the military, will have durations of certain length in which insurance will pay for. So that could be anywhere from six years to three years to two years. You need to read the fine print and make sure you're aware of those kind of limitations well before they happen, for sure. [00:27:07] Speaker B: So it's well worth, well worth taking her advice and having that conversation up front and, you know, and make plans accordingly. It's just one of those things for sure. So I've got one more thing to talk about and this one, this one's interesting to me. I was having lunch the other day and I went to this, this, this ramen place that also does poke bowls and sushis and all kind of things like that. And I got a poke bowl and I'm sitting there and I'm eating with my chopsticks. And I usually don't talk about this stuff too much, but I'm trying to lose weight. So over the last, I don't know, several months, I've lost about 12, 13 pounds. And one of the components of the plan that I'm working on is slowing down and being more mindful about how you eat. So I'm sitting there having lunch and I've got my chopsticks and I'm eating this poke and I'm doing my thing. And it occurred to me that these chopsticks really are interesting way to kind of throttle yourself, especially if you're not proficient with them. Now me, I've gotten too proficient with those things, but it still makes me think about it a little bit. Every once in a while I'm eating, I think, I wonder if I can grab just one grain of rice and I reach down and I grab one grain of rice. And it got me thinking. I'm thinking, I wonder if there is really something to maybe cultures who use chopsticks being not as, not as big as we are in the United States. And is there a correlation between those things? So I decided to ask our favorite friend, Chatty G. Chatgpt said, I asked him, is there are there health benefits and cognitive benefits even beyond, you know, I didn't even say beyond. Honestly, I said, are there cognitive and health benefits for using chopsticks as opposed to western style silverware? And the answer that came back from Chatty G I thought was kind of interesting. So I'm going to read it out for our, for our listeners and let's talk about it and see what you think. So up front it comes back and says, yes, absolutely. Chopsticks instead of silverware can have mental health benefits, including one mindfulness and focus. It says, using chopsticks require more concentration and precision, which can encourage mindfulness while eating. This can help reduce stress and increase awareness of the present moment, similar to mindful eating practices. Okay, okay. I'm down so far with that. What about yourself? [00:29:39] Speaker A: You know. Yeah, all right, cool. I'm hearing that. So. [00:29:44] Speaker B: All right. Two Cognitive engagement. The coordination needed to use chopsticks engages the brain, improving fine motor skills and stimulating cognitive function. This can be particularly beneficial for neuroplasticity. I can't say that word, but I'm gonna try it again for neuroplasticity and hand eye coordination. All right, I'm still there. I think that's reasonable. [00:30:09] Speaker A: You know, you're losing me because. So my wife would love. Loves chopsticks and actually uses them a lot. I avoid them because they frustrate the E. Dee Dee. So I'm listening still, but you know, I'm kind of going, okay, yeah, your. [00:30:27] Speaker B: Mindfulness goes out the window because of the aggravation. [00:30:30] Speaker A: Yeah, the aggravation. My blood pressure is already up. [00:30:33] Speaker B: Let's see, I got you. [00:30:34] Speaker A: But hey, but I get it though. And slower eating and digesting, I get it too, because. [00:30:41] Speaker B: Yep, slower eating, better digestion. [00:30:43] Speaker A: You have a better idea, I think with your 10 minute pause idea with eating. I think that I probably, I've been thinking about for a while, which we all need to slow down. We all need to slow down and think. [00:30:56] Speaker B: It got me on this one is that I thought, you know, not just for me, but, but maybe for some of our loved ones, if, if they're into it, encouraging, that might kind of help along. That might help. The cognitive engagement and the, and the, the mindfulness pieces are known to kind of push off cognitive decline. And not only that, if you can do that and improve some fine motor skills, that it might be a helping factor. So who knows, if, if you don't get stabbed with the, with the chopsticks, when you introduce those, it might be better off. But you know, I think the. One of the last ones down here I really like was dexterity and fine motor skills. For older adults, using chopsticks may help maintain dexterity and coordination, potentially