Black Belt Shopper
(featured column)

Bulk Bins, Phone Cards, Printer Ink and Calculators

by Larry Wiener

Black belt shoppers are always running into new offerings and strategies to get good quality merchandise at great prices.  Here are some of the new strategies I have discovered.  More...

Bulk Bins

Some supermarkets have bulk bins where you can buy staples, snacks, and other non-perishable dry foods at low prices.  You often can save money on the packaging and you actually get to see what you are buying. One chain here in California that has bulk bins is Henry's Marketplace.  When you go to bulk bins, make sure that you are getting good quality and that the prices really are less than you would pay for packaged goods.

Skype

A British outfit called Skype is offering an array of phone services that may save you money on long distance calls.  One offering that is free is a PC-to-PC calling service.  You download the necessary software and buy a microphone (about $10) and you can use that microphone and your computer speakers to talk with anyone worldwide who has a similar setup.  I have tried it and it works great.

Skype also has a service which allows you to call regular phones from your computer for rates starting at 2.1 cents per minute and a 3.6 cent connection fee.  I find this service useful for calling Alaska and certain foreign countries, but I get an even better deal for the 48 states (a penny a minute, no connection charge) from the cards offered by Minute Values phonecard99.com which are sold at the 99 Cent Store 99only.com.  OneSuite also offers good calling plans for people not in the area served by the 99 Cent Store.

Skype also offers a plan that gives you nationwide phone service for $29 and highly discounted service for calls to and from overseas.  You have to buy special equipment for this offering and still need a cell phone or regular phone to call 911.  This service is valuable for people going overseas for extended periods of time.

Ink and Toner

Do you find yourself constantly running out to buy more ink for your printer, often an a high cost?  I've been looking into the price of consumables had here's what I have come up with: 

First, if you do a lot of printing and only need color for some of it, consider having both a laser and an inkjet.  You can now buy remanufactured laser printers for $99 or a little more if you look for a sale and the consumables are cheap.

You can get off-brand ink cartridges at services like 123inkjets for less than your printer's brand name refills, but results have been mixed.  Many experts say that you won't get the quality output from the no-name brands that you will from the originals and that the cartridges will go empty soon.  You can also bring your cartridges to many Walgreen's stores for refills.

My own experience is that the no-name cartridges do produce lesser quality than the name brands and I find that more pages are ruined.  You probably will save some money with them, but to me it's not worth it.  My strategy is to use my laser printer for ordinary printing and use the inkjet when I need a good quality.  Buying remanufactured laser toner cartridges is perfectly fine as the same toner is used.

Whatever consumables you use for your printer, it is best to buy in advance when you see them on sale.  That will save you both time and money.

Calculators

I remember when a basic calculator would cost $50 1975 dollars and would barely add and subtract.  Now you can find calculators that will do more than that for a dollar and sometimes less.

Calculators have become both less expensive and more powerful and a calculator that does what you need it to do may be a good small investment.

If you have middle school or high school kids, they may need scientific calculators or graphic calculators.  Traditionally Texas Instruments has had the best machines, especially in the graphing area. Casio is catching up fast.

You can get a good scientific calculator for as little as $12, but you may want to go for $15 or $20 to make sure it has all the functions you need and is durable.

Graphing calculators are more expensive, but they are often on sale at ebay because students need them for a course, but don't have any use for them after they finish the course.  That's how I got my graphing calculator.

Home Depot has a calculator with special functions for do-it-yourselfers and financial calculators are readily available.

I have seen scientific calculators in dollar stores, but they look really flimsy and probably won't hold up.  You can find an online graphing calculator at CoolMath.com along with a lot of tips on how to use it.

Also, if you or your teenage student needs graph paper, you can find that online at MathematicsHelpCentral.com. 

Those are but a few of the new resources I've found.  Many more resources are listed in my ebook, The Black Belt Shopper's Guide available on this website.  We're planning to revise this ebook in the coming months, look for announcement on this site soon!

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Copyright © 2007 by Larry Wiener, author of The Black Belt Shopper's Guide. All rights reserved.

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