Which one of our appraisal expenses should we cut?

[liznindy]

We dumped our home phone long ago, so the only 'land line' I have is the office phone...may be time to dump it too


I'll look into the efax, thanks for the tip.

 

[LA Woman]

I've already done pretty much what everyone else has done, but here is the short list of what I'm doing:

*Lowered my E&O coverage to $500,000 from $1Million

*Try to do more than one appraisal per outing if work permits to save gas.

*Map out comps after inspection to limit amount of driving

*Got rid of 3 MLS services and now share with a very good friend (in fact this friend lets me use hers for free!)

*Got rid of my 2nd data source, and now just use Realquest

*IMPORTANT - I WAS ABLE TO GET REALQUEST TO CUT MY BILL IN HALF! THEY ARE HAVING SO MANY PEOPLE CANCEL THAT THEY WILL WORK WITH YOU!

*I've reduced the areas that I cover to save on gas.

*I have efax and would like to get rid of my land line......but that means having a scanner (i have one but have trouble getting it to work)

*The efax allows me to print out only what is needed on the fax (no header sheet, advertisements, etc.)

*I'm shopping auto insurance rates-I always go with Auto Club-they have the best service, but may have to go with Geico, etc. I've eliminated the full coverage on my older vehicle.

*I'm considering switching to letter from legal sized paper after I finish with the current box of legal.

*I've really cut back on expenses in the house, unplug all electrical when not in use, microwave, toaster, computer, printer.

*I am considering getting rid of my Cable TV (oh god no! I'm a news junkie, dont know how I could survive that one, lol)

*I've also cut back on personal items: get my hair cut every three months or so instead of every 6 weeks (I get it cut really short, too short, but it grows out). I dye and condition my own hair, don't get manicure or pedicures anymore, I do them myself at home. I've also found a hair dresser that is only 5 minutes from my house-saving gas.

*I make sure that my refrigerator and freezer is set so its just cold enough-thereby saving energy.

*I already have CFL lightbulgs in everything and the lowest wattage I can get away with.

*My water heater is set at the lowest temp. possible. I also hand wash some items now and line dry. And am thinking about having hubby setup an old fashioned Clothes Line in the yard so I dont have to use the dryer.

*I'm switching the pet food from a combo of dry and canned to just dry which is much cheaper. Pet food went up $.20 cents per can in the past 2 weeks. And I'm using a combo of cheap dry food along with the better quality, instead of just the better quality.

*Food costs seem to go up daily. Tuna just went up about 35%, so I stock up on anything that is on sale and only buy stuff that has a very distant expiration date. Some items dont print the expiration date-dont buy them.

"Hard Friggin' Times" as Stephen King would say (from The Stand).

 

[Alison Swain]

An expense that can be cut is continuing education. Instead of booking an entire day in advance and not knowing how busy you will be that week for a live CE course , I take online courses for everything thing permissible, currently anything but USPAP. You can take the online course over several days at your own pace, nights , weekends, a slow work day or whenever. The cost is much less than live CE and the added bonus is you don’t have to listen to some boring windbag tell corny jokes for several hours.

Hey.....Dennis' jokes aren't corny!

 

[tyfsu]

Liz:

Drop your fax line and go with efax or one of the other electronic services.

I recommend trustfax.com They have many different plans (with local #) ranging from $4.95 to 19.95 a month.

 

[Cob]

An expense that can be cut is continuing education. Instead of booking an entire day in advance and not knowing how busy you will be that week for a live CE course , I take online courses for everything thing permissible, currently anything but USPAP. You can take the online course over several days at your own pace, nights , weekends, a slow work day or whenever. The cost is much less than live CE and the added bonus is you don’t have to listen to some boring windbag tell corny jokes for several hours.

Doesn't make sense to do that in my area, the CE classes I take always offer a discount (about $25 to $30 a course) if you take them all at once. I also like going and taking them all at once, usually in the fall when I think it will be slow.

I did an online course before and it just wasn't for me, I'm the kind of person that it took me 4 to 5 weeks to finish a 30 hour course, the other way I'm there a few days in a row and then I'm done.

 

[Edward OConor]

I switched to Vonage (14.99/ month for outgoing 500 min). Two lines less than $42.00/month

I have favorite Vonage features: voice mail goes to a .wav file and is emailed to me.

My second is the simultaneous ring to my cell phone. With a little effort I was able to set up the timing so that if I don't answer my office calls they go to my office phone voice mail, while my personal calls will go to my cell's vmail.

My third favorite is Vonage logs all calls, so if someone claims that I didn't make a call I have a record of all calls.

 

[Lawrence R.]

Cut my renrewal.

Took me an extra 30 min to pull flood map from FEMA, (I have the time it seems) and used google earth for location map...wouldn't you know wintotal has annotation built right in?

Looked just as good as theirs...let's just hope we don't get a bunch of new forms this year...

So, there is about 500 buck saved.

 

[liznindy]

I just paid my E&O for this year and also lowered my coverage to save $$....don't really appraise many houses above $500,000 in my market, anyway. Heck, right now you can purchase homes in some areas of Indianapolis for less than $10,000!

 

[Joyce Potts]

I say the AMC/middleman expense should be the first to go.

 

[Couch Potato]

After the one named by Joyce, cut the office rent to zero. There is no need for a physical office for a residential appraiser unless your name is Skip. You can cut way down on your auto expenses by serving a smaller area.