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Hello Welcome to yours2share's Christmas 2010 newsletter. This edition is all about services that help sharing arrangements to work smoothly. ShareZen – making sharing simple Our Man in Norfolk - looking after your second home Economy - great car hire Plus the usual selection of recent ads to whet your appetite. ShareZen – making sharing simple Over the next few days most of you will be celebrating Christmas and New Year with family and friends. I’m guessing that some of you will end up discussing plans for the future, including the purchase of boats, cars, motor homes and holiday homes. When you think about it, these major assets are almost always bought to share. The real return on your investment is the joy of inviting your immediate family, extended family, friends, colleagues or even like-minded people you met through yours2share to share it with you. (To make life easier, and so that I don’t have to constantly use the word “assets,” which gets a bit tedious, I’m going to use a boat as an example of an asset.) There are two types of boat owners: Private boat owners who mostly just share their boat with family and friends. Usually the owner is on board with them, but some trusted souls may be allowed to use it unaccompanied. Boat sharers who have bought the boat with family, friends or yours2share partners and formed a private syndicate. Over the last couple of months I’ve been talking to ShareZen, a new website that helps both types of sharers manage their sharing arrangements. ShareZen has been designed by Drew Bernard, Shawn Kemp and Adrian Pike, who together have shared several holiday homes, a boat and a light aircraft. Drew and his partners wanted a simple online system that made sharing simpler, so they designed ShareZen. I have been impressed with the user friendliness of ShareZen. There are some excellent short videos on their website that explain the details, but the six key tasks ShareZen makes easier are: Communication – helps ensure everyone who uses your boat knows the status of things at all times: How much fuel is on board? Is the boat clean? Is it at the dock? Bookings – keeps track of who’s using the boat and when Money – records all payments made by sharers and to sharers Maintenance – ensures servicing or other “to-do” items get done on time Info – stores anything a sharer needs to know, such as safety instructions, directions, contact details and maps. Memories – builds a long-term history of your shared boat, with status reports, stories and photos. I’m delighted to see the arrival of ShareZen, because it completes the sharing process: yours2share gives guidance and finds like-minded partners Net Lawman provides the template contracts ShareZen keeps the sharing arrangement running smoothly. ShareZen has several packages. For single owners who simply want to manage friends and family sharing their boat, the basic package is free. More complex packages are priced on a monthly-fee basis. There is also a free 30-day trial period for anyone. This is extended to a 60-day free trial special offer for friends of yours2share, if you sign up for the trial before 15 February 2011. (They don’t require a credit card at the free trial stage, so you won’t be caught out if you forget to cancel. I like this.) If you’re sharing a boat or any other asset and want to try ShareZen out, or are considering sharing and want to see how it might work, sign up and try it out. Our Man in Norfolk Here’s another great service to help people sharing holiday homes, or indeed any second home owners. Our Man in Norfolk was created by Nigel Tompkins, who owned a second home for many years and fully understands the issues associated with balancing precious leisure time with the care of a second home. Our Man in Norfolk specialises in providing all the practical services, support and advice required by second home owners who do not commercially holiday let their properties, and therefore don’t need a traditional letting agent. Domestic cleaning, household shopping, property repairs and maintenance and gardening are essential tasks for second home owners, and can significantly eat into your leisure time. Our Man in Norfolk enables clients to make the most of their time in their Norfolk home, without worrying about its day-to-day care and upkeep. The service is currently available only in Norfolk UK, but Nigel has plans to expand into other counties. I was also a second home owner for several years and I wish Our Man in Norfolk had existed then, so I think this service will do well. Great car hire Car hire isn’t usually something I enthuse about. It’s one of those essentials that I need virtually every time I go abroad, and working out which is cheapest and what insurance is included etc etc, is usually fiddly and irritating. Recently I was supposed to go to Barcelona for a few days, but unfortunately I had to postpone my trip. When I was planning this trip, I thought I’d have another look around to see where the best/cheapest car insurance could be found and I consulted the oracle that is Martin Lewis’s Money Saving Expert. There was a strong recommendation here for Economy Car Hire, specifically because their basic insurance includes the bit of insurance that covers the excess, for which you usually pay quite a bit more. It also allows more than one driver and I always want that and most companies charge more for that too. (Goodness knows why because two drivers would probably be a less risky option, I assume they just charge because they can). So I checked Economy Car Hire out, and the price was just a couple of pounds more than the cheapest which didn't have the excess cover and only included one driver: about £70 for six days from Barcelona airport. This was a no brainer. When I realized I might have to postpone my trip, I rang Economy Car Hire to see what their cancellation charges were. (It was easy to ring them too, this doesn’t normally happen with websites like this.) If I cancelled 48 hours or more before pickup, the charge was £15 plus the credit card charge of £3. I was expecting something like £30-50. Within 48 hours, the cancellation charge is 50%, again I was expecting more like 70-80%. The final cream on top was that Economy Car Hire is actually based about 20 miles away from me in Dereham, Norfolk: a local company. I’m rarely impressed by websites like this, so I thought I’d let you know. And finally, here are a few of yours2share's recent ads that I really like. Selected ads are entirely my choice, but the quality of the pictures is the key factor. Remember this if you are posting an ad.

1/8 share, Princess 65, Greek Isles Summer, Red Sea Winter 1/10 share, Robin DR315, Sywell, Nottinghamshire Horse for share/loan, Wicken, Buckinghamshire Horse for Share, 16.2hh gelding - Wokingham, Berkshire 1/2 share, Hallberg Rassy Rasmus 35 classic yacht, Chichester, Sussex Lake District retreat? Cumbria, 3-5 partners wanted 1/8 share, Villa on Dunbar Rock, Guanaja, Western Caribbean 1/6 share, PA24 250 Comanche for sale, Maidenhead, Berkshire 1/4 share, Texas Star Yacht, British Virgin Islands, Caribbean

If you enjoyed reading our newsletter, please forward it to friends and colleagues. We are always delighted to receive feedback. I hope you have a very merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Sophie Garrett yours2share share valuable assets with like-minded people