Thrifty Mommy » email

Simplify Life with Less Emails

Karen Weideman — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:58:22 +0000

I can’t help but confess that I feel a bit hypocritical writing this post. It’s because my inbox is always so filled with emails. Right now I have over 700 emails. Some days I think I need a secretary. Since I can’t afford a secretary, I’ve decided I need to do some things to get a handle on all this inbox clutter. It is time consuming and it needs to stop. Here’s a few tips I have thought of to simplify our lives and receive less emails.

1) Unsubscribe from unsolicited newsletters. Somehow I am receiving several newsletters that I am certain I did not request. Most of them have an unsubscribe button at the bottom of the newsletter. If unsubscribing doesn’t work, then block the sender.

2) Have a massive deleting party. I admit that I am subscribed to some google alerts and newsletters from companies such as Better Homes & Gardens. I really enjoy looking at their ideas, but I don’t have time for it each day. Every now and then I will sort my emails by sender. That way all of the emails from BHG, Hungry-Girl, and Google are all sorted together. Then I can do some quick massive deleting.

3) Delete anything with “Fw” in the subject line. Like my hubby says, “If the person can’t take the time to delete the word ‘forward’, then it’s not worth my time reading it.”

4) Have a separate account for work and personal email. I think this is one of things that would really help me. I should have done this a long time ago.

What tips do you have on saving time and sanity with emails?

image from kveselyte at sxc.hu

Post from: Thrifty Mommy

Ebay and Craigslist Scammers

Karen Weideman — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 13:32:37 +0000

If you sell anything online, then you need to be aware that you may be contacted by scammers. They will claim to have interest in your product and they may even offer to send you a cashier’s check for a large sum above what you are asking. They’ll say the extra amount is for your troubles, the shipping to another country, or some might even ask you to cash the check and send them the excess. AS IF!!!!

Unfortunately, many have fallen for these schemes and lost large sums of money. Here is an example of a scammer email. Actually, this is one that my husband received this week.

Hello
I am interested in immediate purchase of your ITEM .After several consideration over the advert placed on the website, my client has really shown interest in it and would really want to buy the item. I will however like to see the pictures; showing the parts, full body and most importantly the condition before finalizing the buying process. I wont be chanced to come down to inspect the ITEM so kindly provide me with necessary details regarding the said ITEM. I will as well appreciate if you can reduce the price cos I’m highly interested in buying it

Hoping to hear from you
Thanks.

You may notice that Mian Dans didn’t even bother to change the item information in his scammer letter template.

Have you ever received emails such as this one?

Post from: Thrifty Mommy

Time Saving Email Tip

Karen Weideman — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 06:53:38 +0000

I don’t know about you, but I get more than a thousand junk emails each week! To help cut down on the number of spam emails that I receive in my inbox, I created another email account at yahoo. This is the email address that I always give away to businesses, Cash Crate (lol), websites that are giving away freebies, etc. I still receive way too many spam emails at my regular address, but this system has helped out a lot. It has saved me so much time when sorting through emails each day.

Do you have more than one email address?

Post from: Thrifty Mommy