reducing the risk of cognitive decline over time. Now maybe it's a stretch, but hey, it might work. Who knows? [00:31:53] Speaker A: No, I mean, there's some nice things in there and I think, I think you just have to understand. So for, for my father in law, probably not because one of his issues is his hands, but for others, you know, maybe there's, there's some things to be said on that. You know, and I tried every once in a while and end up getting frustrated. But I really think you should talk about your 10 minute pause because I think that really, I've seen you do that and I think that's really helping you with what you do. So tell them about that. Barry. [00:32:25] Speaker B: I'm a retiree from the, from the, our, my state's state employees retiree system basically. And every once in a while we'll get these emails about, you know, wellness sorts of things. And back back in the summer we got one, my wife and I, for, for them introducing a health maintenance kind of a weight loss plan. And it was an app. And I'll go ahead and say it even though they're not a sponsor, but I'll tell them anyway. It's one called Wonder. It's a W O n D R. And I've tried several of these before and nothing's really worked for me. But I said, you know, okay, whatever, we're not paying for this, let's try it. So we tried it together. And one of the big things about this one is that they want you to slow down eating and to be a little bit more mindful about how you eat and to kind of take your time and give yourself time to be full. And that's something I didn't realize that I was doing was, I was speed eating pretty much. Sometimes that goes along with emotional eating too. Like I've always been an emotional leader, especially if I'm aggravated, frustrated or you know, just pissed off, I'm like this. So it focused a lot of those kinds of things. But the biggest thing that I think has actually worked for me is this 10, 5, 10 timer. It says basically what they'd like you to do when you start eating is set a timer for 10 minutes. Eat for regularly for 10 minutes. At the end of 10 minutes, stop, set a timer for 5 minutes and just chill. Have a conversation with it with your partner. If you're by yourself, read a couple of pages on the Internet or read a book or something, but take your time. Just, even if it's just looking at your surroundings for five minutes, don't eat anything. And then after five minutes you can start eating again. Usually go for about 10 more minutes. So the thing is, is what they're, what they're doing is, is that if you make that pause in the middle of your meal, you give your body time to catch up and realize that it's full. Because you've always read this thing that says it takes 20 minutes to realize you're full. Well, I'll be danged. It actually works so that I haven't written down a calorie or taken and done a food journal or any of the things that a lot of these programs, what you want programs want you to do. And it's actually working. So who knows? I'm gonna keep it up, keep going. I'm not that far from my goal. Maybe three or four more pounds and I'm be happy with it. So we'll see how it goes. [00:34:58] Speaker A: But yeah, you're listening to Diet Caring tips. [00:35:03] Speaker B: There you go. There you go. [00:35:05] Speaker A: I think it's a really cool idea. I saw, I've been watching you do it, especially when you and I meet over a meal and I think it's a really cool idea. I'm actually thinking about incorporating into my, my plan too. [00:35:15] Speaker B: Cool. And, and to bring it back to a tech bent. The thing that I use for my timers is my Apple Watch. Of course that's one of the biggest things I use for that. But that Apple watch for actually is reminders and timers. Timers. And so I've got it where it's really easy to just hit 10 minute timer at the end of that one, stop it, start a 5 minute one and it lets you know. So yeah, it's all good. All right. You got anything else? [00:35:38] Speaker A: Not in particular of course. One of the things we want to do, we go get on our Ben about community and growing in community. So if you like what you hear, please go ahead and hit like write a review, you know, subscribe and join the community and help us. And then we also have an email address. Barry, you gonna say it? [00:35:58] Speaker B: Sure. It is at Care Tech and Tips. That's C A R E T E C H A N D T I p s gmail.com and if you send. [00:36:09] Speaker A: It to that email address, they will read it and we'll may incorporate it in a future show. So why not? [00:36:14] Speaker B: All right. We hope to hear from you soon, but till then we'll see you next time on Care Tech and dips. [00:36:21] Speaker A: Yeah, hope everybody has a great time. [00:36:24] Speaker B: There we go. Take care y'all.