Alumnus to bring athletic injury analysis to Stroudsburg High

While playing for his middle school football team, Scott Dietrich broke his hand in a game. The hand required a fiberglass casting and sidelined Dietrich for the next four weeks.Dietrich remembers hating having to wait for his hand to heal before he was allowed to play again, but in retrospect, it may have saved his life. He also suffered a concussion in that game, and playing again too soon could have caused him severe brain damage.From playing football all the way through to [...]

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Alumni brings athletic injury analysis to Stroudsburg High

While playing for his middle school football team, Scott Dietrich broke his hand in a game. The hand required a fiberglass casting and sidelined Dietrich for the next four weeks.Dietrich remembers hating having to wait for his hand to heal before he was allowed to play again, but in retrospect, it may have saved his life. He also suffered a concussion in that game, and playing again too soon could have caused him severe brain damage.From playing football all the way through to [...]

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Mount Airy slots score in July

Mount Airy outperformed the state in slots growth during July.The Paradise Township casino resort generated $13.9 million in slots revenues during the month, a 2.9 percent jump over July 2015, according to figures released Tuesday by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board.The state’s lots revenues from its 12 licensed casinos rose 1.1 percent in July to $213.4 million, compared with July 2015 of $211 million. The small gain was somewhat surprising considering July had [...]

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Incoming Starbucks will relocate voters from Eastburg 1st, 2nd wards this November

The people’s right to vote won’t be stopped this Election Day by the thirst for a new coffee shop.But planned construction of a Starbucks coffee shop on the East Stroudsburg University campus could result in voters from East Stroudsburg’s first and second wards voting in a different section of Dansbury Commons on Nov. 8.Voters normally cast ballots in the lower level of Dansbury Commons. Campus cooking and dining facilities are located on the upper level of [...]

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Eastburg food pantry honors constables

Manuel Rodriguez of Delaware Water Gap and Sean Benjamin of East Stroudsburg were both raised to realize the importance of serving the community.That's why both became state constables.These are elected law enforcement officers who work with district courts, as opposed to officers hired to municipal police departments or troopers hired by the state and assigned to barracks. Like police, state constables are authorized to carry guns, make arrests, serve warrants, conduct [...]

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Pioneer Diner rolls along after 45 years

A Mount Pocono restaurant has something special to celebrate this Labor Day. September will mark almost half a century of business for the family-run diner.“This place will be 45 years old,” said Nick Korovesis, manager and chef for the Pioneer Diner. His father, Constantine, has, since 1971, owned the restaurant at 508 Pocono Boulevard.“All together I’ve been here about 30 of those years,” said Nick Korovesis. “I was thrown into it at [...]

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Deeds done

Barrett TownshipFannie Mae (By Atty, A/K/A) Federal National Mortgage Association, KML Law Group PC (Atty) to James Walsh, Lot 6, Final Plan Subdivision of Lands of Harry Howard, Parcel 01/113054, $215,000Chestnuthill TownshipLois M. Flynn to Jonathan Chou and Asami Kondo, Lot 47, Section II, Countryside, $280,000Amy Michetti to Barbara and Bryan Schultz, Lot 1, Final Plan, "Subdivision of Lands of Charles Cogan Jr." containing 3. [...]

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Birth announcements, Sunday, August 7, 2016

Grayson Lawrence BorgerBryan and Amber Borger of Effort announce the birth of a son on July 14 at Pocono Medical Center, weighing 10 pounds. The baby has been named Grayson Lawrence.Older child is Clayton.Their mother is the former Amber Heckman.Grandparents are: Mark and Gail Heckman of Effort; Duane and Michele Frable of Palmerton; and Dennis and Joye Borger of Kunkletown.Madison Hope RipleyWesley and Jillian [...]

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Inspiration from Pat Summitt, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and More

Once a month (or so), I share a dozen things that have inspired me to greater personal, professional, and financial success in my life. I hope they bring similar success to your life.

1. Ralph Waldo Emerson on success

“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children… to leave the world a better place… to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

I view success as leaving the world a better place than where I found it. Have I improved the lives of others? Have I contributed something to the world? Have those contributions been worth the negatives I have brought – the waste I’ve produced and so on?

I’d like to think so, but I’m not sure. That sense of not being sure gets me up in the morning. It motivates me. It makes me want to make sure that today is a day where I do something positive in the world.

2. Van Gogh’s paintings redone with a “tilt-shift” effect

Recently, a friend of mine showed me this set of wonderful images of van Gogh’s paintings redone using a “tilt-shift” effect in what I assume must be Photoshop, though this is a Photoshop technique that’s out of my rudimentary image processing skill set. I find these images hauntingly beautiful, as they take some of the paintings I most love in the world and transform them in stunning ways.

