Life Hacks - Do More For Less

If you have a printer at home, you know how expensive ink cartridges can be. I have 2 teenagers in school and my husband is a graphic designer. We go through printer ink like it’s going out of style from all the printing of school work and design projects. It was getting to the point where I had to buy ink cartridges about every month and a half. At around $30-$40 per set, it was ridiculous. I needed to find a solution. I tried the refill companies, but the printer wouldn’t always work well with the refills and I was spending more time going back and forth to get replacements. The savings wasn’t worth the gas and aggravation of extra trips.

Somewhere online I saw some information about the Instant Ink program for HP printers. The program lets you pay a flat monthly fee up to $10 a month to have unlimited ink. There is a page limit on printing of up to 300 pages per month with the $10 plan. However, if you don’t use all 300 pages in a month the extra roll over for you to use if you go over the next month. I figured paying a flat fee of $10 per month, or $120 per year would save me a lot of money. I was already paying about $40 every 2 months, or about $240 per year. Besides, on the Instant Ink program HP monitors your ink use and mails out new cartridges to your door before you run out. You never have to go without or wait till the next shopping trip.

I already had an HP printer, so I called HP customer service to ask if my current printer was eligible for the Instant Ink program. Unfortunately my model of printer was one generation before they started making them Instant Ink compatible. But the company offered to give me a huge discount on the new model if I wanted to trade up, so I was able to get a new printer for about $40. The money I have saved on ink since the upgrade has been well worth it. We have been on the Instant Ink program for about a year now, and it has been wonderful. I never have kids frantic about needing to print out homework and now I don’t get steamed when one of them needs to print a full page in color. We’ve always got more ink ready to go.

This week’s theme has been your virtual office and how to get things done without shelling out a lot of money to do it. Today’s topic is PDF files.

If you send work digitally very often, you have probably dealt with PDF documents. Everyone can view this format by downloading the free PDF Viewer from Adobe. But what if you need to combine multiple PDF documents into one file or take pages out of a PDF document?

I just experienced a very practical example of this yesterday. There were several staff members, myself included, helping some of our university students with their Ed TPA project. This is a state certification requirement for those students who want to go into teaching, and it is a $300 investment for the student. Ed TPA is a digital platform where students upload specific examples of their teaching methods including documents in multiple formats and video clips. These then are professionally evaluated to determine if the student is qualified to be a teacher.  To meet some of these requirements, I was assisting the students with scanning examples of their work and saving those files in the PDF format. Once we got the files ready to upload into Ed TPA, the students found out that the scanned documents needed to be split up into each separate example and uploaded as separate documents. Instead of scanning all that work again one at a time, I used a website to separate out the pages needed for each example.

Keeping with our virtual office theme for the week, I wanted to share how you can send the occasional fax for free without owning a fax machine. Believe it or not, there are still rare situations that call for sending a fax. From my personal experience when sending paperwork to certain government organizations, like DSHS for example, they will not accept a scanned copy emailed to them. Often there is not a physical address nearby where you can drop off the paperwork and you may not want use the postal service if time is an issue or you need proof of delivery. Some agencies will not allow their employees to sign for mail.

Fax machine are increasingly hard to find. Since most offices now scan and email documents back and forth with no extra fees involved, there is no reason to have a fax line. Still, the occasional situation may call for faxing. To send a fax at a copy center or hotel costs dollars per page. This gets to be ridiculously expensive. But there is another online option.

I have used the website www.faxzero.com for a few years now. As long as you are able to scan the document or upload the file, you can send it as a fax. The website comes up as a cover page. You can attach a document with up to three pages and send as a fax without cost. You can repeat this process up to 5 times a day for free. There is also the option for a monthly membership or to pay per page if you need to go over the 3 page limit. Once you enter the destination phone number and send the fax, you will have to go back into the email address you provided and click on the confirmation link before the fax will go through.

The nice thing is you will receive an email confirming when the fax goes through successfully or notifying you if there was an issue. You can go back onto the Faxzero web site and check the status of your request at any time as well.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a separate phone number that you could give out rather than your cell number? Whether to separate business calls from personal, or as a number to write down on forms so you don’t have to deal with all those sales calls on your personal line, a second number can come in handy. But who wants to pay a second bill? Google has a rather nice option in Google Voice. This is just one of the lesser known products available to Gmail users for free in Google’s online software suite.

Google Voice is an online telephone service. You get to pick from a selection of Google Voice numbers, although it probably will not be local number. Since most people have free long distance in the US, a long distance area code shouldn’t be a problem. Google Voice works with the Google Hangouts app on you cell phone. Once you have set up your Google Voice number, install the Google Hangouts app on your cell phone to be able to send and receive calls.

Here are some of the nice features about Google Voice. You can set up personal greetings for specific numbers. Here’s an example – a few years ago I was working with a colleague rather regularly. When I would call him and get his voice mail, the message would say something like, “Jessica, I’m sorry I missed your call. You are a valuable part of the team. Please leave a message and I will get back to you as soon as possible.” I couldn’t figure out how he knew I was calling while he was out and managed a personalized message to boot! Latter I found out he set up all numbers coming from his business contacts with personalized messages through Google Voice.

