Month: August 2026

What it’s Like to Use Avulux glasses for Migraine Light-Sensitivity

Two pairs of glasses are displayed on a turquoise surface. The pair in the foreground are yellowish safety glasses, and the pair in the background look like sunglasses and are propped on a case with the Avulux brand.

[Transparency: I was gifted the two pairs of Avulux glasses seen in this picture to trial in exchange for my honest review.]

I’ve had migraine for nearly thirty years. During that time, I have tried a lot of medications. Only one or two have been effective in treating my migraine symptoms. Although migraine is the second most disabling condition in the world (back pain being number one), migraine research is woefully underfunded.

Despite the lack of funding, fortunately, recent migraine research has resulted in several new classes of migraine-specific medications which seem to be having good results for many people, such as gepants like Ubrelvy, and CGRP monoclonal antibodies like Aimovig, Ajovy and Emgality.

Additionally, non-medicinal therapies have been emerging as well. These include biofeedback, neuromodulation devices (e.g., Cefaly; Nerivio, gammaCore; etc.), vitamins and supplements, and light-spectrum devices such as green light lamps/green lightbulbs and migraine glasses.

Migraine glasses filter out/block certain wavelengths of light in order to reduce photophobia symptoms. For more information on migraine glasses, I recommend this very good overview from the Association of Migraine Disorders.

Avulux is one of the companies producing migraine glasses that alter light for potential photophobia (light-sensitivity) relief. Unlike most companies, which filter out blue light only, Avulux filters out blue, amber, and red light, letting only green light wavelengths through their lenses.

Because I blog about migraine, Avulux very generously reached out to me and offered to let me trial their migraine glasses. I was gifted two pair: the Nimbus and the ProtectLite Fitover. Avulux gave me a choice of frames, and I selected the Nimbus because they were a wider style (and I have a wider face) and they were very lightweight. The Fitover glasses are designed to fit over prescription eyeglasses and, according to Avulux, are “safety goggles [which] are impact rated ANSI Z87+”. [At least, this was true about the style I tried, which does not seem to be currently available.]

After a two-month trial that became a two-year trial due to my fluctuating health conditions, here are my perceptions of the Avulux glasses. The Nimbus glasses, with a titanium frame, are very lightweight. In fact, they are lighter weight than the lightest-weight plastic frames I had for my prescription eyeglasses. They are so comfortable to wear that I transitioned to titanium frames for my prescription eyeglasses after trying the Avulux Nimbus frames. Since the pair I was gifted are not prescription (although Avulux does sell prescription versions of their migraine glasses), I was not able to wear them for computer work. So I have been trialing the Nimbus primarily outdoors, where I don’t usually need prescription lenses. In fact, I now keep them by the back door and wear them every hour while I’m doing my hourly steps outdoors. They really help make the sunlight more bearable.

While I found the ProtectLite Fitover glasses to be very adjustable, and I was excited that I might be able to wear them over my prescription glasses, and thus use them while I was on the computer, in practice I found it difficult to wear two pairs of glasses at the same time – there just wasn’t enough real estate on my nose for both pairs, and the Fitover glasses kept sliding off the end of my nose. Additionally, I found that the Fitover glasses aren’t compatible with my Cefaly device, meaning the Cefaly sits in such a position on my forehead that the Fitover glasses could not then be worn at the same time because the upper edge of the glasses lands at the same place on my forehead. So I could not wear the Fitover glasses when I was actively treating a migraine headache with my Cefaly device.

Overall, I am impressed with the thought that has gone into the design of both pairs of Avulux glasses I received. The Nimbus are very lightweight, and the Fitover are highly adjustable. The area I use as an office space is very dark, as I hide from the provocation of South Florida sunshine, and I think that my eyes had dark-adapted, becoming even more light-sensitive as a result. Wearing the Avulux Nimbus glasses while I did my hourly outdoor micro walks has made me less light-sensitive, and they have become an essential part of my daily routine. If your health insurance will cover them or they fit within your budget, I would recommend trying them. I am grateful to Avulux for this opportunity to trial a new migraine device, and I appreciate their patience.

TL;DR: Although I was unable during this trial to use Avulux light sensitivity lenses while doing computer work, I did benefit from using them outdoors, as I think my eyes became less light-sensitive due to their use. I have added them to my migraine toolbox as a device that gives me some relief from my migraine symptoms. (In very bright South Florida sunlight, I still need to pair them with a hat to block light coming in from above.) I am grateful to Avulux for this opportunity to trial a new migraine device.

