What is the best way to start a budget?
The first thing that anyone who wants to make a budget must do is to compare their income versus their expenses. The good thing is that it is quite easy to do.
To get started you can download this free Excel budgeting spreadsheet which will help you calculate how much you spend each month and compare it to your current income.
It’s too bad most of us never learned this in school and had to figure it out on our own - so here is the lesson that we should have learned in 5th grade:
Expenses > Income = Bad Expenses < Income = Good
And honestly, as simple as it sounds, that is the key to wealth. Anyone, and I mean anyone, who IS wealthy (I emphasize IS because I am not talking about people who appear to be wealthy, but who are actually in debt up to their eyeballs) spends LESS money than they earn. AKA - their expenses are less than their income.
The great news about this is that anyone can do this - no matter what their income level. If you can do it on a small income, then you can do it on a large income. If you can’t do it on a small income, then you won’t be able to do it on a large one either. Trust me!
If you don’t believe me, just ask all of the lottery winners who went bankrupt within years of winning millions of dollars.
Back to making our budget…
Regardless of how your expenses and income compare right now - get excited, because you can easily change it!! If it is bad you can make it so much better!! If it is good, you can still make it even better!! I will show you how later, but for now…
Let’s make a budget!
Did you calculate what your monthly expenses and income were? Were your expenses less than your income? If so, you are a rare breed who is in great shape, so just sit tight for a minute.
For everyone else, whose expenses exceeded your income - you are not alone. You actually have a lot of company. The problem is that it isn’t good company! Most of our debt-ridden society is in the same boat, but you are one of the bold ones who is jumping out of the debt boat!!
So, if your income is $1000 and your expenses are $1200, that means you spend an extra $200 each month that YOU DON’T HAVE!! What your job is now is to find out what you can get rid of or quit buying each month to save that $200. If you have no idea where to start you can check out these money saving tips or browse other money saving ideas.
I know, I know - this is the part that hurts. Just like pruning a bush - cutting back hurts, but ultimately you are going to yield so MUCH more fruit because of it!!
The goal here is to get your expenses and income to AT LEAST be equal. Once that is accomplished we can work on eliminating wasteful spending or cut other costs to bring the expenses below the income.
Now that you have calculated what your monthly income and expenses are we can start designing our budget. We will first discuss the less effective, but easier method for budgeting…
The world’s easiest budget
There are 2 simple rules to do a simple budget:
- You can’t spend more than you earn - carrying a balance on a credit card is not allowed.
- Money must go to the budget categories as soon you get paid.
The way it works:
Rather than having 10-20 different categories of items to be budgeted for you only focus on the 1-3 most important ones and let the rest of the chips fall where they will.
So, to do this you take your paycheck of say $1000 and right off the top you put the money to your main priorities. For many people this is tithing to their church, retirement savings, college savings for children, etc…
A sample of this would be:
$1000 (paycheck)
-$100 (tithe)
-$100 (retirement savings)
= $800 (for the rest of the bills and everything else)
It is absolutely critical that the money gets taken out FIRST for these few budgeted items. If not, I can almost guarantee that the full amount will not make it as intended.
I highly recommend making this process automatic by using direct deposit or some other form of automatic withdrawal. There is just something about human nature that has a hard time staying consistent with things like this.
Why do you think the U.S. government takes our taxes directly out of our paycheck, rather than coming to collect the full sum at the end of the year? It is the same principle - use it to your advantage.
Easy budget, but not very efficient
I think this budget is perfect for people who don’t want to budget. It is simple, doesn’t take up much time, and will help you reach some savings goals. That said, it is still inefficient and leaves the door wide open for inefficient and foolish spending.
I think it should be considered the “lazy man’s budget” - and you are not LAZY, you are willing to work to get your finances in order!! I know this because you are still reading. So, since you are NOT lazy and are hungry for more of a challenge, let’s look at how the pros budget.
The money saving budgeting method
Yes, this method takes a little bit more time and energy, but it also will provide you will long-term financial benefits if followed.
To do this we are just going to expand on the lazy man’s budget mentioned above. Rather than having just 1-3 categories of items budgeted for, we are going to create as many as we need to put a limit on our spending in all areas.
You can use the mentioned budget spreadsheet as a guide for tracking your progress. Try to account for every possible expense that you could run into. You will never be able to budget for every possible scenario, but the goal is to minimize surprise expenses. Inevitably, there will still be surprises from time to time - so I suggest creating a category for these surprises (or you can just use your emergency fund).