I was able to figure out that these alterations were done by a reddit user named melonshade; kudos to him or her for the absolutely stunning works. Melonshade claims to have primarily used the blur tool within Photoshop to create these effects, which must have taken some time. It certainly produced some amazing results.

In fact, I actually wouldn’t mind having prints of a few of these on my walls, though I have no idea as to the legality of selling prints of such works. Images like these – digital modifications of digital reproductions of old paintings – get into really strange areas of copyright.

3. John Steinbeck on summer and winter

“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.” – John Steinbeck

I actually think the reverse is true as well, but I’m a northern Midwesterner, so by default I appreciate the cold weather.

In a broader sense, though, it’s all about being on both sides of the fence so that you can see that the grass is always greener on the other side. On a scorching hot summer day, I sometimes long for winter. On a frigid winter day, I sometimes long for summer.

The truth is that they both bring something wonderful to the table, something I wouldn’t really trade for anything else. The promise of summer makes winter bearable, and the promise of winter makes summer bearable. The truth is that both are wonderful and it’s only the extended periods of extreme weather that really make me desire the other.

4. Tom Hulme on what we can learn from shortcuts

From the description:

How do you build a product people really want? Allow consumers to be a part of the process. “Empathy for what your customers want is probably the biggest leading indicator of business success,” says designer Tom Hulme. In this short talk, Hulme lays out three insightful examples of the intersection of design and user experience, where people have developed their own desire paths out of necessity. Once you know how to spot them, you’ll start noticing them everywhere.

You really need to watch this video. Hulme lays out a concept called a “desire path” that is going to stick in your head. You’re going to see it over and over and over again in life once you understand what it is.

What I find interesting is that these things don’t just pop up in physical paths. They pop up on websites. They pop up in our own time use. They pop up in how we do our work and how we spend our time. Desire paths are everywhere.

To me, it’s just another way of looking at the idea of “the path of least resistance.” People are going to consistently root out the method of least effort to get the result that they want. You do it yourself, and so do I. The real question is what we can learn from those paths of least resistance. What is it saying about what we desire? What is it saying about how we do things?

Look at what you do every day. You can learn a ton.

5. Abraham Lincoln on preparation

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” – Abraham Lincoln

This is a quote that I see popping up from time to time in email signatures or in the forewords of books. It’s a quote all about the value of preparation, of course; a sharp axe will be far more effective than a dull one, so much so that the time spent in sharpening the axe will more than pay for itself later on.

I learn that all the time in almost everything that I do. The more I prepare to write an article, for example, the faster by far the writing process actually is, so much so that in the end it’s actually shorter to go through a sensible process for preparing the article.

The trick, for me, is figuring out when to stop sharpening my axe and to start cutting. I fully understand the value of axe sharpening, but sometimes I tend to sharpen too much, not leaving myself adequate time for the task at hand.

6. Tristan Harris on how better technology could protect us from distraction

From the descriotion:

How often does technology interrupt us from what we really mean to be doing? At work and at play, we spend a startling amount of time distracted by pings and pop-ups — instead of helping us spend our time well, it often feels like our tech is stealing it away from us. Design thinker Tristan Harris offers thoughtful new ideas for technology that creates more meaningful interaction. He asks: “What does the future of technology look like when you’re designing for the deepest human values?”

My cell phone is a giant distraction. In fact, quite often, when I need to work, I literally put my cell phone in another room. I don’t need to hear the beeps or dings from my phone because the vast majority of the things that my phone tells me are urgent but not in the least bit important.

What I would love is a phone that’s truly smart enough to only actually alert me when there’s something genuinely important happening. A phone that can figure out when something is truly important and only lets me know about those things would be great. I’d still want to be able to review the less important things, but on my own terms.

For me, the risk of missing something important – something more important than the task I’m working on at the moment – is pretty small, so it’s worth it for me to just drop distractions entirely. It’s sad that it has to be that way, that there’s no way to be connected and not distracted, and it’s a useful puzzle to solve, because when it’s actually solved, it will make technology far, far more useful than ever before.

7. Marcus Aurelius on pain

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” ― Marcus Aurelius

There is a lot of pain in life. Physical. Emotional. Spiritual. It can add up and really drag you down.

The number one most valuable skill I have ever learned in my life is the ability to put it out of my mind for a while. It doesn’t matter how bad things are screaming, I can shut down pain for at least a while when I want to.

