About Simple Helpers

Hello — I'm Jan Long, a retired software engineer.

I spent a career building tools, and it turns out that's not something you stop doing when you retire. I still notice things that ought to exist and aren't there — or are there, but cost more than the people who'd benefit most are able to pay. When that happens I'd rather sit down and build it than grumble about it.

That's all this site is. A few small, genuinely useful things, given away.

Because it has quietly made a great many things possible for ordinary people that used to need an expert, and because I use it constantly myself — for small everyday questions right through to writing code.

But I keep meeting people who are put off before they start. Not because they couldn't do it — because it's new, and new technology has a way of making capable people feel foolish. That gap is the whole reason for the guides here. The tools are genuinely easy. The instructions usually aren't.

So everything here is written the way I'd explain it to a friend across the kitchen table: plainly, without jargon, and without any assumption that you already know the words.

Guides — things to read:

Getting Started with AI — a self-paced guide for anyone who hasn't taken the plunge yet, built around real conversations you can follow along with.

Family History & Genealogy — using today's tools to research your family's story, tell it well, and make sure it lasts. Includes a regularly-updated list of what's free and what's worth paying for.

Scams & Spoofing — how today's scams actually work and what to do when one lands. This one started with a friend's husband, an IT professional, nearly losing his card to a spoofed call from "his bank."

Private tools — things to fill in:

Home Inventory — a room-by-room record of what you own, with photos, for insurance and for whoever has to sort things out later.

Personal & Estate Organizer — what my family needs to know: accounts, documents, medical details, passwords, and where everything is kept.

Life History Journal — the story of your life in your own words, printable as a keepsake booklet.

All three run entirely on your own device and save to a single encrypted Legacy Vault file. Nothing is sent anywhere, because there's nowhere for it to go.

A site that hands out advice about scams ought to be willing to say plainly what it is. So:

• Everything here is free. There is nothing for sale, and there never will be.
• No accounts, no sign-ups, no email required to use any of it.
• No advertising and no affiliate links. When I recommend a tool, it's because I think it's good. Nobody pays to be on these pages, and I don't earn anything if you use them.
• I don't track you. The site counts page visits so I know which guides are being read — no cookies, no personal information, nothing that identifies you, nothing sold to anyone.
• I'll tell you when something is a guess. Especially with AI, which is confident even when it's wrong.

A fair bit of this started in a classroom. I teach local classes on using AI for family history and genealogy, and I write Tech Tips for a laser and hobby community — with plenty of help from AI along the way.

If you've landed here after one of those: welcome. Everything I mentioned is somewhere on this site, and it's all free.

Found something out of date, spotted a broken link, or got stuck on a step that didn't make sense? I'd genuinely like to know — especially the last one. If an explanation didn't work for you, it isn't working for other people either.

hello (at) simplehelpers (dot) com

I read everything, though I can't always reply quickly.