Every April, after I shovel much of my hard-earned dough into the hands of Uncle Sam, I take a little spring break using the cash that my home-office frugality has saved me through the year. Try my printing tricks yourself--the green they save you can pay for your own after-tax excursion next year. The topper is, these tips are painless; I promise you won't feel a blessed thing.

Print-'em-yourself checks. Though I don't have a head for figures, somehow I ended up managing three bank accounts: one for my business; one for fun things (like vacations and toys); and one for a civic organization I was elected treasurer of (stop laughing--they don't know me like you do). Instead of paying for preprinted checks for all three accounts, I print checks using blank check paper and Checkmagic, a $20 program that's easy to use, though a little awkward initially.

Checkmagic works with Quicken versions 5 through 2002, and QuickBooks versions 4 through 2001. A stack of 500 sheets of blank check safety paper, enough for 1500 checks, costs as little as $16 at office supply stores--much less than the $75-plus your bank charges for the same number of preprinted checks.

Using Checkmagic is a little disconcerting at first. You work in your accounting program as you normally do, but when it's time to print checks, you choose Checkmagic's print driver in the print dialog box. (You are actually printing to a file on your hard drive, something your accounting program will consider an error. It's not--ignore the message.) Close your accounting app, and Checkmagic automatically prints the file on any laser or ink jet printer. By the way, you don't need special ink or toner cartridges.

Save on cartridges. Have you noticed that the price of ink jet printers keeps dropping? Heck, with the outrageous cost of replacement cartridges, companies could just as well give printers away. You can beat the system by using third-party replacement cartridges for ink jets. I searched PC World's Product Finder and found new or remanufactured cartridges for printers from Epson, HP, Canon, and others. A black-ink cartridge for an Epson Stylus Color 880 is about $27 from Epson, but a cartridge from Rhinotek for the same printer is priced at $12. Some people (like my editor) feel the print quality may not be as good. I say hogwash--it looks great to me, and nobody I know has ever noticed a difference.

Remanufactured cartridges for laser printers are an even better deal. A new cartridge for an HP LaserJet III or 4 costs about $81, while a cartridge with its guts replaced will set you back only around $47. To price cartridges, visit PC World's Product Finder and select Printers from the drop-down product-type menu.

Double your printing pleasure. I save money on paper by printing rough drafts on the blank side of used paper. Except for when I've forgotten to remove a staple (duh!), I've never damaged a laser or an ink jet printer. I also throw my doubly used paper into a local print shop's recycling bin---no savings here, but I help the environment twice.

E-postage? No thanks! Finally, one printing option to steer clear of: I tried both Neopost Online's Simply Postage and PitneyWorks' ClickStamp Online, each for more than six months--but neither service seemed worthwhile.

Simply Postage costs $15 per month to rent its postage device, on top of your regular mailing costs. And while it computes Media Rate, it can't handle Bound Printed Matter Rate, which is often less expensive to post. ClickStamp Online is a more reasonable $1.49 per month, but it prints only one envelope at a time (a real pain in the Bass), and it can't print postage on window envelopes. Bottom line? I bought myself a cheap scale, and I use the Postal Service's Web site to figure out the correct postage.

SUMMARY

Checkmagic List: $20

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