Your Cheapskates Club Newsletter 41:18
In this Newsletter
1. Cath's Corner
2. In the Tip Store - Solar Bleaching for Free; Recycle T-Shirts Help the War on Waste and Decorate Our Home; Price Card System Saved My Sanity
3. Share Your Tips
4. On the Menu - Chicken and Vegetable Pie
5. The $300 a Month Food Challenge - Homemade Ginger Beer
6. Cheapskates Buzz - Cheapskaters are talking in the Forum and on Cath's blog
7. Own Your Christmas Challenge - Week 2 Tasks and Tips
8. Last Week's Question - Advice needed to sell our home
9. Ask Cath
10. Join the Cheapskates Club
11. Frequently Asked Questions
12. Contact Details
1. Cath's Corner
Hello Cheapskaters,
If you've had rain, I'm so glad for you! This drought seems to be never-ending, bringing back memories of droughts in the late 1980s and early 1990s. How we prayed for rain during those years. And then when the drought finally broke, and the rain was pouring down, we had a little two-year old who was so excited because we had a "drought" in the drive way! The water was rushing down the drive and he'd never seen that before. His little face was lit up, and he was jumping with excitement. Then Daddy took him out and let him play in it! I hope the rains continue, so you can be as excited as that gorgeous two year old (who is now 27!), and perhaps you'll play and dance in the rain too.
Have a great week everyone.
Happy Cheapskating,
Cath
PS: Love our site? We love referrals! Send a note to your favourite newspapers, magazines, radio stations, TV stations, friends and relatives, and tell them about us!
2. From The Tip Store
Solar Bleaching for Free
If you have white plastic cutlery/utensils/bowls that are stained from using spaghetti sauces and other tomato based foods, try washing them as normal and leaving them out in the full sun for a day for the sun to bleach away the stained discolouring. The sun acts as a natural bleaching agent and will rid your utensils or bowls of the stains as if they were brand new. This has also worked on stained white laundry buckets as well. Sometimes rubbery spatulas are a bit more stubborn and may require extra time to bleach but harder plastic products will be stain free within hours, much to the amazement of your eyes when you collect them looking like they did when you bought them in the shop. No need to replace - just let the sun work it's magic!!
Contributed by Michelle Jones
Recycle T-Shirts Help the War on Waste and Decorate Our Home
I have been saving pretty much all my families T-shirts for the past 20 years. I cut them all into strips to make yarn and then crocheted them into a big floor rug. It took quite a long time and I am more than happy with the result. You could make smaller rugs a lot faster and they would be wonderful bathmats or kitchen mats. The mats are thick and soft underfoot, especially on timber and tiled floors. To build the t-shirt stash quickly, have family and friends save all their t-shirts for you, then the only thing a rug would cost you is your time.
Contributed by GG
Price Card System Saved My Sanity
I am new to Cheapskates and loving it, but the idea of setting up a price book was just overwhelming. The thought of ruling up a notebook and then copying all the prices and trying to get them into some sort of order scared me, and stopped me from making use of this amazing too. And then I had a brainwave! While tidying up at work I found an old index card box with the alphabetical dividers and even some blank index cards. I asked if I could have it, and they answer was yes. Over the next week I sat each lunchtime and made an index card for each item on my shopping list. I ruled them up the same as the price book pages, and filled in the details off the receipts I had, then filed each card alphabetically. It's almost finished and I love it. The thought of a book was beyond me, but the thought of using index cards wasn't. Now as I write my shopping list, I check the price on the card, jot it next to the item on my list and do the shopping. When I get home, if there has been a price change, I just record it on the relevant card and my price card system is up to date.
Contributed by Jodi Livingstone
There are currently more than 12,000 great tips in the Tip Store
3. Submit Your Tip
The Cheapskate's Club website is over 3,000 pages of money saving hints, tips and ideas. Let's get together and make the Cheapskates Club Australia's largest online hint, tip and idea library. Share your favourite money saving, time saving or energy saving hint and be in the running to win a one-year membership to The Cheapskate Club. We publish a Winning Tip each Thursday, so enter your great money, time or energy saving idea now.