NOTE: As I am finishing revising this blog post, the FDA has given a De Novo classification to Avulux, which is a regulatory pathway that grants marketing authorization for novel low-to-moderate risk medical devices. As I understand it, this means that the FDA does not think Avulux glasses are like other, preceding types of light-blocking lenses, but are instead establishing a new category of migraine light-sensitivity device. According to Avulux, the new FDA regulation is 21 CFR 882.5811, titled Light Attenuation Lenses for Migraine-associated Light Sensitivity. Avulux lenses are now classified as over-the-counter Class 1 medical devices under product code QEO. As I understand it, this means Avulux lenses may now be FSA/HSA eligible (which would also extend to ABLE account qualified expenses, I think). I am neither a doctor nor a tax specialist, so this is not advice, just informational. Please check with your doctor and/or tax specialist to verify whether this product is an eligible/qualifying use of these specific funds (ABLE/FSA/HSA).

Book Review: Quit Like A Millionaire: No Gimmicks, Luck, or Trust Fund Required

Picture of a delicious-looking crêpe topped with ice cream sitting on a plate on a table beside the book Quit Like A Millionaire

This review is embarrassingly long-overdue. I won a free (signed) copy of the paperback in a contest on jlcollinsnh.com . It was a simple raffle, with no strings attached, but it is customary in circumstances such as these to review the book. Which has taken me a very long time to do because I am chronically ill/disabled, and for a long time, my brain was not working well enough to be able to read anything more taxing than social media or article abstracts. However, this year I have regained a bit of cognitive function, and have been able to read a few books, for which I am incredibly grateful. So, without further ado, here is my very tardy book review:

For a very long time, most of the voices in the personal finance space were male and white and economically privileged. In the US, that started to change in the 80s and 90s, with books like Making the Most of Your Money, by Jane Bryant Quinn (1991); Your Money or Your Life (YMOYL), written by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin (1992); and The Tightwad Gazette I, II, and III, written by Amy Dacyczyn (1992, 1995, 1996).

Personal Finance books started to reflect some societal changes, such as women in the workplace, with credit cards in their own names, money to invest, and the desire to plan for their financial security and their retirement. But the voices were still predominantly white and higher socioeconomic status (SES). Even the book The Millionaire Next Door (1996), which featured examples of men who had become wealthy in (mostly) blue-collar professions and who discussed their down-to-earth lifestyles (as contrasted to splashy millionaires on TV like those featured in Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, or fictionalized in the shows Dynasty and Dallas), mostly referred to their wives as stay-at-home coupon-clippers (in other words, they could afford to be single-income families, and the husband was the breadwinner).

As I began my adult life, I learned to get rid of debt and to begin to save. But once I reached that point, I was baffled about what to do next. No one *I* knew had investments or retirement accounts. The most financially-savvy people I knew had Christmas accounts, which saved an allocation from your paycheck each month so that you could withdraw your savings at the end of the year and be able to afford the extra expenses of the Christmas holidays. (That’s what they were called, and no one seemed to acknowledge that not all employees celebrated Christmas.)

In fact, to back my story up even further, I was a first-generation college student. And, boy, did I *not* know what I was doing when I went through middle school, high school, and college! The expectation that I would *go* to college was crystal clear and frequently reinforced, but how to get accepted to college, how to select an academic major, and how a college degree translated to getting a “good job” afterward were pretty mysterious to me. I pretty much flailed my way through all of it.

As I tried to learn about personal finance, I eventually turned to the personal finance section of my local public library and read nearly the entire section. Most of those books were helpful, but didn’t represent my circumstances. So imagine my delight, years later, to read a book written by someone who came from similar circumstances. In fact, in many ways, her childhood circumstances had been far worse than mine. While I grew up below the poverty level in America, Kristy Shen was born in abject poverty in Communist China.

In Quit Like a Millionaire, Kristy talks about things I never saw mentioned in other personal finance books, such as:

“When you’re poor, your choice isn’t between Barbie and My Little Pony. Your choice is between food, heat, and medicine, in that order.”

Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung, Quit Like a Millionaire, p.4

I remember My Boomer Parent begging the apartment manager for more time to come up with the rent payment. I remember the phone or the electricity being turned off because the bill hadn’t been paid. I remember having no medical insurance for most of my childhood, and therefore never seeing a doctor or a dentist. I remember finding ways to get to extracurricular activities (in order to have a college-worthy resume) because we couldn’t afford to own a car. But these are experiences I seldom saw represented in the personal finance/Financial Independence (PF/FIRE) communities.

Most people are talking about how to go from being well-off in affluent countries to being even better off, so that they can afford to stop working altogether and even travel the world. (Which is, in fact, what Kristy and Bryce have done – quit working and travel the world.) But Kristy is one of the only people talking about getting to that point after starting at a point so very, very far away from that – a point at which her family lived on forty-four cents a day.

While I enjoyed all of Kristy and Bryce’s book, the parts that resonated the most with me were the ones in which Kristy talks about education.