How to stick with your budget
The almost sure-fire way to make a budget that fails is to NOT budget for any fun stuff. I wrote about how budgeting should be fun and it is a necessary ingredient for success. You need to budget for clothing, entertainment, going out to dinner, or whatever else it is you love to do! The key is to do it in moderation and to set limits and abide by them.
The amazing thing is that by budgeting for fun stuff, it actually liberates you to spend money on these items. When you have money budgeted each month to buy clothes, the money is now sitting there waiting to be used for that assigned purpose. Suddenly you can go clothes shopping without feeling guilty!!
This is how budgeting truly becomes fun. When you have money sitting in the bank waiting to be spent. Or, even better: if you start budgeting for vacation and after a little while you have hundreds of dollars begging to be spent on a vacation!! You go on your trip and come back home and don’t owe any money to a credit card company - now that is how a budget becomes fun and what helps you stick with it!!
Other budget options
There are many ways to make a budget work. The key is to finding a system that works for you and sticking with it. This article has gone over a basic method of budgeting, but I also suggest you check out the envelope budgeting method, or the method that I use to budget with ING.
As far as paying for budget software I think it depends on the user. It is not a necessity by any means, but most software programs will make your life easier and save you time. It just depends on personal preference really.
That said, my favorite budgeting software tool that I have found is called Mvelopes Personal. They are basically like a virtual envelope system for budgeting. They have a very simple and intuitive method for budgeting that is one of the best out there. If you want more information you can Take a tour of Mvelopes Personal.
Another budgeting tool I found is called YNAB and you can find out more about it at YouNeedABudget.com. It is a very basic tool that will help keep your budget organized. I don’t like it as much as Mvelopes, but I think it is a little bit cheaper.
I would love to hear what has worked for you and what hasn’t. Let me know in the comments below…
Technorati Tags: make a budget, budgeting
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I just read an interesting article about a guy who 14 years ago bought the domain pizza.com for $20 (and had to pay $20 each year to keep it). He didn’t really know what it was worth, so he recently decided to put it up for auction to see what he could get for it and it went for a cool $2.6 million. How is that for a nice return on investment?
I remember about that time looking for domains to buy because I had heard a few people comparing it to the California Gold Rush. I spent about 15 minutes typing in domain names and then gave up. Maybe I should have kept at it a bit longer.
While the Pizza.com story is remarkable and not the norm, people have been and continue to make money with domains. I haven’t gotten too involved in buying or selling domains, but if anyone is interested I would be willing to sell ChristianPF.com for a bargain price of $2.5 million (it’s not quite as valuable as Pizza.com hence the discount).
I found another article that talks about how you can still make money with domain names today. The domain name market has some similarities with the real estate market.
Here are a few of the ways the author suggested to make money with domains:
1. Buy existing domains and increase their value (or just flip’em) - it takes money to make money, but you can start small. The domain name aftermarket is extremely inefficient, meaning you can buy domains from one venue and sell them quickly on another. You can also buy underutilized domains, build them up, and watch the cash roll in.
2. Embrace the power of predictive domaining - One of the best new blogs about domains is Predictive Domaining. It discusses ways to determine tomorrow’s hot topics and keywords so you can register (or buy cheap) domains today. Here’s a case in point: the term “blog” wasn’t around during the original 1994 gold rush. There are lots of other terms that aren’t hot (or even known) today that will be tomorrow. I would consider myself a good predictive domainer, but the Predictive Domaining blog always teaches me something new.
3. Stay in it for the long haul - so domain parking revenues are down this year. Perhaps it’s just a speed bump. Will we look back ten years from now at domains that sold for millions when they are then selling for tens of millions? There are still great buy-and-hold strategies for those who are able to hold for the long term.
Real estate and “virtual real estate”
I see the similarities between real estate and domains, but the thing that stands out to me is that there is a limited amount of real estate. There are only so many square feet on the earth, however with “virtual real estate” it is a seemingly unlimited supply.
I understand that the most valued domains receive quite a bit of type in traffic, but it seems like sometimes it may not be worth the investment. For instance eBay, Google, and even amazon all chose not to go after the prime domains and built their brand around a more obscure name. It seems to have worked well for them.
Domain Name tools
If you are curious to see what domains are still available use this tool, it makes it very quick and easy to spot what is available. And if you are trying to find a domain with a particular keyword included - Nameboy is a good tool as well…
Buy your name
I have read a few articles that have suggested to buy YourName.com if it is still available. Domains are cheap - $8 a year with www.GoDaddy.com and it is a lot easier and cheaper to buy it from them than a private party down the road.