When I was a little kid, I had an extremely painful surgery. During the recovery process, my doctor told me that it was going to hurt a lot in the coming weeks. It did. I put it out of my mind a lot in those weeks. At first, it was just to give me peace to rest. Soon afterwards, it was to give me peace while I did things with friends. Eventually, I found that the pain wasn’t there at all.

I’ve done the same thing with lots of different pains in my life. I woke up once in such bad back pain that I literally couldn’t bend myself into a standing position for fifteen minutes. I then proceeded to fly cross country that day while carrying several heavy bags through the airport on both ends of the flight.

I had a girl dump me once. I thought it was the end of the world. I put it out of my mind and within three days my future wife had asked me out on a date. She didn’t know that anything was bothering me.

You can revoke the pain in your life if you want to, at least for a little while. You can sink it and submerge it and perhaps find that you really can deal with it.

8. Pat Summitt on losing

“Losing strengthens you. It reveals your weaknesses so you can fix them.” – Pat Summitt

A few days ago, I was joking about the graveyard of other blogs that I attempted to launch over the years, either prior to The Simple Dollar or even after The Simple Dollar launched.

I had a blog devoted to parenting issues (that one was actually kind of successful). I had a blog devoted to board gaming (an utter failure). I had one devoted to personal productivity (it had potential, but it ended up being more useful to me than to anyone else, I think). I had one devoted to philosophical issues (I deeply, deeply enjoyed writing this one – it had almost no readers).

All of those blogs failed for various reasons, most of them related to time, but at least in part due to the fact that they just didn’t catch on for one reason or another. Maybe the topic was too narrow, for instance, or maybe I didn’t promote it.

Each time I saw a blog fail, though, I learned something. I learned about how not to attract an audience. I learned about good topic selection. I learned about how to write in a way that engaged people.

And, from all of that, The Simple Dollar was born. It rests on a foundation of a lot of failure.

I failed. Many times. It strengthened me. It made everything I did after that much stronger.

9. Sajay Samuel on how college loans exploit students for profit

From the description:

“Once upon a time in America,” says professor Sajay Samuel, “going to college did not mean graduating with debt.” Today, higher education has become a consumer product — costs have skyrocketed, saddling students with a combined debt of over $1 trillion, while universities and loan companies make massive profits. Samuel proposes a radical solution: link tuition costs to a degree’s expected earnings, so that students can make informed decisions about their future, restore their love of learning and contribute to the world in a meaningful way.

10. Buddha on happiness

“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” – Buddha

There is literally no cost to me to be happy in public. There’s no cost to me to smile at someone. There’s no cost to me to laugh at someone’s joke. There’s no cost to me to express sympathy to someone. There’s no cost to me to stop and ask someone if they need help.

Each one of those things, though, offers a huge benefit. Each one of those things makes someone else’s life better. It makes them smile, too. It makes them feel self-confident. It makes them feel less confused. It makes them feel like someone cares about their problems.

If these things can happen with literally no cost to you, why not take that step to make them happen. Smile. Listen. Share condolences. Laugh. Give some simple help. It doesn’t cost you anything, but it makes the lives of everyone around you a little better, and the waves will eventually bounce back to you.

11. Daisy

Over the years, I’ve tried out a bunch of habit-promoting apps that were designed to encourage me to build better personal habits and routines, like making sure that I exercise each day and such. These are things that I sometimes put into my to-do list, but, honestly, it’s kind of weird to have a to-do to remind me to floss. I want that habit to just become natural over a long period of time, just something I do each day.

I think Daisy is that app.

It basically just sits on your phone and sends you reminders of the things you’re trying to do each day. I find myself flipping over to that app each time a reminder comes up just to see what I missed, and usually I just do it to take care of it.

The whole app is about as simple as can be. It also generates good statistics along the way, so it’s good for “chaining” sequential days of good habit performance.

In other words, it’s basically the perfect habit building app, in my opinion. It’s free, too, unless you are wanting to build a ton of habits at once, in which case it’s $3.

12. Dietrich Bonhoeffer on regarding others

“We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

This quote has been the signature of my email for the last year or two. It’s been changing and shaping the way I look at other people.

The truth is that everyone you meet has been through some sort of pain in their life, and some have been through far more than others. Everyone has the capacity to bear some burdens, but sometimes people have more thrown on their shoulders than they can stand.

As human beings, even if we’re not willing or able to help that person, the least we can do is respect that person. It is far, far too easy to judge someone else through the eyes of our own experiences and burdens, because that’s all we have. It’s very likely that the person you see on the street, having been given your burdens and your advantages, might have turned out very much like you. But they weren’t given those burdens and they weren’t given those advantages.

