I love credit cards so much! v2.0 (see first page for add'l details)

[platamama]

At least around here, they are not very accurate or current. They list houses available which aren’t. They give inaccurate price estimates. Realtor.com uses the MLS and is pretty much accurate within a few hours. I have a search for our locality saved on Realtor.com and it send me new listing updates in real time. For instance, a house I pass by on the way to work this morning had a for sale sign posted when I cam home. Had a notification from Realtor on my iPad already. (I don’t have notified on my phone, I don’t need interruptions at work). In fact when my realtor sent me daily updates of new listings, they came every am. Many times I had already seen the listing pop up on Realtor.com the night before. Zillow May be more accurate in other locations, just not as helpful in our locale.

@Haley R Zillow is the same for the Denver area...shows houses that are no longer for sale and price estimates are way off. I also like Realtor.com better

Zillow is what clued me in that the county has the wrong square footage of our house! It shows our house as being worth 200K more than our neighbors (uh, tract home here, just no, not possible) so that made me dig into property tax records and we are paying more than our neighbors too. I went in to talk to the assessors office, brought a copy of our appraisal from when we bought the house, and it turns out they have an incorrect floor plan. So I'm planning on an appeal and an abatement, and boy that's going to be fun. But without Zillow I would have never questioned it!

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

This made me
I really hope you’re kidding about using your high voice for 2 hours. Because wouldn’t it be easier to ask DW to just tell them “Let him handle it” then give the phone to you? That’s what my DH did. Because listening to him bumble around on the phone drives me nuts.

Yeah...that sounds easier...but it’s not what I did LOL!

 

[elgerber]

@Haley R Zillow is the same for the Denver area...shows houses that are no longer for sale and price estimates are way off. I also like Realtor.com better

It’s the same in my area.

 

[wendow]

Zillow is what clued me in that the county has the wrong square footage of our house! It shows our house as being worth 200K more than our neighbors (uh, tract home here, just no, not possible) so that made me dig into property tax records and we are paying more than our neighbors too. I went in to talk to the assessors office, brought a copy of our appraisal from when we bought the house, and it turns out they have an incorrect floor plan. So I'm planning on an appeal and an abatement, and boy that's going to be fun. But without Zillow I would have never questioned it!

You have a good Zillow story and hopefully you can get that all corrected! For us, we just changed our home owner's insurance and they use Zillow to decide what the value of our home is for replacement value. Well, Zillow has our home value as about 100k more than we can actually sell for. So we are being forced to insure much more than we actually should thanks to Zillow which is a couple hundred more a year

 

[platamama]

You have a good Zillow story and hopefully you can get that all corrected! For us, we just changed our home owner's insurance and they use Zillow to decide what the value of our home is for replacement value. Well, Zillow has our home value as about 100k more than we can actually sell for. So we are being forced to insure much more than we actually should thanks to Zillow which is a couple hundred more a year

That stinks, and I'm surprised your insurance company would use Zillow's estimate. When I switched our home insurance a little over a year ago, I seem to recall that the agent said Zillow is not a good source for determining replacement value - if anything he was trying to talk me down from overinsuring our home. As much as you can feel bad for an insurance company (I mean, who feels bad for an insurance company???), I feel bad that shortly after we started with them, we got hit with a huge hailstorm and my new insurance company (AAA) is paying out a pretty big claim on our house....whereas the old company (Travelers) benefited from all our premiums for 13 years and we never made a claim with them. It doesn't seem fair, but that's the bet insurance companies wager I suppose.

 

[Haley R]

At least around here, they are not very accurate or current. They list houses available which aren’t. They give inaccurate price estimates. Realtor.com uses the MLS and is pretty much accurate within a few hours. I have a search for our locality saved on Realtor.com and it send me new listing updates in real time. For instance, a house I pass by on the way to work this morning had a for sale sign posted when I cam home. Had a notification from Realtor on my iPad already. (I don’t have notified on my phone, I don’t need interruptions at work). In fact when my realtor sent me daily updates of new listings, they came every am. Many times I had already seen the listing pop up on Realtor.com the night before. Zillow May be more accurate in other locations, just not as helpful in our locale.

It worked well when we were looking for houses in our town but we don’t live in that big of an area so I think it would be pretty noticeable if the houses listed weren’t actually for sale. Now the estimates I have no idea. Those might be way off here. I’ll definitely tell Dh we should look at realtor.com as well though!

 

[Haley R]

When I look around down there I'm mostly like, dang we cant even get a starter house for that price Crazy how different things are!

I’m probably being slightly picky on houses but I want nice schools, near dh’s work, and SOME kind of grass (which seems to not be a thing in lots of areas). Most of the areas we’re looking in you have to spend at least $320k if not more for a decent house. We paid about half that for our house and I would say our house is bigger than a starter home

 

[wendow]

That stinks, and I'm surprised your insurance company would use Zillow's estimate. When I switched our home insurance a little over a year ago, I seem to recall that the agent said Zillow is not a good source for determining replacement value - if anything he was trying to talk me down from overinsuring our home. As much as you can feel bad for an insurance company (I mean, who feels bad for an insurance company???), I feel bad that shortly after we started with them, we got hit with a huge hailstorm and my new insurance company (AAA) is paying out a pretty big claim on our house....whereas the old company (Travelers) benefited from all our premiums for 13 years and we never made a claim with them. It doesn't seem fair, but that's the bet insurance companies wager I suppose.

