Estate Agents – Noble Intermediaries or Villainous Vermin?

June 1, 2013 By 7 Comments

The following is a guest post from Ezekiel Ayonrinde. Ezekiel is based in London, but many of his thoughts here are universal. If you are interested in guest posting at Club Thrifty, please see our guest posting guidelines.

 

Estate AgentsYou may have heard the “fact” that when you’re in London you are never more than 10 feet away from a rat. Did you also know that you’re no more than 20 feet away from an estate agent? For some people who see rats and agents as the same thing, there may be no difference in these two statistics. The UK has around 9,500 estate agencies, and in urban areas, walking down the high street you notice that a significant percentage of the “shops” are actually estate agencies. It feels as though the high street won’t let you find the corner shop until you’ve bought at least one house from these people.

Are they all untrustworthy devils just out to take our money? Or are they helpful, professional intermediaries who just want to ensure “the right house for the right person”? Here we look at what motivates estate agents: [Read more...]

photo by: bradleygee
Filed Under: Real Estate Tagged With: ,

VIP Club: Jury Duty and Link Love

May 31, 2013 By 33 Comments

What’s up, Club Thrifty enthusiasts?

It’s been another great week here at the crib.  We haven’t had a lot of excitement this week and have mostly been catching up from the long weekend. The most exciting thing that happened is that I got called to jury duty for the one millionth time.  Seriously?!?!?   Do I seem like a person who should be making life-changing decisions for others?  I realize that it’s my civic duty to participate but I hope that the whole thing gets called off.  After all, I’ve been called to jury duty numerous times and it has always gotten cancelled until now.  If I do get called in, I hope to get disqualified on the first day.  Maybe I’ll say something completely ignorant, like “most white people are guilty honkeys” or “Hang ‘em!!!…” just to make sure that I don’t get picked.  I’m not above it, folks.  Not even close.

Anyway, we rocked another amazing week.  In case you missed it, here are the amazing topics that we covered this week:

Freelancing is Making Me Fat

Club Thrifty May Budget Review: Epic Fail

The Most Commonly Asked Credit Score Questions

Here are my favorite posts from others this week:

Jacob at Iheartbudgets asks, “Is my emergency fund too big?”   He also announced that his wife is totally preggers.  That’s awesome!

Budget Blonde wrote about hanging her clothes out to dry vs. using the dryer.

Canadian Budget Binder wrote about gardening.  I’m so jealous!!!

Making Sense of Cents wrote about finally paying off her student loans….hooray!

Money, Life & More wrote about resisting the urge to fill his new house with new furniture.

Frugal Rules asked if saving for retirement and college was possible at the same time.

What are your plans this weekend?

 

 

 

 

 

photo by: steakpinball
Filed Under: Blogging, Personal Stories Tagged With: ,

Freelancing is Making Me Fat

May 30, 2013 By 71 Comments
Freelancing is Making Me Fat

The culprit? Grilled cheese.

Yesterday, I wrote about how our May spending was out of control.  A convergence of excess social encounters and unrestrained grocery spending pushed our budget to its breaking point.  We crossed the threshold back into our old spending habits and we are working on reigning it back in.  Truthfully, I’m probably being a little hard on myself.  People go over their budget all the time, right?  In fact, the comments were filled with similar stories of booze filled weekends and overflowing grocery carts.  So, anyway.  I’m going to stop giving myself a hard time about it.  I’m determined to move on to June which will hopefully by kick-ass in terms of income and spending. [Read more...]

photo by: pirateyjoe
Filed Under: Frugality and Saving Money, Personal Stories Tagged With: , , ,

Club Thrifty May Budget Review: Epic Fail

May 29, 2013 By 84 Comments

Our Epic Budget MeltdownGood morning, peeps.  Welcome to our public shaming.  I have some good news and some bad news to share with you all.  I am proud and horrified by what went on around here during the month of May and I wanted to share as a way to hold ourselves accountable.  First, let’s get to the good news. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blogging, Budgeting and Income, Frugality and Saving Money, Personal Stories Tagged With: , , ,

The Most Commonly Asked Credit Score Questions

May 28, 2013 By 42 Comments

Thanks for joining us here at Club Thrifty! We hope you had a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend! Today, we are proud to present our new contributor, Joshua Rodriguez. Enjoy!

Most Commonly Asked Credit Score QuestionsHey everyone, my name is Joshua Rodriguez and thank you for reading my first article here at Club Thrifty! One of the best ways to live a thrifty lifestyle is to build and maintain a good credit score. After all, with a good credit score, you can get lower interest rates on mortgages, auto loans and credit cards. The lower rates could save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year. However, before you can build or maintain good credit scores, you’re going to have to understand how they work. With that said, here are the 3 most commonly asked questions about credit scores and the best answers that I can give! [Read more...]

photo by: Valerie Everett
Filed Under: Budgeting and Income, Debt Tagged With: , ,

Marriage and Money: How We Make it Work

May 23, 2013 By 71 Comments
Marriage and Money

Still married!

Although our early twenties were spent wasting most of the money we made, we eventually matured enough to realize what we were doing.  In fact, becoming pregnant with our second daughter made us freak out.  All of a sudden, we began to realize that time was slipping away from us.  Getting older meant that that we had to start taking things seriously.  Therefore we decided to take this challenge head on and pay off all of our consumer debt ASAP.  How did we reach this conclusion?  Together.

The truth is that we’ve never argued about money in our entire eight years of marriage.  Don’t believe me?  It’s true!!  People often ask us why we’re always on the same wavelength.  Honestly, I don’t really know.  Maybe it’s because we ultimately want the same things out of life – peace, stability, early retirement, and lots of travel and fun along the way.

So I decided to detail how we make our finances work as a team.  What follows is a boring story about two people getting along.  It’s not exciting, dramatic, or suspenseful.  [Read more...]

Filed Under: Budgeting and Income, Debt, Frugality and Saving Money, Personal Stories
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