How To Save Money With Your Office Supplies

A few months ago I bought some Pilot G2 pens to use around the office. These ones are supposedly the “best” ones to use, because of their “security” feature: you can’t wash out anything written with one of them. This is a useful feature when signing those cheques or anything else with your signature. The document cannot be used fraudulently. I know this isn’t a big concern for most people, but still, I thought it was a nice feature.

Plus I’m just a sucker for a great writing pen, and these are definitely fun to use.

I had bought a three-pack for around $10 or $12, and I was a little sad to see that they seemed to be disposable pens. Until yesterday.

I finished off the blue one last week, and threw it out. I’m not a huge environmentalist, but I was a little annoyed that such a well-made pen was disposable.

Then yesterday I was in my local discount department store, and saw that they DO make refills for the G2 pen! Hot diggity! So I immediately picked up a 2-pack of refills for $4, not a bad deal. But of course on the drive home I had to remember if I still had the empty pen. Luckily due to my lazy housekeeping skills this week I hadn’t actually emptied out the trashcan in my office, so this morning I fished around in there and found it! I discarded the empty cartridge, put in the new one, and voila! I’m good to go.

What’s the lesson here? Well, it’s that you can save money by buying refillable pens. Sure, they might be a little more expensive for the initial outlay, but in the end you save money with the refills that could be up to one-third cheaper than an entirely new pen.

How have you been saving on your office supplies? Buying printer paper in bulk? Leave a comment and let me know.