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Can I really watch TV on the computer?
As everyone knows High Definition (HD) TV is so much better than regular TV. I didn’t have an HD capable TV myself and I didn’t want to run out and spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on another TV, so I thought I would investigate other alternatives. I thought there was probably a way to watch TV on my computer, but I wasn’t sure about if it would be in HD or not. I found the answer.
I don’t know that much about TVs, I just know that watching HDTV vs. a normal analog signal is about as drastic of a difference as color was to black-and-white. And then I of course heard about how all television will be going digital in less than a year and those of us with “old-school” TVs will have to get an adapter and possibly a new antenna just to watch the local news.
So anyway, I was pleased when I got this cool little TV tuner for my birthday a couple of weeks ago. It plugs into your computer via a USB port and is about the size of a jump drive.
I am still really excited about my little toy. I keep finding out more and more features:
- It has a TV scheduling program that will allow you to schedule a time for it to record a TV show for you directly to your computer’s hard drive. Basically just like a TIVO. Now I will never miss another episode of “The Office” again.
- When ATSC digital TV comes next February the TV tuner will also receive the new digital TV channels, so I won’t have to buy an adapter or anything else.
- It also comes with an RCA adapter and an S-Video adapter which will allow you to hook up a VCR or DVD player and play those videos on your PC as well AND record them. So, now I can take all of my old video tapes and record them and burn them to DVD.
Steps to watch and record HD TV on your computer
- You will first need to get a HDTV tuner card, I got this gadget
and it costs less than $65, but there are bunch that you can use to watch TV (check closely, because many are TV tuners, but not all are HDTV tuners). I chose the one I did, because it was very simple to use - just plug in and go. The
downside, of course, to having an external one as opposed to an internal one is that it is taking up space in your USB port. I prefer this over having to do PC surgery to install the internal one. - Installation was very simple for me. It comes with a CD that contains the necessary software and drivers. You just drop the CD in, run the setup program and it installs all of the programs and files for you.
- Now that the software is installed, you can plug
in the tuner stick. The one I received came with a small antenna that attaches to the stick to allow for better reception. Or, you if you have cable you can connect the cable line to it as well. - Next, you can open the software program that the TV tuner came with. You will then need to have the tuner scan for TV channels. It will probably do this for you automatically, if not you may need to dig around the menus to find the option. I was pleasantly surprised that my TV tuner found about twice as many channels as I could watch on my regular TV.
- Now, you are ready to start watching TV on your computer!! It’s just like the Jetsons!!
Actually watching HD TV on my computer
Above is a screen-shot of the program that came with my TV tuner. By a click of a button, it goes to full screen so you can make the most out of your computer monitor’s space.
Although you can change channels and adjust volume from your keyboard, I chose to buy a PC remote control
. I have not yet received the remote control, but I will write about it to let you know how it works with my whole computer TV system.
Getting hundreds of channels to watch on your PC
I have heard about things like this that allow you to watch hundreds of channels on your computer for a small one-time fee. I am not sure exactly how it works, but I am going to try it out soon and I will write about that as well.
Technorati Tags: how to watch HD TV on your computer, watch tv on computer
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7 Steps to sell your stuff on eBay
As part of my de-cluttering process, I unload a lot of my stuff and random items by selling it on on Ebay. If you have never done it before, you will probably be surprised at how easy it is and how quick you can make a little money. Last time I de-cluttered, I made over $200 for only a few hours worth of time. This is a perfect follow-up to some major closet simplification. So, if you have a few hours of spare time, this may be a good way to make a few bucks.
1. Open an eBay account
This is a very quick and easy process. Click here to get started.
2. Buy a few items to get some positive feedback
(This step is optional, but it will probably help) -Small items are fine, anything you can find will work. The reason is that your credibility as an Ebay seller is primarily determined by your feedback score. By purchasing a few items and paying for them quickly, you will be able to get some positive feedback, thus giving you at least a little bit of credibility. Think about it, if you are buying an item wouldn’t you rather buy from a seller has feedback proving that he actually delivered his products rather than a seller who has never used eBay before?
3. Decide what to sell
I only sell name brand or easily defined unique items. When selling, you have to think like the seller and ask “how would I search for this item?” If the answer isn’t clear, it may not be a good item to sell. For example, I had a pair of fake leather pants (don’t ask) that weren’t a brand that anyone would care about, but I knew that people would be searching for leather pants, because it is such a unique item. Often times buyers will search for a brand name and a size, and this is why brand name items are good to sell.