The vast, vast majority of people are trying to do the best they can with the situation they’re in, with the burdens they’re carrying and with the advantages they have. Some people simply have fewer advantages and more burdens, often through no fault of their own.

Keep that in mind as you interact with the people around you. Ask yourself what burdens they carry. You might end up seeing that person a little differently, and that might end up shaping how you see the world a little bit, too.

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What Is a Balance Transfer (and Should I Consider It)?

If you’re struggling with high-interest debt, a balance transfer credit card could be the solution to your problem. By moving balances from your high-interest credit cards to a balance transfer credit card, you can score a 0% interest rate for 12 to 21 months, buying you time to make faster progress on your debt – or even pay it off entirely. Not only can you do this with minimal or even zero fees, but you can save hundreds – or even thousands – of dollars in interest during your balance transfer’s introductory offer.

Many consumers are hesitant to get another credit card when they’re already in debt, however, and that makes sense. With yet another credit card in your wallet, you could potentially get even further into debt, right?

That’s absolutely true, if you’re not careful and disciplined. Yet many people have learned how to use a balance transfer to their advantage. As with anything else, there are certain rules you should follow when you transfer a balance, and best practices that keep you from spiraling back into debt. We’ll get to some of those tips in a minute.

How a Balance Transfer Works

Let’s start with how this process works. When you’re ready to transfer a balance, the first thing you’ll do is shop around for a new balance transfer credit card. While there are several criteria to consider, the biggest factors worth mentioning are the length of the card’s introductory 0% interest offer, and the card’s associated transfer fees. Let’s look at a few specific cards to illustrate how a balance transfer works in real life.

As an example, the Citi® Diamond Preferred Card® offers 0% interest on transferred balances for a full 21 months. However, it charges a balance transfer fee equal to 3% of the balance. The Chase Slate®, on the other hand, offers 0% intro APR for 15 months, but doesn’t charge a balance transfer fee in the first 60 days. Neither card charges an annual fee, and both cards revert back to normal interest rates (between 13% and 21%) once your introductory period ends.

Let’s say you owe $10,000 in credit card debt at an 18% interest rate — you would likely benefit from transferring that debt to a card with a 0% introductory APR.

If you chose the Citi® Diamond Preferred Card® for your balance transfer, you’d get 21 months to pay off your debt at 0% APR, but you would need to pay a 3% balance transfer fee — equal to $300. Over a 21-month timeline, you’d have to pay around $490 per month to pay off your entire $10,000 balance plus the $300 balance transfer fee. But at the end of those 21 months, you’d be entirely debt-free.

By comparison, if you paid $490 a month for 21 months at the original 18% interest rate, you’d have to keep paying for another four months — almost $2,000 more — before you vanquished the original $10,000 balance.

With the Chase Slate®, meanwhile, you wouldn’t have to pay a balance transfer fee for the first 60 days. On the flip side though, the 0% introductory APR period is markedly shorter. To become debt-free within this card’s 15-month 0% intro APR period, you’d need to pay $666 per month.

The right card and offer for your situation will mostly depend on how much you can afford to pay each month and which offer works best for your needs. As you shop for a balance transfer credit card, make sure to read the fine print and understand each offer in its entirety.

Tips for Getting the Most Out of a Balance Transfer

While a balance transfer might seem like a no-brainer, there are plenty of ways for this strategy to go awry. If you don’t change your habits and continue using credit to spend more than you can afford, for example, you have very little chance of improving your situation.

To make a balance transfer work, you have to dedicate yourself to using your card’s 0% APR offer to actually pay off the debt. Here are some tips that can help:

• Don’t forget to factor fees into the equation. As you search for the best balance transfer card for your needs, don’t forget to factor in fees. While at least one card doesn’t charge a balance transfer fee, others charge fees equal to 3% to 5% of the transferred balance. Needless to say, these fees can add up fast on a big balance.
• Choose the best card for your needs. After you factor in balance transfer fees, you should also look for cards that offer 0% APR for the longest time possible. With more months at 0% APR, you’ll have more time to pay down the debt without paying a dime in interest.
• Quit using credit cards for purchases. This might be the most important rule to follow. Once you transfer your balances, you must stop using your credit cards for additional purchases. If you continue using your credit cards as you once did, you’ll keep racking up more debt. If you want to stop digging yourself deeper into debt, you must break the cycle and stick to a cash budget instead.
• Make sure to pay all of your bills on time. The single biggest factor in your FICO credit score is your payment history, so it’s crucial to pay all of your bills on time. Beyond that, paying bills on time can help you avoid late fees and penalty interest rates. If your goal is getting out of debt, you don’t need any new fees in your life anyway.
• Keep old accounts open – even if you’re not using them. Once you transfer balances from your old cards, you might be tempted to shut them down. Before you do, however, realize that closing old credit card accounts can shorten your credit history and lower your utilization ratio, and thus, lower your credit score. To keep those old accounts working in your favor, keep them open — just don’t use them. (You can cut up the cards or hide them in a drawer to ward off temptation.)