“Around the world, education often remains the only way out of poverty.” – Kristy Shen & Bryce Leung, Quit Like a Millionaire, p.24

Education was my pathway out of poverty, and it was Spousal Unit’s pathway out of poverty as well. And when I read chapter four, in which Kristy talks about how she selected both a college and a degree program based upon how much the associated career would pay after graduation in relation to how much the tuition was to attend said college and complete said degree, I suddenly flashed back to ninth grade.

Where I grew up, middle school/junior high consisted of grades 7, 8, and 9, and high school consisted of grades 10, 11, and 12. In the spring semester of ninth grade, guidance counselors came from the high school to the junior high school to help process our transition between schools in the fall. I distinctly remember the guidance counselor asking me what I wanted my academic major to be in high school. I was not prepared for this question. Not only did I not know I would be asked this question, I didn’t know what an academic major was, let alone which one I should select. The guidance counselor was very patient with me as I asked him numerous questions, but he refused to answer when I asked him which major was the “best” or which one I “should” major in. He insisted that I had to select for myself, and that he would not influence my decision.

I’ve thought about this moment a lot over the years, but it wasn’t until I read Quit Like a Millionaire that I finally fully understood this interplay. The guidance counselor might have had many reasons for not wanting to influence my decision. But he never understood my fundamental questions, which I didn’t myself know how to express: “Which academic major in high school is going to lead to the most career opportunities later in my life? Which academic major is going to lift me out of poverty? Which academic major will lead to financial security?” Eventually, I chose to major in math and science in high school, which led to a full-ride scholarship for college, a guaranteed job after college, and ultimately, financial security and financial independence.

But in ninth grade, what I was really asking the guidance counselor was, “How do I prepare in high school for a secure job in the future where I can make enough to pay my bills?” However, as well-meaning as my guidance counselor was, he couldn’t understand the questions I didn’t know how to word, because he didn’t have the same frame-of-reference I did: Poverty and determination to get out of poverty. Like Kristy, I wasn’t thinking about what classes I might enjoy in high school, or what my passions were. I was thinking about survival. The guidance counselor was asking me clarifying questions like “What do I enjoy?” and “What are my aptitudes?” None of that mattered to me then. From a survival mode, all I wanted to know is how to secure a J-O-B. “What would make me marketable?” Like Kristy and her dad, I wanted to know how to turn education into financial security.

Unlike me, Kristy found a way to express and quantify this idea, and her Pay-Over-Tuition (POT) calculation (pp. 27-28) has stayed with me ever since I read this book, and it’s a tool I highly recommend to others.

If you are financially comfortable, you might have the luxury to study whatever you desire. If you’re not, then Kristy’s calculations can help you decide where to go to college, how much to pay for college, and what academic major/future career to select, in such a way as to pursue the greatest potential rate-of-return.

Of course, as we’ve seen with the recent upheaval in the computer technology career space, there are no guarantees. Economies change. Politics change. The best you can do is make the best decision you can at the time with the information you’ve got. Quit Like a Millionaire helps you make those decisions.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading Quit Like a Millionaire and hearing voices and experiences represented with which I could identify. I hope we will continue to see more personal finance content that represents a broader range of the human experience and the financial experience. Everyone can benefit from access to financial information and financial conversations, and sometimes it helps to hear from a voice with which one can more closely identify.

NOTE: I was not compensated in any way for this review, other than having won a free copy of this book in a contest in exchange for my honest review.

Our Biggest Financial Liability is My Boomer Parent


Personal finance is personal – each person/family has a unique set of circumstances. Many of the loudest voices in the personal finance space are those of privileged individuals who have not had the additional struggle of providing for family members. But the experience of providing for or assisting family members is not uncommon, and I think it’s important to see that experience represented, and to talk about how it affects one’s financial journey.

We recently received our annual property tax estimate for the home in which My Boomer Parent lives, which prompted us to sit down and calculate how much it currently costs us to keep a roof over My Boomer Parent’s head. Which, in turn, caused me to realize that My Boomer Parent is our greatest financial liability. (Although the mortgage on the house in which we live is currently our biggest monthly expense, the expenses for the additional house in which My Boomer Parent lives is our second-biggest monthly expense, and would be our greatest expense if homeowners insurance hadn’t soared here in Florida. Between insurance where we live and taxes where My Boomer Parent lives, the costs of both houses keep increasing, and compete for which one costs us more. But we also occasionally help My Boomer Parent with other expenses as well.)

Supporting My Boomer Parent started out slowly and increased over time, much like the proverbial frog being cooked in a pot of water. First, my step-parent lost their job and was forced into early retirement. Without my step-parent’s income, my parents could no longer afford the monthly rent on their apartment in a high cost-of-living area (HCOL).