Share your favourite hint or tip that saves money, time and energy and be in the running to win a one-year subscription to The Cheapskate Journal.
Remember, you have to be in it to win it!
Submit your tip
4. On the Menu
Chicken and Vegetable Pie
Ingredients:
3 sheets frozen puff pastry, thawed
1 egg, lightly beaten
60g butter
3 tablespoons plain flour
Combine:-1 ¼ cups chicken stock
¼ cup milk
2 tablespoons Barbecue Sauce
2 teaspoon Worcestershire Sauce
½ x 1.5 kg Barbecue chicken or cooked chicken broken into small pieces
125g broccoli steamed
½ carrot, diced, steamed
1 x 310g can corn kernels, drained
milk for glazing
2 tablespoons poppy seeds
Method:
Using a 23cm flan tin, cut pastry into 3 x 23cm fluted rounds. Take one round and brush with beaten egg and place a second round on top, and again brush with beaten egg. Place the pastry rounds onto a buttered scone tray. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour and cook for 1-2 minutes, stirring continuously. Add combined ingredients and stir until mixture boils and thickens. Add the chicken and vegetables and place mixture onto the centre of the pastry, leaving a 2cm border. With the remaining sheet of pastry, cut into 8 wedges. Brush the edges of the pastry with milk and overlap, covering the chicken filling. Brush the pie with milk and sprinkle with poppy seeds. Bake in the upper half of a gas oven 190deg C for 15-20 minutes, or until golden brown. Serve immediately.
This week we will be eating:
Sunday: Roast Lamb
Monday: Chicken & Vegetable Pie
Tuesday: Spaghetti Bolognese, tossed salad
Wednesday: Sweet lamb curry & steamed rice
Thursday: MOO Pizza
Friday: Schnitzels, tomato gravy
Saturday: Haystacks
In the fruit bowl: Mandarins
There are over 1,600 other great money saving meal ideas in the Recipe File.
5. The $300 a Month Food Challenge
Homemade Ginger Beer
For the most part we all drink water. I have tea (green, lemon, ginger or raspberry) during the day and Wayne has one cup of coffee at home and one in his travel mug each day. The kids buy their own fizzy drinks - I don't have them on my shopping list and they're not included in my grocery budget. When I do buy soft drink, it is for a special occasion and comes from the entertainment budget.
If you have a family you’ll know just how much it costs to keep them in cordial, juice and soft drink. Even buying generic brands or on sale drinks can make up around 20% of your grocery budget.
Save your money, keep the preservatives out of your mouth, control the amount of sugar and make your own soft drinks. You’ll be saving your back too, because you won’t have heavy bottles to carry home from the shops.
With the lovely warm weather we had this week, I was looking for something other than tea to drink in the afternoons. My mother made the best ginger beer and this is her recipe. I have fond childhood memories of sitting on the lounge and suddenly the lounge exploding around me, with ginger beer raining down. Mum kept her bottles lined up behind the lounge to brew and occasionally one would explode out of the blue!
This ginger beer costs arond $3 to make if you have your own lemons, and it's so much nicer than the run of the mill sof drinks you can buy. With real ginger, it has a nice bite to it, and served well chilled over ice on a warm afternoon it's just perfect.
Ginger Beer
Ginger Beer plant
4 teaspoons sugar
2 cups cold water
2 teaspoons ground ginger
juice of 2 lemons
1 teaspoon of lemon pulp
8 sultanas (yes, you have to count them)
Further ingredients
sugar
ground ginger
3 lemons
To start the plant, mix all the ingredients and put in a screw-top jar for 3 days with the lid on.
After 3 days, feed the plant by adding 1 teaspoon sugar and 1 teaspoon ginger on alternate days, for 6 days. You can make up your ginger beer on the seventh day.
To make up, dissolve 2 1/2–3 cups sugar in 3 cups of boiling water in a large stock pot. Add the juice of 3 lemons and the strained liquid from your ginger beer plant, plus 3-1/2 litres of cold water.
Bottle the ginger beer and cap. Leave at least 1 week before using, and chill well to enjoy.
Halve plant. Add 1 cup cold water, 1 teaspoon sugar and 1 teaspoon ginger to the mush from your first plant and continue to feed as before.
