The Pledge

Went to Sam’s Club today to pick up a few things and I always cruise the CD and DVD aisle to see if there are any bargains or if they have a new release that I just can’t live without. One of the things that aggravates me about shopping for DVD’s at Sam’s is the way they have built a locking display case around all the new releases so that you can’t just pick up what you want and go to the checkout with it. This is a huge barrier to making a sale and I can’t believe that someone in management can’t figure out a better way to stop theft and still serve their customers with this extra time and effort to buy a $20 DVD.

Anyway, over in the section where they evidently don’t give a shit if you steal these older or less popular releases, I found a new western starring, of all people, Luke Perry, as the cowboy who was done wrong and goes out for revenge. It’s called, “The Pledge” and I haven’t seen any ads for this movie but since it is a western and I could take it off the shelf without the security hassle of the other movies, I went ahead and bought it. Hope it’s a good one.

No Broccoli

At the grocery store tonight there was a sign on the freezer doors in the vegetable sections saying that due to acts of nature and circumstances beyond their control, there will be shortage of frozen broccoli and possibly other vegetables this summer.

I’m not sure where the top broccoli producing states may be and what acts of nature were involved, but I suspect that with all the flooding in the Midwest these past couple weeks and the fires in California, there may well be shortages of other vegetables and fruit later this summer.

On a good note, there are plenty of cantalopes and they are wonderfully sweet and at a great price this week. I plan on eating fresh cantalope daily while this bounty is here in our local stores. And my tomato plants are producing 2-3 ripe tomatoes every day. Last night we dined on BLTs and they’ve never tasted better.

Saving on Printers, Ink and Toner

My home office has my desktop PC and two printers hooked up to it. The first printer is a little HP color inkjet printer that does a decent job on photos and anything that has to be color. But the real workhorse in my office is an HP monochorome laserjet that prints only black and white papers and man, does it print them fast and cheap.

I have to print out reports every night of the week except Tuesdays and Thursdays, so that’s a lot of printing. The color printer would take up to three hours to print the reports and since they are just black and white it occurred to me that I should look into get a monochrome printer that is faster. The fast color printers are just too expensive for my home office budget. So I found the HP laserjet and discovered a little bonus – the laser toner cartridge lasts 6 times longer than the inkjet cartridges.

The inkjets were running out every week of one color or another, especially the black cartridge. I could easily go through two black cartridges each week. But the laserjet toner cartridge lasts about one month. Of course the price difference is huge. You can buy inkjets for $20-$30 at the discount stores but the laser runs $80. But the yield is much greater than the increased cost, so I’m saving a lot of money and time with the laser.

Trying to pinch my pennies even further, I decided to check out the generic cartridges and also getting refilled or recycled cartridges. If I know I can recycle something I feel guilty tossing it into the trash and not recycling. There’s been so much buzz about recycling printer cartridges that I knew I had to start doing that. So I surfed the internet and found a cool site called Inkjet Deals. They have information refilling both inkjet cartridges and laser toner cartridges for my HP laserjet and all the top brands of printers.

I like the sectio on their site that is a resource center with informational articles. After I read the one about “Generic and Remanufactured Cartridges,” I knew right then that I must start recycling my cartridges and also spread the word so everyone else will do that, too.

Another article they have that helped me with the penny pinching mode is called, “Seven Tips for Saving Ink.” Now some of those tips might be obvious to you, but I hadn’t thought of them until this article pointed them out.

I’m also not sure that I’m going to keep my HP color inkjet. After reading this site and learning more about printers, I might be better off buying a different brand for the photos I want to print. I’m seriously thinking about shopping around for the right site to buy Epson color printers online for less money than the local discount stores and getting a better quality photo print for my collection.

Ross Perot is Charting Again

Remember Ross Perot? Rich guy from Texas, ran for president, made a lot of noise. A lot of what he says makes sense, and when a millionaire – or more likely billionaire – is willing to talk about money and share his insights, maybe the rest of us peasants should listen to him and take his advice. He is a powerful and persuasive speaker and is notorious for using lots of charts to illustrate his points.

Perot has launched a website called www.perotcharts.com that has . . . you guessed it! Charts.

He’s trying to help America manage it’s money and its debt. Check it out.

Comparing Notes

Talking with another District Manager last night we were comparing notes on how our out of pocket expenses have been increasing the past few months. With our contract renewals right around the corner, we are looking hard at how much money our current rate really nets so we can arm ourselves with information for our next contract negotiations.

One of my biggest expenses is gasoline, as I live exactly 22 miles from the office and there’s no way to shave that expense. I’m not moving out of this house – I love it here – and I’m not able to use a smaller vehicle and get the same same payload.

My next big expense is all the paperwork and all the route sheets, invoices and payroll information that I have to print on paper every week. We go through a case of printer/copier paper every week. Tommy says he buys his paper one or two packs at a time for $2.50 per pack. I told him that a case of 10 is only $21.0, so he can save a little that way.

I bought a low end HP laser printer that goes through one laser cartridge every 2-3 weeks. Tommy is using the Lexmark printer that came with his Dell computer system that he bought online last year. It uses the little inkjet cartridges and he goes through those like string through a duck.

I told him to try using the refilled inkjet cartridges – there’s a lot of money to be saved by recycling your empty inkjet cartridges and buying refilled cartridges. The refilled HP cartridges that I buy cost 40% less than the brand new ones. I’ve used them for 2 years now with no problems at all and I’ve saved a lot of money. Tommy says he had thought of that but was concerned that the refilled inkjets might hurt his printer. I had to laugh – he is so gullible if he believes that he has to buy new inkjets!