Frugal Quick Tip: Before You Junk It, Google It

There has been more than one occasion where we thought an electronic was broken, but my husband simply went to the Internet and searched the error code or issue and was able to fix the problem relatively easily.  Here are a couple of funny examples:

• When our third son was about 2 weeks old, I was warming up water in the microwave for a bottle.  It was the middle of the night and all of a sudden the microwave stops working!  Joe went to the computer and Googled the error code.  He discovered several other users that had the same issue and their solution was simply to whack the thing on the side, very hard!  It worked!  Apparently, the condensation from the water can disturb a sensor.  This saved the cost of someone coming to fix it. 
• We had been blaming our third son (do you see a pattern here?) for our printer being broken for about a week.  Whenever you turned it on, it flashed a blue screen with a code and then ultimately all of the lights flashed.  Again, my husband Googled the error code and discovered that, in fact, Vince had not broken it, it was just a bad printer cartridge that I had just loaded.  Sorry, Vince, you were innocent this time!

The moral of the story is, don't pitch or buy new before you do a little investigation!

I posted this about a year ago and we recently had some more instances where the internet and a little effort saved us a ton of money.

• Joe got a new computer for school and one day it stopped accessing the internet and gave an error code.  He researched the code online and ended up discovering that the updates he had done had goofed things up.  He returned the computer to factory settings and it was good as new (literally).
• Our dishwasher stopped working.  He researched the problem online and discovered we just needed a $6.75 part.  It came in the mail and I fixed it while he was at work!!! (I was so proud of myself.)

Moral of the story is that YOU can fix things yourself.   Just go to the computer and start 'googling'.