So, we moved them to a much lower cost-of-living (COL) area and bought them a house to live in. We figured this way we wouldn’t have to worry about them not being able to afford housing. They agreed to reimburse us for the monthly mortgage payments. This arrangement worked well until my step-parent abruptly passed away.

My Boomer Parent has always refused to discuss their finances, but they’ve always been working class. There isn’t much money to stretch. I helped them apply for Social Security benefits after my step-parent passed away. There was also a very modest pension. But, over time, their mortgage reimbursements to us dwindled and then stopped. We could afford to absorb the expense because Spousal Unit was still working, because we were frugal with our spending, and because we had purchased the house in a low COL area before house prices had skyrocketed. We took over the house payments because we felt like keeping a roof over My Boomer Parent’s head was the right thing to do.

A few years after my step-parent died, My Boomer Parent wanted to move to live closer to family. The new location was a higher cost-of-living area than where they had been living, but lower than where they had lived when step-parent had to retire. We sold their house and bought them a new, more expensive house (but still before housing prices skyrocketed). Spousal Unit was still working. We discussed the fact that this house was more expensive, but My Boomer Parent did not offer to reimburse us for any of the expenses. (They do pay for their utilities.)

Property taxes are much higher in the new location. (Their old state was in the lowest quintile for property taxes. Their new state is in the highest quintile.) The new house is located within a Homeowners Association (HOA), which has an annual fee. (Previous house did not have an HOA.) We also pay for insurance on the house and maintenance and repairs to the house and property.

More years passed. Real estate prices skyrocketed. Property tax assessed values increased significantly. And Spousal Unit has been retired for over a decade. We have worked diligently to decrease our fixed expenses. But the expenses for My Boomer Parent’s house keep increasing.

Spousal Unit and I are financially secure, due to a lot of hard work, some privilege, and some luck. [I acknowledge the role that all three play, and credit Angela Rozmyn of Women’s Personal Finance with putting the idea into words.]

As we toiled to become financially secure, we also assisted and provided for our parents and several of our siblings and nieces and nephews along the way. There are a lot of emotions that go along with that, but I am grateful that Spousal Unit has never resented our decisions to provide for our family members, even after I stopped working and Spousal Unit was carrying more of the financial burden. (Although, after more than two decades of paying for an additional house for My Boomer Parent to live in, and as the costs continue to climb, Spousal Unit is getting a little frustrated.)

To be honest, we never expected, when we made the decision to help my parents, that we’d be paying all of the expenses for decades. We thought we were helping My Boomer Parent and Step-parent get back on their feet after a setback, and helping them transition from a situation that was no longer sustainable to one that would be. I guess we are a cautionary tale about unintended consequences. Despite everyone’s good intentions, helping a family member financially can put a big strain on your own finances. Also, be very careful about deciding to co-sign a loan or a lease for a family member (or anyone else), because you might be stuck making the payments and if you can’t, your credit rating will be damaged and the debtor can sue you. It’s normal to want to help your loved ones, just try to do it in ways that won’t destroy your own financial security. [We’re fine. Just trying to pass along some financial wisdom.]

Reaching financial security while assisting family members and providing housing to several family members along the way has been more difficult than doing it without those extra expenses/responsibilities. Not gonna lie, sometimes I envy people whose parents have assisted their journey through life. But I also appreciate what I have gained by standing on my own two feet and working hard to leave poverty behind and reach financial security. However, I acknowledge that not everyone has the same privileges I have had, especially health privilege when I was younger, to be able to reach financial security through hard work. I also acknowledge that the current economy is very different than it was when I was working toward financial security.

If you choose to help your family financially, one challenge is to help them without enabling them to become financially dependent on you or enabling them to continue to make bad financial decisions. And another challenge is to be able to help loved ones without undermining your own financial position, if for no other reason than that you cannot continue to help them if you have nothing left to give. While we have succeeded at the second, I’m afraid we may have failed at the first. Given My Boomer Parent’s age and financial situation, we will most likely be paying for their housing expenses for the rest of their life (unless/until they need assisted living care). And while I do not want to see them out on the street, it’s also hard to avoid occasionally thinking about all of the other things Spousal Unit and I could have done with all the money we have spent housing My Boomer Parent for decades. There is an opportunity cost to spending one’s money helping others financially.

These are just a few aspects of the choice to help one’s family financially. There are others I didn’t cover here, such as the potential strains it can put on a marriage/partnership. Furthermore, helping one’s family financially is not just a financial decision, but also can be an emotional, spiritual, and/or culturally-based decision as well. No matter how you frame it, helping family members financially multiplies the number of people in your financial plan, and makes reaching your financial goals more challenging. It’s time we acknowledge that, and include these voices/stories/case studies in the personal finance space.

Have you helped family financially? What lessons have you learned from the experience? What advice would you give? Please share in the comments below.