The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video I'll talk what I don't like about  Mint.com  -- my budgeting program of choice.  This is the last of a 3 part series on how I use Mint. In the last two videos, I did a quick tutorial on  Mint.com , which I use for budgeting and I talked about what I like about Mint.  In this video, I'll share what I wish it did better: Security  - I wish I didn't have to give my bank account login credentials to Mint.  That said, if I want the convenience of having all of my transactions in one place, this is the price I have to pay.  Thankfully, Mint isn't some 2 bit, fly by night operation.  They are owned by Intuit, who also owns TurboTax and Quicken.  They have some experience in keeping data safe.  Here's what Intuit says on their website about how they store this data: "Login user name and passwords are stored securely in a separate database using multi-layered hardware a

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video I'll talk what I like about  Mint.com  -- my budgeting program of choice.  This is Part 2 of a 3 part series on how I use Mint. The first video in this series gives an overview of how I use Mint.  In this video, I want to cover all of the things I like about Mint: Consolidation  - prior to using Mint, I had an elaborate process by which I would log into both my bank and my main credit card website and export transactions from each.  Then I would put them all into a spreadsheet.  This required me to be at my laptop and would take some doing.  Plus there were inevitably duplicate transactions.  It was, in short, a pain in the rear.  Mint makes this process SO MUCH EASIER.  Once you establish a connection inside Mint with your bank account and credit card accounts, it seamlessly pulls in all your transactions each time you visit the webpage or open the app.   No elaborate export process,

Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll give you a quick tour of the program that I use for budgeting,  Mint.com .   This is the first of a 3 part series on how I use Mint. I’ve been compulsively keeping a budget since I was in college.  My parents made it a mission to spend as little money as possible when i was growing up, so I guess some of that rubbed off on me.   I'm also someone who loves systems, tracking things, and data -- so budgeting is a natural fit for me.   Obviously, the technology has improved a lot in 25 years. My favorite software used to be Microsoft Money, but they phased that out years ago, which is when I switched over to  Mint.com .  Mint has some real advantages and some annoying drawbacks, but having tried many of the alternatives, I’m convinced it’s the best thing out there at the moment for my needs.  I have two separate videos where I share my likes and dislikes, but first let me tell you why I n

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll take you on a quick tour of my favorite iOS PDF reader and manipulator, the GoodReader app. There are a billion apps out there that will allow you to view and edit PDFs.  I use Notability if I need to draw on PDFs, but if I want to interact with the text in a PDF, GoodReader is by far my favorite and has the most robust functionality that I have found.  It definitely trades simplicity for function, so although it does almost everything, it can feel complicated AND some functions are kind of buried, so it helps to have someone show you all the things it can do. So, this is my whirlwind tour.  Here we go!  First, let’s talk about Getting PDFs into GoodReader Goodreader offers lots of ways to get PDFs into the app. I almost always use iOS’s intra-app exchange system. Meaning that when I am in Safari and viewing a PDF, I simply hit the share button and choose to open the PDF in Go

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s quick video, I’ll show you how I convert a PDF file that doesn’t see any text, to one that recognizes text  using the Adobe Scan app.  I have to read a lot of PDFs for my graduate school program. I like to pull them into the Goodreader app on my iPad and then highlight, comment, and annotate away.  Sometimes though, I will pull in a PDF and find that none of the GoodReader annotation features work because the PDF isn’t recognizing any of the text in the document. It’s just treating that text like an image. This happened recently with a 33 page document.  I really like to be able to highlight passages while I’m reading a PDF, since I save all of the highlighted bits in a spreadsheet — you can see my video on that if you are interested.  I tried a bunch of options and apps — one offered to convert PDFs to Word documents, but it just made each page an image within the Word document, so that didn’t help

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll show you how I use Text Replacement on my iPhone and iPad to speed up my typing.  I can type pretty quickly on my iPad, but I’m absolutely hopeless on the iPhone.  Let’s just say that rely on autocorrect, A LOT.  On iOS devices, your typing speed is necessarily restricted because you have to take the time to switch keyboards for numbers and special characters.  AND there are some things that you have to type ALL THE TIME that require those characters. For these frequently used, but slightly complicated terms, I use iOS’s Text Replacement.  Text Replacement is a feature that allows you to substitute a predetermined string of characters for a frequently used term or phrase.  For example, we all have to type our email addresses a ton.  We type it every time we fill out a form, make a purchase, or log into a website. That is a lot. Email addresses have an annoying @ sign, so it takes a littl

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video I’ll show you how to slow things down or speed things up on your favorite iOS listening app. Sometimes I’m listening to a YouTube video and they are talking so fast that I can’t keep up!  Or more frequently, I’m listening to a book on tape and the narrator’s vocal pacing is so slow and dramatic that it is absolutely driving me crazy.  Here is the good news!  Most non-music listening apps have anticipated that you might want to control the speed of playback and have built this into their controls. I’m just going to show you how to change the speed on some of the main apps that I use. First, YouTube I have a tendency to speak kind of quickly on these videos. But if you listen to some of my early videos, like my trailer, I speak much more slowly.  They drive me nuts now and I would have to speed them up to make them tolerable to listen to!  Here’s how to do it: after you have begun watching a