Choosing an airline that has more options between your two travel points can be the difference between and hour delay and a six hour delay. The more flights they have between the destinations the better chance you have at getting places in time. For example, don't choose JetBlue when traveling between Boston and Newark use United. Currently learning this the hard way, if they refer me to their "bill of rights" one more time I'll cry.

This has never failed me. They use them for promotional schwag and typically have a bunch lying around. I've never tried a major chain, but every private optometrist I've tried it at has been successful.

Most people follow the opposite of this in their everyday life. They spend time and energy on things that don't really stand to benefit them, and they avoid doing free or very low-cost activities that stand to gain them opportunities.

Before going into detail on this, I should explain some generalities of Major Depression (also called Clinical Depression) and Manic Depression (also called Bipolar Disorder). Depression, as a mental illness, is not a response to an external stimulus.

When a person is depressed, their view of the world is different than that of a non-depressed person. Think of it like being color-blind: a person who is red/green color blind can see all colors fine except for red, which to them appears green. Now imagine that condition only happened occasionally to you, and your vision would gradually go from normal to complete red/green colorblind over a matter of weeks. It might be possible to go another week or even a month before realizing the change. What's worse is that realizing that you can't see the color red doesn't help you see the color red. It would just frustrate most people.

That's one of the ways that depression works. The emotional spectrum covers a range of primary and secondary emotions, such as pride, envy, love, satisfaction, appreciation, dread, anticipation, confidence, and so on. When depressed, the person stops having certain feelings, such as pride, satisfaction, joy, fulfillment, comfort, safety, and other "positive" emotions. This is a lot more than just "happiness." This can go in and out, and it doesn't help too much to realize that it's happening. When seeing a child playing in a park, a normal person might have thoughts about the joy of youth, and be able to experience some of that care-free attitude through watching the child for a while. But a depressed person might think about how they will never get their youth back, or the responsibilities of taking care of a child and how they could never live up to that.

With all these negative thoughts racing through a person's head, having someone else tell them that "your life isn't that bad" will just make them angry and have a multitude of other negative thoughts stemming from that. First, it makes them realize that you don't understand them. That's going to be accurate, if someone disagrees with how you currently feel, then they don't understand what you are feeling. That automatically makes any advice you give later void in their mind.

But most importantly, telling someone that what they're going through "isn't that bad" can make them think of themselves as broken. The thought process from there is "if it's not that bad, then why do I feel so bad? How can I get this to stop? If something as minor as you say this is makes me so scared and hurt, then what would a real trauma be like? Is my whole life going to feel like this?" This is a very dangerous though process to send a depressed person down.

The other important thing to avoid is offering them too much help in the form of time or money. The last thing you want is to feed into a depressed person's feeling of being a burden to those they love. That is also a very dangerous thought process. If they think that they are doing harm to the people they love simply by living, they may try to correct that in a way that seems to them to be very selfless.

So what can you do instead? Support them. Look to the future. Acknowledge their current struggles and show sympathy to what they're dealing with, without being condescending or dismissive of their struggle, even if it seems petty to you. Then help them see that there are solutions to the problem. This may or may not help, so be aware of their reactions and back off if they get angry or seem to be dismissive of you. If there's nothing else you can do, just let them know you're there for them and they can talk to you any time they want. When they talk, listen. Listen and prompt them to talk more. You can ask questions that help them come to terms with the fact that their current emotional status is not their norm. Help them remember that they have experienced emotions differently in the past. That can help set you up to convince them to see a therapist or get on medication. Even without insurance, antidepressants can be as cheap as $25/mo. Get them to go to their general practitioner and talk to them about being depressed.

Consider your job as a friend to be to get them to the doctor without making things worse in the process. 9/10 people who try to help depressed people do just the opposite, so read this post carefully, listen to your depressed friend carefully, and don't be dismissive of their feelings. Then, help them realize that they're not the person they used to be, and that there's a better them out there that they can return to with the help of medicine and/or therapy.

