Managing your home improvements

Monday, May 19th, 2008

One of the bigger challenges I have found in doing home improvements is when we’ve had to call in professionals to sort something out.  If we hadn’t had the problem before or didn’t like the last electrician or plumber or whatever, we were starting from square one. 

And so went the process of calling a bunch of companies from the phone book, getting one call back (or two, if we were particularly lucky!) and hiring them because we had no choice.  Sometimes we’d get a referral from a friend or another trusted professional.  Sometimes this worked, but usually the referral never called back or did shoddy work and then we felt bad about telling the referrer.

 Enter www.servicemagic.com.  It is a referral service for all sorts of home improvement contractors, from handymen to roofers, plumbers, you name it.  You log on to the site and you tell them what service you are looking for, how large the project, and how soon you want it completed.  You enter your contact info, and boom! you are given the names and info of 3 professionals in your area.  And guess what?  These people actually call you!  They actually come out for estimates!  And they are actually nice! And the whole process is free!

The way it works is this: the contractor pay to be a part of the service as well as for each referral they receive (unlike with Angie’s List where you pay for membership).  So that is a good incentive for them to contact you.  You have no obligation to use their services, but since they are paying for the referral, you want to use www.servicemagic.com if you are seriously considering a repair or upgrade, not just to price a “someday” project.

www.servicemagic.com has a price estimator for those  “someday” projects that is quite specific and based on zip code, which is great as the cost of labor and materials can vary widely across the U.S.

We have found some great home improvement people for around our house through www.servicemagic.com and hopefully you will too!

Copyright 2008-2009 Kristin Delfau, author of Turbo-Mom's Guide to Saving Money Without Wasting Time a womens' personal finance book, and Aji Publishing.

Tags: home improvement, top 10
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Saving and printing

Monday, May 12th, 2008

Belated happy Mother’s Day!  Hopefully everyone had a good day! 

Now, onto another Top 10 website…

Many moms today have (or are trying to start) home businesses.  This requires some start up cash and advertising as well as a business plan!

 So how do you get the word out there about your business?  Well, business cards are a great start!  Then you have coordinating stationery, calendars, magnets, etc.  But this stuff gets very expensive very fast and if you want to design your own logo, well, forget it–that’s out of our league, right?

 Wrong.  Head over to www.vistaprint.com.  Here you can print pretty much anything you want (from stationery to folders to pens to T-shirts) at great prices.  And you get their stuff fast even if you order their standard shipping service.  And the quality is very good–you wouldn’t know you were getting your items from a discount online printing service.

They have a huge selection of templates…or you can create your own.  It’s easy to edit since you do it yourself–which I find is much simpler than going back and forth with a printing company to correct problems.  And if you want a custom logo, they will work with you on that as well!  You can even upload photos pretty easily.  They also do rubber stamps, invites, holiday cards, you name it. 

The only downside is that when you check out they offer you tons of different add-on items, but it is simple to say “no thanks”.

The best part of all…access them through www.ebates.com (discussed in the previous post) and you will not only get special coupon savings, you will also receive 10% cash back on your purchases!  How’s that for a good deal?

Copyright 2008-2009 Kristin Delfau, author of Turbo-Mom's Guide to Saving Money Without Wasting Time a womens' personal finance book, and Aji Publishing.

Tags: printing, top 10
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absolute best & fastest way to save money online

Monday, May 5th, 2008

Happy Monday!

Finally some nice weather in Connecticut–enough for the weeds to really start growing again!

Each of the next 9 weeks, I am going to be posting my absolute favorite ways of saving money online.  Since I have already introduced you to one of my top 10 in an earlier post (www.beautypedia.com), we only have 9 left!

For those of you who shop online regularly (and not so regularly), here’s my absolute, hands down, favorite and easiest way to save money online. 

Who’s heard of Ebates? If you haven’t, zip over to www.ebates.com ASAP!  Sign up and they give you a bonus of $5 or $10, depending on how you choose to receive it.  That’s not the best part, though, but it is not a bad start.

Here’s how it works: all you do is search for a website on www.ebates.com.  Each site that they work with automatically gives a percentage of cash back.  All you have to do is access the website through Ebates.   That’s it!  Ebates also has coupons for these websites, so you can save even more! Then, at the end of each quarter, Ebates sends you a check!

And Ebates has TONS of websites that they work with–everything from airline and travel websites to contact lenses and pet food. 

 Example: www.vistaprint.com.  GREAT for small businesses, personalized stationery, calendars, you name it–for great prices.  If you access through www.ebates.com, you will save an ADDITIONAL 10% plus whatever discounts they are offering.  Awesome!

What do you do if you have gone to a website, put everything in your cart, and are about to check out?  Open www.ebates.com in another window and see if site is affiliated with them. If they are, click through Ebates.com and go back to the sitewhere you were doing your shopping–now with extra savings coming your way! 

An easy thing that I have done is to stick a Post-It on my computer with a big “Did you use Ebates?” message.  This way, I never leave my extra savings behind.

If you want to be nice, tell them you heard about it from ktdelfau@yahoo.com…

 Happy virtual shopping!

Copyright 2008-2009 Kristin Delfau, author of Turbo-Mom's Guide to Saving Money Without Wasting Time a womens' personal finance book, and Aji Publishing.

Tags: online, saving money, top 10
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