How do I send money to a friend using Paypal without them paying fees?

Paypal is an awesome service. With it, you can instantly and securely send money to people and businesses anywhere on Earth. But Paypal has to make money as well. So if you're paying for goods or services, they charge a fee. But you can send money to someone for free if it is money being sent to a friend AND the funds are coming from a bank account, not a credit card.

As long as your paypal account is linked to a bank account, checking or savings account, that contains enough funds to cover the payment you wish to send, you can send money to someone without fees.

1. Log into your Paypal account.

2. Click on the "Send money to a friend" button

3. Enter the mobile number or email address of your friend and the amount you wish to send to them.

4. Press the Send button.

That's it!

***NOTE This only works for payments sent from someone in the USA to someone in the USA. International payments may not be free. :/


The day may come when we'll be able to send money instantly to anyone on Earth with little or no fees for the transfer. This is the promise that Bitcoin hopes to deliver on. Right now, it's not clear if it's sustainable:

Under Bitcoin protocol and payment scheme, anyone can send any amount of bitcoins that he owns to anywhere in the world via internet, near instantly for near zero fees. While the popular crypto-currency enjoys low transaction fees, a feature that is highly promoted and is working fine for the current state of the Bitcoin ecosystem, we argue that in an unforeseeable future, zero or infinitesimal transaction fees will not be sustainable. We apply a financial reasoning via depicting the interrelation of fees with mining, securing the network against 51% attacks, scarcity of supplies and the price of bitcoin, which in addition are the essential parameters involved in the problem of setting the right transaction fee in the future that we briefly discuss. -Kerem Kaskaloglu

so for now, Paypal is a pretty good deal

Breaking free from the chains of Epson

I love my old epson printer. Epson Stylus Photo R200. All I use it for is to print random things like Paypal shipping forms and movie tickets to the Arclight, perhaps a google map here and there.

The other day, the printer kindly notified me that 2 ink cartridges were out of ink, Magenta and Light Cyan.

"No bother", I told my printer. (I was only printing a B&W shipping form.) "Continue and print my form please."

"NO!" said the printer. "I will not! Not until you replace the empty ink cartridges."

"Printer, it's cool. It's not color, just go ahead and print it. I promise it will work just fine", I said, getting a little warmer. Was the AC on in here, I wondered to myself.

"You don't understand!" the printer scolded back at me, it's red light now blinking at a furious pace. "I cannot and will not print one more thing until you replace those cartridges."

Now I was angry. My printer thought it knew better than me what it could and couldn't do. I knew the black ink was just waiting to be spit out on the paper, giving me a shipping form that I now wanted more than a trip to Scoops!

So what's going on here? Why does my printer defiantly disobey my commands like it doesn't have any respect for me?

Epson cleverly, or rather deviously, placed a small microship in each ink cartridge that monitored the use of ink and once the level was determined to be empty, it would tell the printer to stop printing. Mind you, the cartridge doesn't need to be actually empty for this to happen. It could have many pages left and still be functionally useless due to this mis-application of technology.

Seeing that I was up against a corporation intent on forcing me to purchase their liquid crack at outrageously high prices even when I didn't need it, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I was going to give my little printer a lobotomy, and remove the parts of it's brain I found useless. It turns out people have been thinking the same thing for a while now, and even built special surgical instruments to quickly slice out this useless flesh in one stroke.

Making it's debut all the way from Nanshan District in Shenzhen China....Behold the YXD268-II! It's a multi-function chip resetter with the following specs:

1. YXD268-II can RESET the chip on the cartridge into full mode.
2. YXD268-II can also DETECT the chip status.
3. Red and Green LED for easy identification.
4. Both sides CONCAVES for easy holding.

It slices, it dices, it saves you money time. Folks, step right up and gets yours today!

Now my printer is happily printing in black and white, blissfully unaware it's almost out of magenta and light cyan. And when it runs out, I'll know, because my printouts will be ugly and weird. I don't care, it's just a google map...

Great Depression Cooking

We all thought it would never happen again, but today we stand on the precipice of another depression. Our elders told stories of enduring hardships we could only imagine. Now those stories are no longer outside the realm of possibility. What lessons can we draw from their experiences and innovations? Here's a start: Cooking Lessons from the Great Depression, brought to us by Clara, a 91 year old who grew up during those trying times.

WAMU customers get ready. Chase is now protecting your assets.

From Consumerist comes this tale of Chase and their outsourced security department. As a WAMU customer, I am frightened at the prospect that my financial security is in the outsrouced hands of Chase's security department.

A former Chase call center rep tells the story about this one thief who was able to rip off one customer for over $40,000, thanks to his constant outwitting out the internationally out-sourced security department. It wasn't that hard. Over and over again, he was able to commit credit card fraud just knowing the guy's name, social, and mother's maiden name.

The Americans would beg and plead with the Filipinos to not unblock the account, and over and over again they would. Says our insider, "if US security had been able to intervene from the get-go, he would never have been able to do so much financial damage. For the rest of his life, the true owner of that account will be dealing with the effects of this crime."

http://consumerist.com/5069018/how-outsourced-call-centers-are-costing-millions-in-identity-theft

Bye Bye WAMU....

Tonight WAMU becomes the largest US bank to ever fail. US Regulators seized control of the bank tonight as JP Morgan Chase purchased the bank's branches and deposits for 1.9 billion. I wonder what this will mean for their famous free checking account, which I only use nowadays as a transfer point to a high interest earning online savings account.

In plain english! How Did This Happen?

Step by Step: The Market Meltdown of 2008

From Kiplinger

$50 for Free Checking?

Wachovia is giving new customers $50 to open a free checking account with them. I've been with Wamu for years, and don't plan to change that for now, but why not get $50 for free? You have to call Wachovia and open the account over the phone ( (800) 922-4684 ) because they don't have any place to enter the offer code on their website. The offer code is ATM2 and the offer expires 1/31/08. Thanks to Bank Deals for letting me know about this!

UPDATE 1/12/08 Wachovia takes their time paying you the $50 bonus. Mark your calendar 120 days out, and don't bounce a check, your account must be in good standing or you'll lose the bonus.