Oh, and I also don’t sell items that aren’t in great condition - you can, but one person’s definition of “small hole in sleeve” can be completely different from another’s. I consider it to be dangerous territory, so proceed with caution.
Just FYI, about the fake leather pants, I had gotten them for about $3.00 on a clearance rack and ended up selling them for about $15.00. So, the $12.00 profit helps offset all the harassment I received for owning them in the first place.
4. Get Pictures of your items
Grab your digital camera (if you are still taking Polaroid pictures, then see step #2 and make a digital camera one of your purchases) and start shooting. Use a well lit room, with the simplest, nicest looking background you can find; e.g. a hardwood floor or a plain wall. Take a few pictures of each item and get close ups if needed. Check out this article for more tips about Ebay pictures.
5. List your item
Now you are ready to list your items. I suggest doing all of your listings on the same day. This will enable you to do the shipping all on the same day, eliminating wasted trips to the Post Office.
Be as detailed as possible in the listing title. Include as many that apply to your item:
- item names and similar names
- Brand names
- Model names or numbers
- Sizes
- Colors
- Men’s, women’s, or kids
- material
- any other details that stand out about your item
At the time of this writing, if you search for “dress shirt” on eBay it will yield over 12,000 listings. However, if you search for “M banana republic dress shirt blue” we only get 5 results. As sellers, this is what we want - limited competition when people search for our item. If your listing title just said “dress shirt,” then your shirt would now be thrown in the world’s largest bargain bin with 12,000 other shirts for people to dig through. The more detail you put in the title, the easier it is for your buyers to find it.
The first picture is free, but Ebay does charge to add additional pictures. I suggest adding at least one additional picture, unless you are convinced that the item doesn’t need it. Buyers like to see products from different angles and with detail.
Use the description field to fill in any and all detail that you couldn’t squeeze into the title section. The more detail the better. I learned the hard way when selling my wife’s clothes that a lot of the eBaying women like to know the measurements of each item before bidding on it.
A few more things to keep in mind:
- open a paypal account (free, simple, and will make it easier for buyers)
- Check for misspellings in your title (this could dramatically affect sales)
- International shipping can be expensive and time consuming, so you may want to limit your shipping area
6. Answer buyer’s questions
Buyers may email you with questions about the product, it is in your best interest to respond quickly to them. They are clearly interested in buying the product, otherwise they wouldn’t have spent the time emailing you about it. You can respond to their questions and see what each item is going for from your Ebay account.
7. Ship your eBay items
Try to get your items shipped ASAP to get positive feedback from your buyers. Look for old boxes (without writing on them) or for some items you can use brown paper bags to package it in.
I have had the best luck with the good ‘ol U.S. Postal Service. The standard shipping at that Post Office is almost always cheaper than UPS and FedEx. There are some occasions where this is not the case, but from my experience, the USPS is the best way to go.
As with anything, the more you do it, the faster you will get at it. And of course, some items will sell, and some won’t - I just give the unsold items to Goodwill. Good luck!!
Click here to open a FREE eBay account
Technorati Tags: How to sell on eBay, eBay selling, put stuff on ebay
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This was a trick I discovered late in college, that I wish I would have known about earlier, it could have saved me thousands over my college years. It shouldn’t take more than a hour and could save you hundreds each semester. Basically, the goal is to buy and sell the textbook for the same price - making it ($75-$75=$0) FREE!!
1. Find the cheapest priced textbooks.
Check Amazon and eBay. Get the ISBN# from the barcode of the book and do a search on both for the cheapest used book. Feel free to look other places like textbooks.com or Barnes and Noble, but Amazon and eBay are likely to be the cheapest. Make sure you are getting the right edition for the class (I had many classes that it didn’t matter, but for the purposes of reselling, the newest edition will help).
2. Use it, but don’t abuse it
Folded pages, highlighting, rounded edges don’t affect the price very much, but missing covers or pages do. Don’t eat your book! I know you are in college and probably short on cash, but if resorting to eating paper as a dietary supplement, stick with looseleaf; it is cheaper.
3. Get ready to sell those textbooks
After the fall semester you are going to want to sell them right away, because other anxious college kids will be looking to buy them up for the spring semester. After the spring semester on the other hand, you should probably wait a couple months before looking to sell. Remember: supply and demand. How many college kids are looking to buy their textbooks for fall, when classes let out in May?
