Reason #89: Super Summer Man is here! Flickr photo by Quiet Storm!

We tell people all the time that NYC is a great place to live even when you’re broke, and never is that truer than in the summer, when the city splits open at the seams and releases everyone into the wide open. The almost nightly barrage of free movies, free concerts, cheap drinking spots and no-cost revelry makes you drunk on the idea that this is indeed the best city in the world, even if you don’t have a dime. And there’s seemingly more every year. Here, in honor of  today’s high temp, our top 88 reasons why summer belongs to brokesters: (more…)

So we’ll be speaking at a panel at SXSWi next month called “The Broke Diaries: Using Blogs and Twitter to Live Cheaply” but have been seriously lollygagging on booking a room. As a result, all the hotels within walking distance of the conference were sold out, and way too expensive anyway. The plan: something between couch-surfing and a house rental, but the ask-everyone-on-Facebook route didn’t work. But yesterday, our pals over at LearnVest ran a post about a site called Airbnb (sorry but who thought of that impossible-to-remember name?) where you can book a room in someone’s house for less than a hotel. There was a cute room in an artist’s home for $33 a night available during the conference, but we wound up splurging on a $55-a-night room in the home of a wholesome-looking couple named Courtney and Joep. It has a private bathroom, plus a deck overlooking an organic garden, plus wifi, plus coffee, plus personal-training sessions with Courtney if we want them (that’ll be extra), plus a new travel tip for our SXSW panel. We have to drive to the conference, but… score! Not everything on this site is budget-oriented though. They have housboats in India, igloos in Switzerland, castles in England. Check it, Brokesters.

[via LearnVest]