Ginger is expensive from the supermarket. I buy it in bulk from Hindustan Imports, but most Asian and Indian grocers sell ginger powder for a fraction of the price of supermarkets.
I get the kids to save soft drink bottles for me. They are washed and well rinsed and let to air dry, before I re-use them to bottle the ginger beer. The lids are usually re-used too; I get Wayne or one of the boys to screw them on really tight, but you can buy new screw top lids from Big W and homebrew stores (you can buy new bottles too, but they are expensive!). So far, thorough washing and air drying has kept the bottles clean, and no one has been poisoned by my re-using the bottles and caps.
The $300 a Month Food Challenge
The Post that Started it All
6. Cheapskates Buzz
From the Article Archive
The Golden Rule of Cheapskating: Spend Less, Save More
Meal Stretchers
Six Multitasking Tips to Get More Out of Your Day
Most popular forum posts this week
Stinky Dishwasher Rescue
Stockpiles
Monthly Budget
Most popular blog posts this week
Why Won't My Yoghurt Set?
The Joyco Christmas Hamper
Frugal Haystacks
7. Own Your Christmas Challenge
Week 2 Tasks and Tips
I shook my head this week when I typed "It's only 10 weeks until Christmas" - surely the year can't be going by that quickly! But it is, perhaps because we've had so much going on that time hasn't dragged. Anyhoo, this week is Trappings and Wrappings week and I've been busy sorting and tidying the wrapping paper, gift bags, ribbons and bows and sticky tape. Or rather hunting down the sticky tape - it seems to disappear like scissors and Sharpies in our home.
There is a small pile of gift bags to be repurposed or renovated. I love being able to reuse the paper bags that come from shopping, and the lovely Maureen left me quite a few last card day. Not sure how they'll turn out yet, this year's Christmas theme isn't quite set in my mind. As soon as it is, they'll be decorated to suit, packaged and put away until it's time to put them under the Christmas tree.
Christmas cards were finished over the weekend. Now to finish the writing and stamping, ready to post them on 28th November this year. The change in post office delivery means they'll take longer to be delivered and I like the tradition of having them arrive on 1st December.
Some new resources were added to the Own Your Christmas Challenge this week too. Hop on over to get this week's tasks and have a peek at what's new. If you haven't joined the Own Your Christmas Challenge yet, it's not to late. Join us here, and look forward to a debt free Christmas in 2018.
8. Last Week's Question
Last week's question was from Jo D who wrote
"We are selling our townhouse this year to move into a retirement village. My husband is determined to sell it himself to save on agent fees. I've been looking at sites like Purple Bricks. They charge a fee to cover things like photographs, display board and other help. Has anyone had any experience in selling this way?"
Lynne Bowler answered
Hi Jo D, we sold our property ourselves through forsalebyowner. We initially went through a local agent who had the property on the market for nearly one year and could not get anywhere near the price that they had suggested. No one knows your property as well as you; I was initially a bit worried but we ended up selling our property within 6 weeks and for $70k more than the agent could get and we didn't have to pay commission. We did use some of the initial photos the agent took (but we paid for them) and I had some other photos taken professionally, as I am not very good at taking photos. We printed our own brochures and could determine our own opening times. It was the best thing we have ever done, we will never again sell through an agent. Wishing you all the best and have confidence in yourself. You can do this.
Gaylene Falconer answered
Be wary of false economy. I sold at the end of last year and moved to a retirement village. I had an agent who was popular in the area who attracted a large crowd and seven bidders. Result: a price way above reserve. Check with your village; if you are not ready to move within a certain time you may lose your new home.
Narelle Knights answered
I saw this purple bricks ad on TV constantly and thought to myself there has to be a catch... there is no way these companies are going to short change themselves.
From reading the fine print as best I could without having any sort of legal background etc this is what I understood:
The flat fee they talk about is based on the 2% or 3% (can't remember which) total commission other agents in the area get on average. So, a flat fee in one suburb could be completely different to another a few blocks over. It's not a same flat fee for everyone.