Also, you can forward your calls to any other number, or several numbers at once. If you have a cell number, work number, home number, etc. and are expecting an important call, this is a great feature. On the other hand, if you don’t want to be disturbed for a bit you can have your Google Voice number take messages by choosing not to forward the calls for a while.

Google Voice will work over WiFi hot spots so that you don’t have to use your data or your minutes. In order to be able to use Google Voice through the Hangouts app on your phone, you have to have a valid and active cell phone service at the time. However there have been times when my cell phone either wasn’t working or the bill had lapsed and I was still able to send and receive calls through my laptop by setting up near free WiFi. If you make calls through your laptop it acts as a speaker phone where everyone cal hear your conversation. I suggest getting some ear buds that have a small mic built in. That way you can make calls and keep it personal.

Even if you are not near WiFi and don’t have Google Voice on your phone, any calls you miss will go to the voice mail. You can have these messages come through as an email or text as well, although the transcription of the message is not always 100% accurate.

There are some drawbacks with Google Voice that you should be aware of. In order to keep your number active, you need to send or receive a call at least once a month or so. If your number lapse due to non use, you will have to set up the service again and pick a new number. Also, if making calls over WiFi, the reception can be a little spotty or echo at times.

Have you noticed it’s getting harder to buy software without a monthly subscription? Some of us don’t want another monthly bill. Plus, if something happens and you miss a payment or can no longer afford the bill, you no longer have access to your work. Not acceptable!

I remember the good old days of buying a copy of Windows Office and having the actual disks around. So what if your version of office was over 5 years old. It still worked and you only paid once. Now I have a 14 and 18 year old who need their own computers for school and software on disk is hard to find. I don’t want to start a starving college student out with an extra monthly expense right out the gate. Even with the student discounts, once they are no longer a student the bill would come due. No thanks!

This is why I am so sold on all things Google. Most anything you could need for a virtual office can be found for free with Google.  Well, free might not be entirely accurate. Google makes money as everyone knows. Even on their free stuff, you pay in information and by becoming a voluntary software tester / statistic. Google makes millions by perfecting their software technology through feedback from billions of eager users happy to use “free” digital tools. Meanwhile users are providing invisible statistical data on demographics back to Google automatically without really realizing it. This information is worth far more than a minor subscription fee. This thought might make so people paranoid out there, but I for one understand the terms of dealing with Google and am fine with it.

Google has a free equivalent for everything you would find in Microsoft Office Suite. From word-processing to spread sheets to PowerPoint, Google has you covered. As a matter of fact, any time I need to solve some digital problem Google is the first place I look for a free solution.  All you need is a free Gmail account with Google to access their software.  Some of the built in advantages – Google office software is based online, so you can access your work from any device. Also, as you create documents things are backed up automatically while you work.

This week I will be going over some of the lesser known software solutions available for Google that I personally have found useful. Stay tuned!

Every had old tires on your property that you need to get rid of? Finding a way to dispose of tires can become a difficult and costly affair. 

I learned this lesson while living in Washington Sate, USA. Our family had just moved into a rental property. We were broke at the time and had to scramble every month just to pay rent. The place we were renting was very inexpensive, and, truth be told, a tiny little dump. However the landlord was willing to forgo a credit check and work with us with late payments. It was a rough time.

The prior tenants left about 10 old tiers on the property which we inherited for better or worse. Our town had a reputation for being a snobbish little retirement community with a small town mentality. This meant that the police department had nothing better to do than drive around town as code enforcement pestering residence about city code infractions. Old tires, as it turns out, is one of those property issues. 

One Saturday morning a local officer interrupt our weekend with a pink written warning over the tires. On Monday I called down to the police station and explained that we were renting the place and the tires were left by former tenants. The officer informed me that the tires were then the responsibility of the landlord and they would be happy to take his information to speak with him. I said I would speak with him first and call back if need be.

The landlord said the former tenants were his daughter and son-in-law. He wasn’t sure if they still wanted the tires. After two weeks of waiting to hear if the tires would be claimed or not, I got tired of waiting. Code enforcement would be back with a citation at some point, yet I didn’t want to strain relations with the landlord by pestering him to deal with the situation when rent was already an issue. So I began looking into how to get rid of the tires.

First, we didn’t have a truck, just a small compact car. If I really jostled things around I was able to get 3 tires in the car at one time out of shear stubborn will. Then it was a matter of finding a place to dump them. Several calls and Google searches latter I had found out that very few places are willing to deal with used tires. Most charged to take them off your hands and the least expensive was $5 a tire. Times 10 tires. I didn’t have $50 to take care of this issue, especially when it was not my issue to begin with.

I kept searching. Eventually someone told me they had hear a rumor that Les Schwab would take tires for free. I called the company up. They said they would take up to 10 tires per day at no cost. Finally! In my little compact car, it took 4 trips to get all the tires down there. Les Schwab said they send the old tires to a company that recycles the rubber. The tires are shredded and then made into industrial rubber mats for workshops, kitchen, warehouses, etc.