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 only choose Notability if the conte

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share some tips for organizing your notes and making them easily searchable in Evernote. I use Evernote as my main note-taking app.  I've done a couple of videos about Evernote, but in this one, I want to talk specifically about organizing and finding notes.  First -- a quick overview on how Evernote structures itself organizationally.  The primary organizational unit for Evernote is the  Notebook Notebooks should contain broad topics.  You can add as many as you want, but I think you should limit the number you have or it will be unwieldy.  Obviously, if you are just starting out, you aren't going to have any notes yet, but my rule of thumb is that each notebook should contain at least 100 notes.  If you don't ever think you'll put that many notes in a notebook, it's probably not notebook worthy.  The 6 notebooks I have are: Books & Reading, Grad Schoo

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video I'll tell you why you really need a "Respond To" email folder for work. If you are like me, you probably receive emails from work on your phone.  You also get your personal emails on your phone.  I have 2 additional email addresses -- one for school and one for this YouTube channel, so instead of flipping back and forth between my four inboxes, I make use of the All Inboxes function on the iPhone.  This is great -- EXCEPT -- I really try to get to inbox zero one time per day.  That means that once per day I totally clean out my inbox by deleting emails, filing them, or acting on them -- or if the task is longer than 5m -- putting it on my task list.   The issue is this -- when I get a work email that I need to act on -- I don't want to do that during my home time.  BUT it bugs me that it is sitting in my inbox taking up space.  Particularly when I have to work around  a b

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 transactions from your bank or credit card account.  It wi

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 actually hits your bank account.  I’m going to assume for now that yo

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 categories.  After we've done this for all of

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 adjustments.  So, we are going to make t