They do all the work for you yes, however if you want to go to auction then that is extra. So you have to fork out for an auctioneer and all the trappings that goes with that.
Here is the real catch... If the property does not sell you STILL have to pay the flat fee even though it hasn't sold. So you are basically paying them the 2% or 3% commission on the price of the average sale of a property in your area even though you didn't sell.
That is where I stopped reading cos I got my answer there. It never seems as good as it sounds. There are pros and cons to everything.
9. Ask Cath
We have lots of resources to help you as you live the Cheapskates way but if you didn't find the answer to your question in our extensive archives please just drop me a note with your question.
I read and answer all questions, either in an email to you, in my weekly newsletter, the monthly Journal or by creating blog posts and other resources to help you (and other Cheapskaters).
Ask Your Question
10. Join the Cheapskates Club
For just 10 cents a day you can join the Cheapskates Club and get exclusive access to the Cheapskate Journal, the monthly e-journal that shows you how to cut the costs of everyday living and still have fun.
Joining the Cheapskates Club gives you 24/7 access to the Members Centre with 1000's of money saving tips and articles.
Click here to join the Cheapskates Club today!
11. Frequently Asked Questions
How do I change my email address?
This one is easy. Members can update their email address or any other details by clicking on "Edit Profile" directly under their membership number after they have logged in to the Member's Centre. Subscribers to our free newsletter can use the Change Your Address form (under Customer Service in the menu) and fill it out. Once you've filled it in click the send button and we'll do the rest. Please remember to include your old email address so we can find it in the list as well as the new one.
How do I know when my membership should be renewed?
When you login to the Member's Centre you will be told how many days of membership you have left once you have 30 days left. Just click on the link to renew and your membership will just continue on, uninterrupted.
What will you do with my email address?
We never rent, trade or sell our email list to anyone for any reason whatsoever. You'll never get an unsolicited email from a stranger as a result of joining this list.
How Did You Get on Our List?
You signed up to receive our Free Newsletter at our Cheapskates Club Web site or are a Platinum Cheapskates Club member
12. Contact Details
The Cheapskates Club -
Showing you how to live life
debt free, cashed up and laughing!
Contact Cheapskates
1. Cath's Corner
2. In the Tip Store - Solar Bleaching for Free; Recycle T-Shirts Help the War on Waste and Decorate Our Home; Price Card System Saved My Sanity
3. Share Your Tips
4. On the Menu - Chicken and Vegetable Pie
5. The $300 a Month Food Challenge - Homemade Ginger Beer
6. Cheapskates Buzz - Cheapskaters are talking in the Forum and on Cath's blog
7. Own Your Christmas Challenge - Week 2 Tasks and Tips
8. Last Week's Question - Advice needed to sell our home
9. Ask Cath
10. Join the Cheapskates Club
11. Frequently Asked Questions
12. Contact Details
1. Cath's Corner
Hello Cheapskaters,
If you've had rain, I'm so glad for you! This drought seems to be never-ending, bringing back memories of droughts in the late 1980s and early 1990s. How we prayed for rain during those years. And then when the drought finally broke, and the rain was pouring down, we had a little two-year old who was so excited because we had a "drought" in the drive way! The water was rushing down the drive and he'd never seen that before. His little face was lit up, and he was jumping with excitement. Then Daddy took him out and let him play in it! I hope the rains continue, so you can be as excited as that gorgeous two year old (who is now 27!), and perhaps you'll play and dance in the rain too.
Have a great week everyone.
Happy Cheapskating,
Cath
PS: Love our site? We love referrals! Send a note to your favourite newspapers, magazines, radio stations, TV stations, friends and relatives, and tell them about us!
2. From The Tip Store
Solar Bleaching for Free
If you have white plastic cutlery/utensils/bowls that are stained from using spaghetti sauces and other tomato based foods, try washing them as normal and leaving them out in the full sun for a day for the sun to bleach away the stained discolouring. The sun acts as a natural bleaching agent and will rid your utensils or bowls of the stains as if they were brand new. This has also worked on stained white laundry buckets as well. Sometimes rubbery spatulas are a bit more stubborn and may require extra time to bleach but harder plastic products will be stain free within hours, much to the amazement of your eyes when you collect them looking like they did when you bought them in the shop. No need to replace - just let the sun work it's magic!!
