Prepd Pack Lunchbox

We’ve been talking about the benefits of dinnertime for years. Psychiatrists have proof dinnertime 4 nights a week helps kids grow up to be more focused. So, why is it so hard for parents to keep this ritual alive? Here’s some help. This DinnerTime Plus app reminds your kids that it’s dinnertime by locking them out of the device that they are using until the meal is over. In my day we weren’t allowed to answer the phone during dinner. That was the only possible distraction. These days phones do SO much more than just ring. I can’t imagine what the pavlovian effect is on kids when they are not able to answer all the dings, dongs, beeps and bings from their phone during dinner. Cheers to forced focus.

Speaking of marrying two life passions (see Wednesday’s post) today we bring that idea a little closer to home. This week Google announced Google Trips, it’s obviously named travel app. Here at FTHQ, we love nothing more than eating new delicious food with new interesting friends. So, this could come in handy. We’ve tried to go digital with our travel details but never found a place we can keep everything at our finger tips especially when not connected to the internet after landing in some rando city with crazy high roaming charges (thanks Lima). Up until now, we’ve cobbled together some Foursquare lists and Google MyMaps hoping we’d be able to access both our curated food notes and location info. There’s usually a fail at some point in the trip. Enter Google Trips App (iOS and Android, of course). The promise is “everything where you need it, no internet necessary”. If you look close you get a sneak peek of where we’re headed for our next gastro-adventure. We’re excited to give it a go. We’ll report back.

Visa wants to help curb your appetite and fatten your wallet. On average American’s spend $53 a week on lunch. I can only imagine how us NYers index on that scale. I’d guess we’re scrapping $100. Their new lunch tracker app aims to curb this craving and ultimately help you buy a house or a boat or a vacation or just build that retirement account. For many of us it will help us afford that Eleven Madison Park meal we’ve been jonesing for. The app is part of Visa’s larger financial education program, Practical Money Skills for Life. We could all use a little help understanding “practical” these days even if it results in deferring food spend to another meal.