buying postage / printing a label at USPS.com

A benefit of buying a label online for mailing a package is that you can select to get tracking info sent to your email address for free. The page indicated that the tracking info is only available when purchasing the label online.

One can pay with credit card or Paypal.

Use Internet Explorer; I had problems with Firefox - for some reason I had to enter stuff twice and then I was redirected to the Login page again. So I switched to using IE.

I have a USPS user account already. Sign in to begin with, or else you'll have to do it later anyway.

You can click "Calculate a Price" to determine how much the postage will cost. But if you do that, don't click the "Customs Forms and Extra Services" button, as the customs form will be printed automatically as part of the label anyway when you print your label.

To actually buy/print a label, click on "Print a Label with Postage" from the main USPS page.

.

Hopefully next time it won't take me 2 hours to print out a shipping label.

Anxiety over not being able to think of a succinct easy-to-remember tag to use for "mailing/postal/shipping/delivery" type posts. I wonder if "postal" can be used to describe companies like UPS and FedEx, or if it only applies to official government postal services? What does UPS stand for.. oh, Parcel Service.

Ah, I already had a tag that I could use: mail

school fees

I didn't realize that some public schools in the U.S. charge parents mandatory fees for each student. It seems to be common in Illinois. Up to $500 or more per student per year, although they are supposedly waived for low income families.

From what I remember of my own school years, there may have been various fees, but I think they were mainly for "optional" things like field trips, after-school activities, school photos & yearbook.