Contributed by Michelle Jones
Recycle T-Shirts Help the War on Waste and Decorate Our Home
I have been saving pretty much all my families T-shirts for the past 20 years. I cut them all into strips to make yarn and then crocheted them into a big floor rug. It took quite a long time and I am more than happy with the result. You could make smaller rugs a lot faster and they would be wonderful bathmats or kitchen mats. The mats are thick and soft underfoot, especially on timber and tiled floors. To build the t-shirt stash quickly, have family and friends save all their t-shirts for you, then the only thing a rug would cost you is your time.
Contributed by GG
Price Card System Saved My Sanity
I am new to Cheapskates and loving it, but the idea of setting up a price book was just overwhelming. The thought of ruling up a notebook and then copying all the prices and trying to get them into some sort of order scared me, and stopped me from making use of this amazing too. And then I had a brainwave! While tidying up at work I found an old index card box with the alphabetical dividers and even some blank index cards. I asked if I could have it, and they answer was yes. Over the next week I sat each lunchtime and made an index card for each item on my shopping list. I ruled them up the same as the price book pages, and filled in the details off the receipts I had, then filed each card alphabetically. It's almost finished and I love it. The thought of a book was beyond me, but the thought of using index cards wasn't. Now as I write my shopping list, I check the price on the card, jot it next to the item on my list and do the shopping. When I get home, if there has been a price change, I just record it on the relevant card and my price card system is up to date.
Contributed by Jodi Livingstone
There are currently more than 12,000 great tips in the Tip Store
3. Submit Your Tip
The Cheapskate's Club website is over 3,000 pages of money saving hints, tips and ideas. Let's get together and make the Cheapskates Club Australia's largest online hint, tip and idea library. Share your favourite money saving, time saving or energy saving hint and be in the running to win a one-year membership to The Cheapskate Club. We publish a Winning Tip each Thursday, so enter your great money, time or energy saving idea now.
Share your favourite hint or tip that saves money, time and energy and be in the running to win a one-year subscription to The Cheapskate Journal.
Remember, you have to be in it to win it!
Submit your tip
4. On the Menu
Chicken and Vegetable Pie
Ingredients:
3 sheets frozen puff pastry, thawed
1 egg, lightly beaten
60g butter
3 tablespoons plain flour
Combine:-1 ¼ cups chicken stock
¼ cup milk
2 tablespoons Barbecue Sauce
2 teaspoon Worcestershire Sauce
½ x 1.5 kg Barbecue chicken or cooked chicken broken into small pieces
125g broccoli steamed
½ carrot, diced, steamed
1 x 310g can corn kernels, drained
milk for glazing
2 tablespoons poppy seeds
Method:
Using a 23cm flan tin, cut pastry into 3 x 23cm fluted rounds. Take one round and brush with beaten egg and place a second round on top, and again brush with beaten egg. Place the pastry rounds onto a buttered scone tray. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour and cook for 1-2 minutes, stirring continuously. Add combined ingredients and stir until mixture boils and thickens. Add the chicken and vegetables and place mixture onto the centre of the pastry, leaving a 2cm border. With the remaining sheet of pastry, cut into 8 wedges. Brush the edges of the pastry with milk and overlap, covering the chicken filling. Brush the pie with milk and sprinkle with poppy seeds. Bake in the upper half of a gas oven 190deg C for 15-20 minutes, or until golden brown. Serve immediately.
This week we will be eating:
Sunday: Roast Lamb
Monday: Chicken & Vegetable Pie
Tuesday: Spaghetti Bolognese, tossed salad
Wednesday: Sweet lamb curry & steamed rice
Thursday: MOO Pizza
Friday: Schnitzels, tomato gravy
Saturday: Haystacks
In the fruit bowl: Mandarins
There are over 1,600 other great money saving meal ideas in the Recipe File.
5. The $300 a Month Food Challenge
Homemade Ginger Beer
For the most part we all drink water. I have tea (green, lemon, ginger or raspberry) during the day and Wayne has one cup of coffee at home and one in his travel mug each day. The kids buy their own fizzy drinks - I don't have them on my shopping list and they're not included in my grocery budget. When I do buy soft drink, it is for a special occasion and comes from the entertainment budget.