The Bottom Line

A balance transfer can be an absolute lifesaver if you use it wisely, but it may not make a large impact if you continue using your credit cards and racking up debt. To get the most out of these offers, you have to change the way you think about and use credit. And most of all, you have to change the way you spend.

Have you ever used a balance transfer credit card? Why or why not?

Related Articles:

• Best Balance Transfer Credit Cards for 2016
• Five Steps You Should Take Immediately After Doing a Balance Transfer
• How to Save Money With a Balance Transfer
• In What Order Should I Pay off My Debts?

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Got a Parking Ticket? This Robot Lawyer Will Fight It for You — for Free

By the time he was 18, London native Joshua Browder had garnered 30 parking tickets.

“When I started driving, I thought I knew everything about the roads, and I didn’t,” Browder, now 19, says. “It was a combination of my carelessness and the unfair nature of the tickets.”

The self-taught coder decided to take matters into his own hands. So he created DoNotPay, the world’s first robot lawyer programmed to fight parking tickets. Then he started getting tickets on purpose to test his new system.

Thanks to DoNotPay, he ended up paying only 14 of those parking tickets. And now, his program helps other drivers fight their tickets, too.

DoNotPay Helps Drivers Fight Parking Tickets — For Free

In nine months, DoNotPay has helped appeal more than 160,000 tickets in the United Kingdom, worth about $4 million, according to Browder. And it’s won 64% of those appeals.

And most importantly to Browder, DoNotPay is free.

“Parking tickets are issued to rake in money for local governments, but that’s what taxes are for,” he says. “Some of the most vulnerable people in society are getting tickets, and that’s not fair.”

How DoNotPay Works

DoNotPay is a chatbot, which is a program that automatically generates an appeal to your parking ticket based on the way you answer a few quick questions.

To get started, visit donotpay.co.uk and sign up or log in. The program will then guide you through simple multiple choice questions.

Where was the ticket issued?

Which of these best describes why you shouldn’t receive a parking ticket?

For the second question, you’ll select an answer from 12 options ranging from “The parking bay was too small” to “Missing details on the ticket” to “I was travelling [sic] to the hospital urgently.”

Answer a few more questions until it’s time to type in your name, citation number, street of offense and the offense itself. Then click “generate appeal.”

The bot chugs through the information you’ve entered and generates either an appeal for you to copy and paste into your city’s online form or a printable version you can mail.

It all depends on jurisdiction, but, either way, you’ll receive directions as to what to do next.

DoNotPay Comes to the United States

Browder still can’t believe the number of people who are using his little coding project — which is why he plans to expand.

“It’s amazing how much parking tickets anger people,” Browder says. But he never expected his side project — something to show off to his friends — to explode and help an exponential number of people.

Last month, the chatbot launched in New York City.

It’s a bit of a test to see if his system and handle the “biggest kind of crookery,” as Browden describes New York.

“If it can work there, it can work anywhere,” he says.

He plans to debut DoNotPay in Seattle later this year and says Los Angeles is on the horizon.

It takes Browder two to three months to master the parking regulations in each city and devise the code to work with them. Luckily, he now has many lawyers on his side who want to help out in their time off.

Plus, DoNotPay Isn’t His Only Chatbot

In addition to the parking ticket system, Browden has created an interface to help people with flight delay compensation — also for free.

Browden also devised a system that allows those who are HIV-positive to prove they’ve disclosed that information to their partner (since not doing so can be punishable by law in several countries, as well as 35 states).

He’s also exploring an interface to help refugees navigate foreign legal systems.

But these are all just side jobs, really. He’s not even getting paid.

Browden plans to start his second year at Stanford University in the fall. Naturally, he’s studying economics and computer science.

Talk about an overachiever.

Your Turn: Have you ever fought a parking ticket? What happened?

Carson Kohler (@CarsonKohler) is a junior writer at The Penny Hoarder. After recently completing graduate school, she focuses on saving money — and surviving the move back in with her parents.

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