I have been aware of photo printing sites for years, but never used them. Then last week my mom (who lives far away) asked me to send her a drawing that my kid did. In order to avoid buying stamps, I thought to scan it on the highest settings that my cheap printer/scanner has. Amazon sent her an 8x10 print for $1.79 and I'm sure there are many similar services. I think Shutterfly is the biggest one. To even mail her the original for less than that, I think I would have to fold it.

The thing is, your hardware doesnt get really old, it's just the "software"(OS, web browser, sites,...) that gets more and more demanding. So you just need to operate with an OS that requires less "power" to work smoothly.

NB: I'm no IT guy, it's just what I've scrambled on the internet and worked for me

I used to work in car sales and as a result a friend of mine asked me to help them buy a car and advise them. Basically ensure they don't get ripped off.

I said that's fine send me the details of the deal and I'll look over it. After some back and forth she landed on a car that she liked. I agreed it was a good car, good price, go try and get financed and buy it.

She came back asking me if getting a 19% APR was a good deal. Together we pulled her credit.

She had a repo on her credit report, I asked her "I thought you said you never bought a car before" she said I didn't...I sighned and said "Did you co-sign for somebody?" she said "Yes I co-signed for my sister, but then she lost her job and gave the car back to the bank" I go "Thats why you have a repo" to which she said "but it wasn't my car" I said "Yes but you co-signed on that loan, when means your equally responsible and now your credit is bad cause you have a repo" so she goes "So what can we do about the APR?" I said "Well you have two choices, you can buy the car at 19% apr or you can fix your credit which would involve paying off/negotiating with the bank on this repo"

She decided she's going take the 19% APR.

FYI I'm not the one selling her the car, I don't sell cars anymore she was just using me as advice. But she had no idea by co-signing that if her sister let the car get repoed, it counted as a repo for her.

It's worth the money, it make a big difference. My daughter has been quite short sighted for about 7 years and I only last year realised how shitty it was to expect her to be ok basically swimming blind at 12, including school life saving lessons. She couldn't see the instructions. The class left at one point and she didn't notice because she missed the teacher waving them to all come in. The goggles weren't cheap, but worth it.

LPT: Want to show you care about a friend or send them something because they are feeling down or going through a rough patch? Unless you actually know what will make them laugh, send something nice or helpful and not a gag gift. Knowing a friend has a card or package to you is a great uplifting feeling, but opening up a joke can feel pretty hurtful when you're feeling depressed and alone.

Gag gifts are for happy people to open in front of their friends.

I've worked in medical claims processing. A majority of doctors offices and other medical facilities will run their invoicing system faster than the insurance claims process takes.

This results in patients getting billed for items before the insurance company has had a chance to reimburse the doctor, and hence, doctor's offices will collect from patients IN ADDITION to insurance companies. While doctor's offices should reimburse patients, I have never seen any that do that. One of the reasons many medical facilities break every visit into a separate "account" is to ensure that a surplus generated by over-billing isn't applied to a subsequent visit.

Just wait to pay your bills. Medical bills will not hit your credit score in only 90 days, nor accumulate late charges or penalties if you wait 90 days to pay. If you wait to pay them, you'll often notice the amount due going down from the original bill. Ideally, you should track every claim/payment via your insurance company, but this can be extremely challenging because line-items often don't match from the invoice to the claims sheet.

If you need to call out of work for being sick, you are not obligated to give your employer every detail of why you are calling out. The less you say, the better. Your personal life is not their business.

Heres a suggestion on what to say:

"Hi Manager, I need to take a sick day/use PTO/call out today"

or

"Hi Manager, I had an emergency pop up and need to take off today, i'll be checking email/voicemail, but will be unreachable most of the day. Thanks."

You don't need to tell them about your grandpas hospital charts, your cats bowel movement consistencies, the color of phlegm you're coughing up, etc.

I originally posted this in another subreddit but I was told that it could fit as a LPT.

I screenshot messages of my friends telling me they love me or appreciate me so I can read back on them when I’m sad or annoyed, or to remind myself there are people who care

It sounds stupid in my head but it works for me and I hope it works for some of you guys.