(by Kemper B. at TWC)
Here at The Wealth Conservancy, we focus primarily on wealth coaching for inheritors, as well as wealth management for heirs. However, we do like to throw in the periodic blog post about everyday items that can be useful to all TWC Blog readers. Today’s topic is how a useful little app saved me from having to buy a brand-new phone.
My wife, Kaylyn, and I were flying back home to Colorado from a wedding in California in early November. As far as the flight was concerned, everything was normal. Once we landed at DIA, we were able to catch the bus that would take us to the parking lot in Boulder where we left our cars. After shoveling my wife’s car out of the snow, I let her go home ahead of me, so that she wouldn’t have to wait around for me to finish getting the snow off my truck. Once I finished shoveling and got into my truck to warm up, I noticed that I didn’t have my phone on me.
Hoping that I had left my phone in my wife’s car, I began my drive home, albeit a bit more nervous than usual. After getting home, I asked my wife if she had seen my phone in her car, only to be met with the stomach wrenching answer, “No, I haven’t.” My mind began to race, worrying that it could be anywhere from the bottom of a pile of snow to sitting in the hands of an unscrupulous thief.
While I was nearing a full-on panic attack, my wife had the brilliant idea of using “Find My iPhone” to track my phone’s location. She was able to find out that I had left my phone on the bus seat, and that the bus was still enroute up in the Nederland area just outside of Boulder. The neat thing about “Find My iPhone” is that not only are you able to see the location of the missing phone, but it will give you directions to the phone as well. So, mapping out that it would take the bus the same amount of time it would take me to get back to Boulder, I set back out to try and intercept the bus before it was too late.
I took my wife’s phone with me on my journey, so that I could keep track of my phone’s location. Whenever the bus I was tracking passed me, I tailed behind it, hoping to cut it off at its next stop and retrieve my phone. Unfortunately, it was 1 o’clock in the morning and the bus wasn’t going to make any more stops for the night. I followed the bus back to the bus depot. Without wanting to lose track of all the progress I made, I decided to enter the bus depot. After talking to one of the workers there, he was able to find my phone, sitting there right in the seat where I had left it. Going home victorious, I started thinking about how wonderful a tool “Find My iPhone” is.
For those of you who own iPhones and other Apple products, “Find My” is an app that allows you to track all of your Apple products within seconds. You can use it to keep track of your AirPods that often go missing, and even have it send you alerts whenever a device is outside of your immediate area. If you lose your phone in a hard-to-see place with your ringer off, “Find My” has an option that allows you to play a sound. If you are in an unfortunate situation where you know that your phone, laptop, or iPad has been stolen, you can erase all the data that is stored on the device by using the cloud, and you can remotely lock the device. This helps prevent anyone from gaining access to your personal data, and if someone were to try and reset your device, “Find My” would require the thief to enter your Apple Account password beforehand. For Android users, they have an app fairly similar to Apple’s, called “Find My Device.” The biggest difference between the two comes down to the interface.
If you are a client of the firm and would like me to help you with downloading the app and ensuring that all your compatible devices are listed, please call us at 303.444.1919, and I will be more than happy to assist you.