4. List and sell them
There are many options for selling your books, but you want to find one where YOU are selling to the customer. What you will find is that as long as every school in the U.S. hasn’t switched to a newer edition, you shouldn’t have a problem selling them for what you paid. I like Amazon’s textbook store
- When setting your price, look to see what the lowest price is and go a few cents below that. This will help you to sell your book as quickly as possible. Check back every week or so and adjust your price so it is the cheapest listed. If your book is not in the 5-10 lowest priced books, it is unlikely that it will sell.
- When you do sell your book, you will receive a notice via email with the buyer’s info. It is your responsibility to get it shipped ASAP. Not doing so will result in poor ratings and will make it more difficult to sell the next book.
I did profit off a few books over my last year in college doing this. You will find that some are winners and some are losers, but no matter what - you will be doing a whole lot better than those who buy their books new and sell them back to the campus bookstore.
Technorati Tags: free textbooks, cheap textbooks, save money on textbooks
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Everyone knows they should save, but a lot of people say they can’t find the money to start saving. They get their paycheck, promise themselves that this time they will save whatever is left over and sure enough two weeks later nothing is left over to put in savings. Have you ever been there?
So how do you find money to save on your current income?
The best way is to get a piece of paper, attach it to your hip for a week, and write down EVERY SINGLE thing that you spend money on. Even if it is a 50 cent newspaper - every single thing. Most people are amazed at what they find, not so much because they forgot that they spent the money on _____, but now they can see how it all actually adds up.
Once you are armed with the truth of your miscellaneous spending, you can look to find ways to fight back. David Bach calls this the “latte factor.” In his book, The Automatic Millionaire
The point here is that you can exchange a small sacrifice (a coffee everyday) for a large reward (a nice sized nest egg for retirement). So, regardless of whether it is a daily coffee, or buying one less article of clothing a week, or cable television, or any number of things, it is surprising how much benefit can be gained by making a small sacrifice.
So grab your list and look for trends in your spending - things you may buy on a regular basis and ask yourself, “Will my life come to a screeching halt if I stop buying ______?” Chances are good that you can find one or more things on the list that you could answer “NO” to. If so, are you willing to sacrifice them?
For some people it can be difficult to pinpoint an expense that is UNNECESSARY, because otherwise you wouldn’t be buying it in the first place. For these people, this is where the rubber meets the road, because if all of these expenses are necessary, then you need to decide which of them you are willing to sacrifice in order to live the life you want in the future. This part requires thinking “outside of the box” and imagining and adapting to a life without _______.
Often times we are perpetuating expensive habits, just because that is what we are used to doing. It is scary to think that a habit, that I may not even enjoy that much can be the only thing between retiring well or not at all.
Technorati Tags: find money to save, save money
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Dividing large bills into smaller chunks can make them much more manageable.
They say the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. The point is, that when you look at the size of the thing, it is overwhelming, but by working at it one small bite at a time, you will make progress and eventually you will complete the task. The same principle applies to our finances. Be it saving for retirement, eliminating your consumer debt, or paying a huge bill.
In our state we have to pay taxes on our personal property. So, at the end of every year we owe a few hundred dollars in property tax for our cars due on December 31. A bill for $350 can be challenging at any time, but right after the Christmas spending spree makes it even more difficult.
The great news is that for $29.16 a month I can have all of the money saved up for that bill when December rolls around again. This is part of my budgeting with ING Direct that I use. I create a savings account for each “elephant” sized bill and divide by 12 to figure out how much I need to save on a monthly basis. A side benefit is the interest that is being earned all year long on that savings.
If you haven’t tried saving up for large bills, I promise that you will absolutely love the feeling you get when you do. It almost makes me excited when the bill comes in, because I don’t have any question of where is the money coming from. It has been sitting in a savings account just waiting all year for that bill to come in.
I use this method with car insurance premiums rather than using the monthly rate that some companies offer. Normally there is a fee charged for the monthly billing option and you can save yourself a few bucks a month by paying the 6 month premium all at once.
Oh and don’t forget to use the interest you earned to take yourself out to lunch, because you’ve earned it. 
Technorati Tags: saving techniques, budgeting, pay large bills
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I love books. I used to hate reading, therefore I hated books as well. But, as soon as I got out of school I began to enjoy reading - probably because I was no longer forced to do it. So now I collect good books, but I can’t remember the last time I paid full price for a book, or even half price for that matter. These are the 5 ways I save money on books:
1. Amazon.com
It doesn’t get much better than Amazon.com
2. The local Library
I can’t speak for all libraries, but ours has a website that allows to us to browse the library database and request items to be sent to the nearest branch. Once they arrive, I get an email notification that they have arrived. Even though I prefer to own the books, this is a great option to have free access to a lot of books.