If you have a family you’ll know just how much it costs to keep them in cordial, juice and soft drink. Even buying generic brands or on sale drinks can make up around 20% of your grocery budget.
Save your money, keep the preservatives out of your mouth, control the amount of sugar and make your own soft drinks. You’ll be saving your back too, because you won’t have heavy bottles to carry home from the shops.
With the lovely warm weather we had this week, I was looking for something other than tea to drink in the afternoons. My mother made the best ginger beer and this is her recipe. I have fond childhood memories of sitting on the lounge and suddenly the lounge exploding around me, with ginger beer raining down. Mum kept her bottles lined up behind the lounge to brew and occasionally one would explode out of the blue!
This ginger beer costs arond $3 to make if you have your own lemons, and it's so much nicer than the run of the mill sof drinks you can buy. With real ginger, it has a nice bite to it, and served well chilled over ice on a warm afternoon it's just perfect.
Ginger Beer
Ginger Beer plant
4 teaspoons sugar
2 cups cold water
2 teaspoons ground ginger
juice of 2 lemons
1 teaspoon of lemon pulp
8 sultanas (yes, you have to count them)
Further ingredients
sugar
ground ginger
3 lemons
To start the plant, mix all the ingredients and put in a screw-top jar for 3 days with the lid on.
After 3 days, feed the plant by adding 1 teaspoon sugar and 1 teaspoon ginger on alternate days, for 6 days. You can make up your ginger beer on the seventh day.
To make up, dissolve 2 1/2–3 cups sugar in 3 cups of boiling water in a large stock pot. Add the juice of 3 lemons and the strained liquid from your ginger beer plant, plus 3-1/2 litres of cold water.
Bottle the ginger beer and cap. Leave at least 1 week before using, and chill well to enjoy.
Halve plant. Add 1 cup cold water, 1 teaspoon sugar and 1 teaspoon ginger to the mush from your first plant and continue to feed as before.
Ginger is expensive from the supermarket. I buy it in bulk from Hindustan Imports, but most Asian and Indian grocers sell ginger powder for a fraction of the price of supermarkets.
I get the kids to save soft drink bottles for me. They are washed and well rinsed and let to air dry, before I re-use them to bottle the ginger beer. The lids are usually re-used too; I get Wayne or one of the boys to screw them on really tight, but you can buy new screw top lids from Big W and homebrew stores (you can buy new bottles too, but they are expensive!). So far, thorough washing and air drying has kept the bottles clean, and no one has been poisoned by my re-using the bottles and caps.
The $300 a Month Food Challenge
The Post that Started it All
6. Cheapskates Buzz
From the Article Archive
The Golden Rule of Cheapskating: Spend Less, Save More
Meal Stretchers
Six Multitasking Tips to Get More Out of Your Day
Most popular forum posts this week
Stinky Dishwasher Rescue
Stockpiles
Monthly Budget
Most popular blog posts this week
Why Won't My Yoghurt Set?
The Joyco Christmas Hamper
Frugal Haystacks
7. Own Your Christmas Challenge
Week 2 Tasks and Tips
I shook my head this week when I typed "It's only 10 weeks until Christmas" - surely the year can't be going by that quickly! But it is, perhaps because we've had so much going on that time hasn't dragged. Anyhoo, this week is Trappings and Wrappings week and I've been busy sorting and tidying the wrapping paper, gift bags, ribbons and bows and sticky tape. Or rather hunting down the sticky tape - it seems to disappear like scissors and Sharpies in our home.
There is a small pile of gift bags to be repurposed or renovated. I love being able to reuse the paper bags that come from shopping, and the lovely Maureen left me quite a few last card day. Not sure how they'll turn out yet, this year's Christmas theme isn't quite set in my mind. As soon as it is, they'll be decorated to suit, packaged and put away until it's time to put them under the Christmas tree.
Christmas cards were finished over the weekend. Now to finish the writing and stamping, ready to post them on 28th November this year. The change in post office delivery means they'll take longer to be delivered and I like the tradition of having them arrive on 1st December.
