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Welcome to the Big Picture Retirement Show, where we deliver insight on what you need to know

for a meaningful and successful retirement. If you are planning for or

living in retirement, this is the show for you. I'm Devin, and I'm joined today by my co-host,

John Rowe. Howdy.

Hey, John, before we jump into the show, several months ago, you told me that you had bought the

Amazon Alexa. No, it's the Amazon Echo. That's what it's called, the Echo. And so you were telling me how cool it was. It could do all this neat stuff. And so I decided to order one myself. Oh, yeah. My wife's an early adopter on most technology. And so, yeah, we had pre-ordered when they just announced it. Oh, wow. So yeah, we've, we've had one since it came out. Well, so after listening to

you talk about it and talking about it, And so, yeah, we had pre-ordered when they just announced it. Oh, wow. So, yeah, we've had one since it came out.

Well, so after listening to you talk about it and talk about how fantastic it was, I decided it's time to order one for myself. So I got one. I set it up in my kitchen, and we absolutely love it. It's fantastic. Oh, yeah. No, we've now expanded to where we have one in almost every room,

including at my office and in our individual offices and stuff. Yep. So the other day, I ordered

an extra one to put just in my office here so I could listen to stuff in the downtime when I'm

working and stuff like that because it's so much easier to listen to stuff on the Alexa than it

is to go out online and find it or anything like that. In addition, it'll do all of this other stuff too, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, we've even gotten to where we'll order stuff off the Amazon and things just with the basically by asking for it. Oh, I know. It's crazy. You just tell Alexa to order something And it does. Some of the other things that it will do, though, is I know people who turn their lights on and off with this thing. Sure. With those enabled little plug-in things that you use. They adjust their thermostats with it. Yep. Karen, my wife, she uses it to build a shopping list. And then when she goes to the store, everything that she just told Alexa to add to her shopping list is right there in her out.

Yeah, they're a neat little tool.

Yeah. build a shopping list. And then when she goes to the store, everything that she just told Alexa to add to her shopping list is right there in her out. Yeah, they're a neat little tool. Yeah, it's fantastic. One of the other things that it will do is it'll pull up the episodes of our podcast. That's right. So I actually listen to our podcast quite often in the mornings before anyone ends up. I'm in there listening to it, figuring out

how we can improve it. But there's going to be a little bit more in the show later on about how

you can get your own echo, because we're going to give one away. That's right. Fantastic.

Everybody needs one of these things. Devin, you know, one of the things that I've routinely

run across over the 15 years that I've been doing

this sort of stuff.

And in fact,

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