3. Check out thrift stores for used books
I just discovered this one a few months ago on a suggestion from a friend that they have tons of books for about a dollar. I was pleasantly surprised! I walked out with three famous business and finance books, a dictionary, and a thesaurus (all hardbound) for $5. I added up the retail price for kicks and the 5 books went for $142 new. Beware, you may have to wade through many romance novels to find the gems!
4. Trade your books with others
Swaptree.com has a cool service that allows you to trade your books, CDs, and DVDs with others online. The service is free, the only expense is the shipping cost of your item.
5. Borders
If you are into NEW books, signing up for Border’s email list may be a good way to go. On about a weekly basis I get a coupon from them, sometimes as much as 40% off.
Technorati Tags: save money on books, used books
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This is the fourth and final entry of a series I am doing about How to save time on your PC. These are a few of the ways that I try to shave off minutes or even hours of wasted time on my computer each month.
8. Google toolbar
The main reason I use Google Toolbar is for the bookmarks. It has a few other features that make it useful, but I think the best part is that my bookmarks are right at my fingertips at all times. The Google toolbar also allows you to TAG your bookmarks, rather than putting them in folders like most browsers. Tags are more versatile, because you can add multiple tags to any bookmark. Del.icio.us is another great bookmarking tool as well.
9. Firefox Quick Search
If you are a Firefox user you will have a quick search box in the top right corner. You can add all kinds of searchable websites to the list. You can search within Google, Yahoo, Ebay, Amazon, Various dictionaries, Flickr, Wikipedia and many others. Rather than going to the individual sites themselves, you can search many sites from your browser.
You can download Firefox with Google Toolbar, if you aren’t using Firefox yet. If you are still using Internet Explorer, I recommend using Firefox. There are a bunch of reasons why Firefox is better, but the safety factor with Firefox was a big one for me.
10. Google Homepage
My Google homepage is where I tie a lot of these tools together. Google homepage is basically a dashboard of whatever you would like. They have thousands of different widgets to choose from so you can create a custom homepage that can have just about anything you could want or need all on one page for you.
This is a quick snapshot of my Google homepage…
I have my email, calendar, stock quotes, weather, to-do list, feedreader, Jotts, bookmarks and a few other things all accessible on the same page. I love the ease of being able to get updated information from various different pages all in one place. And who knows how much time you save by having it all together rather than going to one site to check weather, another to see if you have any new emails, another to check your stocks, etc…
You can find out more about Google homepage here.
Check out the previous posts in the series…
How to save time on your PC - Part One
How to save time on your PC - Part Two
How to save time on your PC - Part Three
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This is the third entry of a series I am doing about How to save time on your PC. These are a few of the ways that I try to shave off minutes or even hours of wasted time on my computer each month.
6. Manage Multiple Email addresses
Lucky for you, I am going to save you the countless hours I spent trying to find a way to manage my multiple email addresses. Lets say you have a Yahoo email account and a Gmail account that you use both for different reasons.
How much time could you save if you could view your email from both accounts in one place?Maybe a little, maybe a lot. But, if you have about 5 active email addresses like me you know that it is a huge time waster to have to go to 5 different accounts to view my email.
Well, I tried Outlook, I tried Entourage, and I also tried Thunderbird to manage my email. Each has their own pros and cons, but what I was looking for was a way to view my email from any computer and have it all stored in one centralized location.
Enter GMAIL. This may sound like a Google commercial, but it’s not. I just am very excited that they provide the solution to my problem.
Gmail allows you to manage all of your email addresses from your Gmail inbox. You can receive your Hotmail or Yahoo email into your Gmail inbox and you can also send email from these addresses all in the comfort of your Gmail inbox. It can easily be set up by clicking on SETTINGS when at your Gmail inbox, and then clicking on the ACCOUNTS tab. From here you can add your various email addresses. Get detailed instructions from Google on setting this up.
7. Save time with a Feedreader
Basically this is a way to get updated content from various websites sent to you - rather than you having to go to each website individually.
Look for this Icon
or 
and when you see it you can add add that site’s updated content to your feedreader. I use Google’s feedreader, but Bloglines is really nice and there are other good ones out there as well. Check out this video for a little more detail about Google’s Feed Reader.
Check out Part Four for the last few tips…
How to save time on your PC - Part One
How to save time on your PC - Part Two
How to save time on your PC - Part Four
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