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Save Online Data/Cloud Storage Fees: A Little Google Hack

 As I (and probably everyone) lives more of my life digitally-email, social media, photos, documents-I've come to realize that 15 years with the same/only email account isn't sustainable when it comes to the *free* storage limits set by the service provider-think Gmail, Hotmail, etc...and have noticed that these free storage limits are also decreasing over time, which compounds the issue. 

These two things combined mean that just *one* free email account (for my *entire* life) isn't going to work for the duration of my life-never mind with (hopefully!) 30-40 years still to go.  

But, being the ever-frugal person that I am, I finally realized a few months ago that there's an easy way out of the death spiral of save email/documents, receive warning that you're over the limit, delete documents/email you want to keep to get your storage limit back below the free threshold, and lather/rinse/repeat ad infinitum.   What is the easy way out?  Have multiple email accounts for multiple needs!  I'm really smacking myself on the forehead that I didn't realize oh..um...20 years ago that I should do this-and in honesty, everyone except for me may have already been doing this for years, but better late than never, right?

The gotcha with this is keeping track of the additional email accounts you decide to set up.  While I didn't do this, in hindsight, I should have set up an email for all video, an email for all important docs, an email for photos...and maybe a few other slices that I haven't yet thought of.  So, in my hindsight, being prescribed about the organization is actually the learning point here-more than the extra email account itself.  For the moment, I've got one extra account that is holding all video/docs/email, and it is luckily only 20% full, so it is possible that I won't need another account before I leave this mortal coil-after all, this is 30 years-plus of my digital life already.  Even if I double my needs in the next 30 years, I'll still have 40% left to play around with.  ...Hopefully.

Anyhoo, I hope this all makes sense!  If this is a trick that you're already using, I'd love to know how you approached your organization (or changed your organization) over the years!  I'm sure I could learn a thing or two, so please drop a comment below and share your knowledge!

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