Some new resources were added to the Own Your Christmas Challenge this week too. Hop on over to get this week's tasks and have a peek at what's new. If you haven't joined the Own Your Christmas Challenge yet, it's not to late. Join us here, and look forward to a debt free Christmas in 2018.
8. Last Week's Question
Last week's question was from Jo D who wrote
"We are selling our townhouse this year to move into a retirement village. My husband is determined to sell it himself to save on agent fees. I've been looking at sites like Purple Bricks. They charge a fee to cover things like photographs, display board and other help. Has anyone had any experience in selling this way?"
Lynne Bowler answered
Hi Jo D, we sold our property ourselves through forsalebyowner. We initially went through a local agent who had the property on the market for nearly one year and could not get anywhere near the price that they had suggested. No one knows your property as well as you; I was initially a bit worried but we ended up selling our property within 6 weeks and for $70k more than the agent could get and we didn't have to pay commission. We did use some of the initial photos the agent took (but we paid for them) and I had some other photos taken professionally, as I am not very good at taking photos. We printed our own brochures and could determine our own opening times. It was the best thing we have ever done, we will never again sell through an agent. Wishing you all the best and have confidence in yourself. You can do this.
Gaylene Falconer answered
Be wary of false economy. I sold at the end of last year and moved to a retirement village. I had an agent who was popular in the area who attracted a large crowd and seven bidders. Result: a price way above reserve. Check with your village; if you are not ready to move within a certain time you may lose your new home.
Narelle Knights answered
I saw this purple bricks ad on TV constantly and thought to myself there has to be a catch... there is no way these companies are going to short change themselves.
From reading the fine print as best I could without having any sort of legal background etc this is what I understood:
The flat fee they talk about is based on the 2% or 3% (can't remember which) total commission other agents in the area get on average. So, a flat fee in one suburb could be completely different to another a few blocks over. It's not a same flat fee for everyone.
They do all the work for you yes, however if you want to go to auction then that is extra. So you have to fork out for an auctioneer and all the trappings that goes with that.
Here is the real catch... If the property does not sell you STILL have to pay the flat fee even though it hasn't sold. So you are basically paying them the 2% or 3% commission on the price of the average sale of a property in your area even though you didn't sell.
That is where I stopped reading cos I got my answer there. It never seems as good as it sounds. There are pros and cons to everything.
9. Ask Cath
We have lots of resources to help you as you live the Cheapskates way but if you didn't find the answer to your question in our extensive archives please just drop me a note with your question.
I read and answer all questions, either in an email to you, in my weekly newsletter, the monthly Journal or by creating blog posts and other resources to help you (and other Cheapskaters).
Ask Your Question
10. Join the Cheapskates Club
For just 10 cents a day you can join the Cheapskates Club and get exclusive access to the Cheapskate Journal, the monthly e-journal that shows you how to cut the costs of everyday living and still have fun.
Joining the Cheapskates Club gives you 24/7 access to the Members Centre with 1000's of money saving tips and articles.
Click here to join the Cheapskates Club today!
11. Frequently Asked Questions
How do I change my email address?
This one is easy. Members can update their email address or any other details by clicking on "Edit Profile" directly under their membership number after they have logged in to the Member's Centre. Subscribers to our free newsletter can use the Change Your Address form (under Customer Service in the menu) and fill it out. Once you've filled it in click the send button and we'll do the rest. Please remember to include your old email address so we can find it in the list as well as the new one.
How do I know when my membership should be renewed?
When you login to the Member's Centre you will be told how many days of membership you have left once you have 30 days left. Just click on the link to renew and your membership will just continue on, uninterrupted.
What will you do with my email address?
We never rent, trade or sell our email list to anyone for any reason whatsoever. You'll never get an unsolicited email from a stranger as a result of joining this list.
How Did You Get on Our List?
You signed up to receive our Free Newsletter at our Cheapskates Club Web site or are a Platinum Cheapskates Club member
12. Contact Details
The Cheapskates Club -
Showing you how to live life
debt free, cashed up and laughing!
Contact Cheapskates