We are switching from Farmers (car & house) to Ameriprise (car & house). We are saving like $800 a year but we could be saving more if Ameriprise didn't insist on using Zillow! Farmers only had our replacement value at about 383k and Ameriprise is using the 630k that Zillow says. I think Farmers might have been too low but ameriprise is way too high.

 

[Haley R]

@wendow can you not see schools on realtor? I’m using the app and I don’t see any option for looking at schools

ETA: I see them when I click on the house but can you have them show on the map

 

[wendow]

@wendow can you not see schools on realtor? I’m using the app and I don’t see any option for looking at schools

ETA: I see them when I click on the house but can you have them show on the map

I don't have the app so not sure. I see them on the desktop but it's once I've clicked on a house.

 

[wendow]

@Haley R I put in Doctor Phillips but nothing really specific for that area came up. The home I chose in Winter Haven has an elementary with a rating of 7 and then both the middle and elementary are rated a 3 I got the impression from talking to various people that the schools in FL are not always the best. As homeschooler's, I listened as I never know when I could need to put my kids into school but also tuned out some of that chatter because well, I'm still able to homeschool. However, you would definitely want to contact a realtor to help guide you.

 

[Lain]

Interesting: Plastiq created a chart to show which type of credit card can be used for each type of payment.. - VftW

Relatedly, someone in the comments mentioned that Plastiq has been down since last night for maintenance. I don’t know of any tech company that has downtime lasting 24 hours and counting. Plastiq recently raised something like $27 million in VC funding, so I’m assuming they’ve got money to keep the servers running and the checks going out. Let’s hope it really is just maintenance and Plastiq comes back online soon.

 

[Haley R]

@Haley R I put in Doctor Phillips but nothing really specific for that area came up. The home I chose in Winter Haven has an elementary with a rating of 7 and then both the middle and elementary are rated a 3 I got the impression from talking to various people that the schools in FL are not always the best. As homeschooler's, I listened as I never know when I could need to put my kids into school but also tuned out some of that chatter because well, I'm still able to homeschool. However, you would definitely want to contact a realtor to help guide you.

Yeah I’m looking in doctor Phillips and I see the elementary is 9/10. The middle and high school are a 5 and 6 which isn’t great but not terrible compared to some of the others like the 3’s you saw. We found 4 houses we liked in that area. I never considered home schooling so down the road it might be something I think about.

 

[wendow]

I never considered home schooling so down the road it might be something I think about.

Florida has some of the best homeschool laws in the county, imo. I like the laws in CO and have always appreciated how good we have it here but FL is a bit better.

 

[PolyRob]

It's officially decided, I've started the gift card purchases to get myself a WDW AP!! It's going to hurt to cash out URs for $.01/point to cover the cash for the gift card purchases but that's what my budget says I need to do to make these trips happen so that's what I'm gonna do #WorthIt

Could you try getting a WDW ticket with URs on your highest redemption card and then upgrade it to an AP with discounted GCs?

 

[Haley R]

Florida has some of the best homeschool laws in the county, imo. I like the laws in CO and have always appreciated how good we have it here but FL is a bit better.

I honestly don’t know anything about homeschooling. What do you mean by it has better laws?

 

[wendow]

I honestly don’t know anything about homeschooling. What do you mean by it has better laws?

If you ever look into homeschooling, you’ll want to look at the laws for your state that govern homeschooling. They vary by state in regards to how much freedom they give the parents, how much the state will oversee, required hours and courses, methods of testing (if they require it), etc. Some states are homeschool friendly and some aren’t. FL is very homeschool friendly and has great opportunities for homeschool kids (dual college credit, for example).

 

[Haley R]

If you ever look into homeschooling, you’ll want to look at the laws for your state that govern homeschooling. They vary by state in regards to how much freedom they give the parents, how much the state will oversee, required hours and courses, methods of testing (if they require it), etc. Some states are homeschool friendly and some aren’t. FL is very homeschool friendly and has great opportunities for homeschool kids (dual college credit, for example).

Do your kids like homeschooling? It’s not a very common thing around here for kids to be home schooled unless they are in competitive sports and travel a lot

 

[palhockeymomof2]

Do your kids like homeschooling? It’s not a very common thing around here for kids to be home schooled unless they are in competitive sports and travel a lot

It’s not common on LI either..since our school taxes..are so high lol..

 

[Alexle2007]

If the DD works the bonus posts within one to two business days. They waive the first month fee, so you don't have to rush to change if you don't want to. But most on r/churning report asking to change within a few days of the bonus posting. I didn't feel that ruthless so I waited a bit and changed it this week. I pulled nearly all the money out a few days after the bonus posted, there's no requirement to hold it for any time.

M&T should post the bonus within a few business days after your DD hits the account. From there you can transfer it out and ask to change to EZ Choice Checking. I feel like I waited a month, but I don't think even that is necessary.

It is that easy.

Thank you! Just scheduled my direct deposit! Once I know it works, I’ll open an account for DH. I still wish I could get PNC to work since we are surrounded by their offices and it is kind of sad to constantly be seeing them.