If you're like most people, you'll start by seeking assistance from a professional. A local real estate sales associate, who knows your neighborhood, can help you determine a fair market price. The sales associate should also recommend extent to which you should make repairs or improvements to your house.

In order to select a real estate professional who's right for you, ask family, friends and neighbors for referrals. Attend open houses and interview several sales associates to find out how professional or experienced they may be. Get a written outline of how they plan to market your property and services they will offer you.

Once you've identified a qualified professional, rest is chemistry. Is sales associate someone with whom you would like to work closely? Do you feel comfortable with sales associate as your partner, working with you to give you advice and acting as your representative? Does he or she practice a consultative selling approach, focusing on long-term client relationship and on importance of exceeding client needs and expectations or is he or she caught up in proverbial 'hard sell?'

The brokerage firm that your agent is associated with is also important. Research firm's success rate and commitment to quality service. Does it survey existing clients in order to ensure customer satisfaction? What are results of those surveys? How in tune are they with consumer needs? Do they offer guidance with mortgages or any discounts for other home related or moving services?

Want to spend less on food? Today my family is spending on average, one-third less on our grocery bill than we did last year. We are also able to go to grocery store every other week and still have plenty of food in house. How did we do this? This article is first installment of a three part series on how we made these significant savings in our food spending.

In order to save money on groceries we first took a long look at our shopping habits. We occasionally took advantage of sales, yet had no organization to our menus, food storage, or shopping. We went to store "between trips" and often ate poorly if both of us were sick at same time. We wanted a change.

Our first purchase was a food sealer. I had been looking at sealers before, thinking we threw a lot of food away. We often had left overs three days in a row. I thought there had to be a better way without cooking more meals or ordering delivery. The purchase of a food sealer has been very helpful in saving money. We use leftovers when we want and not just first few days after meal is cooked. The food can be saved in meal size packages and micro waved or boiled.