The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll show you how I use both Evernote and Notability together for notetaking and record keeping. I use my two traditional note-taking products: Evernote and Notability.  I consider Evernote my main note repository since it is fully Cross-platform That means that Evernote has an app (in my case) for the iPhone, iPad, software for the PC, and a web-based format as well.  So, I can get to my notes from any of these devices, from someone else's phone, or from anywhere I happen to be.  My notes are stored in the cloud and are replicated across all of these platforms.  This is important to me.  I have over 3,000 notes and I refer to them regularly.  When I am deciding which app to use for a note, Evernote is my default choice if the content of the note will be text-based.  Any note where typing is the mode of input goes immediately into Evernote.  I onl...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel.  This is the last video in this four part series where I will walk through the steps to start budgeting using Mint.  This video will cover tracking your spending progress against your budget and making adjustments when needed. In the 4 steps to successful budgeting, this video will cover the last 2: tracking progress and making adjustments.  So far we have linked all of your spending accounts to Mint, developed a list of budget categories, tagged your historic transactions, set an amount for each budget category, done a quick savings check, and entered your budget into Mint.  Now you are ready to start to spend some money and Track Your Progress I split this step into two different parts: categorizing your ongoing transactions and reporting on your budget.  Let’s start with Categorizing Your Transactions As you spend, Mint automatically imports your tran...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel.  This is the third video in a four part series where I will walk through the steps to start budgeting using Mint.  This video and the last one cover all of the steps involved in creating a budget.  In this one, we will do a quick savings check and enter your budget into Mint. In the 4 steps to successful budgeting, we are still on the second step -- create a budget.  So far we have linked all of your spending accounts to Mint, developed a list of budget categories, tagged your historic transactions, and set an amount for each budget category.  Now it is time to do a  Quick Savings Check I’m assuming that the whole reason you are budgeting is to save a little more money, right?  Or pay down some debt? Well, let’s check to see if your budget is going to allow you to do this.  First figure out your monthly take home pay -- that is the money that ...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel.  This is the second video in a four part series where I will walk through the steps to start budgeting using Mint.  This video and the next one will cover all of the steps involved in creating a budget.  In this one we'll tag all of the transactions that we've pull in from Mint and set an amount for each budget category. In the 4 steps to successful budgeting, we are still on the second step -- create a budget.  In the last video, we linked all of your spending accounts to Mint and developed a list of budget categories.  So, now it is time to Tag Historic Transactions This part takes some time, so make sure you block off some time to do this.  To figure out how you have been spending your money, you need to go back through the historic transactions that have been pulled into Mint from each of your accounts and tag each transaction with one of your budget cat...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel.  This is the first video in a four part series where I will walk through the steps to start budgeting using Mint.  In this first video we will talk about gathering historic data (which involves linking your accounts) and choosing budget categories. Okay -- I've done a bunch of videos recently about budgeting.  The last series of videos that I did was an overview and explainer on the process of budgeting and the types of budgets that exist.  This series will break down exactly how to get started with budgeting using the platform that I use -- Mint.com .  There will be some repetition from my other videos, since the overall budgeting process is similar, so apologies about that in advance.   If you watched my 3 part budgeting series, you'll know that the 4 steps to successful budgeting are: determine your current behavior, set a new plan, track your behavior, and make adju...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share how I organize my refrigerator by function -- so that I can find things easily and food doesn’t go bad. My refrigerator is always completely stuffed.  This is apparently hereditary -- there is never any space in my mom's refrigerator either -- even when she was single!  Now granted, some of her stuff expired, like 6 years ago -- my husband would never let that happen in our fridge.  But here is the biggest problem with having a completely stuffed refrigerator -- I can't find things and I don’t remember what is in there.  And that means that food goes bad.  So, I needed a better system. I went looking for ideas on how to organize my fridge.  I found plenty, but all of the organization systems seemed to be geared towards preventing food from going bad -- certain things shouldn’t be stored in the door, put eggs up high, meat down low, etc.  I rea...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll go through the step-by-step process I use when writing a research paper. Every person is different, but I think there are some basic steps to writing a good research paper -- and it doesn't involve just typing out as many words on a topic that you can possibly think of.  Now, these are fairly generic steps, but I think they would apply the majority of research papers give or take a couple.  If your paper is 8 pages or longer, I would strongly urge you to plan out the steps for your paper at least 4 weeks in advance.  You can watch my video on planning out big projects or research papers.  I'll give you an idea of how long I think most of these steps would take for a 15 page paper and you can adjust accordingly based on your assignment and general research and writing speed.  Here we go: Understand the instructions - read through the instructions for the assi...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll talk about the Equifax data breach from 2017 and the steps you should do to make sure your data is safe.  Last year, Equifax revealed that they had had a data security breach and that criminals has obtained very private data — like social security numbers, birth dates, and drivers license numbers — from almost 150 million people.  That is almost half of the people in the United States. Even though you may have never voluntarily done business with Equifax, they most likely have all of your data because they are one of the 3 big credit reporting agencies.  That means every time you open up a line of credit, they are the company that sends the detailed credit report showing that you are a good credit risk — or not.  So, what does this mean?  It means that the criminals who stole that data can now use your private information in order to open up new lines of cred...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and today we are going to go over how to use the parental restrictions that are built right into the iPhone and iPad.  Okay -- so today we are going to explore the parental controls that Apple has built into their iOS devices. They actually can be quite powerful. I know a family that essentially transformed an iPhone temporarily back into a dumb phone for their daughter just by using these controls.  More about that later on.  Okay -- go into Settings --> General --> Restrictions. By default, the Restrictions are all turned off. In order to make any changes in this area, you will need to create a passcode.  Choose to Enable Restrictions and select a 4-digit passcode.  This is something you will not be sharing with your kid, so make a note of it somewhere private.   Allow Apps: The first area allows you choose which native apps to allow on your kid's device. By native, I ...