Home and Real Estate
Real Estate Investing: Return On Investment and Leverage
March 27, 2008 :: Home and Real Estate, Investing :: 19 Comments
One of the commonly touted advantage of real estate investing is the financial leverage that can result in enormous return on investment. A typical example usually compares investing an amount in real estate versus the stock market, where the return on investment for real estate investing far exceeds that of ...
Meandering Into Real Estate Investing
March 19, 2008 :: Home and Real Estate :: 21 Comments
Investing in real estate, specifically small rental properties where I'd buy single-family or multi-family houses for the purpose of renting them out has been one of the things I wanted to do. However, the three musketeers of fear, doubt, and uncertainty discouraged me from taking any action toward residential real ...
Dave Ramsey’s Baby Step 6: Pay Off Home Early
March 5, 2008 :: Home and Real Estate, Investing :: 37 Comments
The M-Network is currently doing a series highlighting Dave Ramsey's 7 Baby Steps for getting out of debt and getting your life on the right track financially. You can read about all of the steps over on Cash Money Life who kicked things off with a great introduction. As other ...
Trying Out Ambit Energy To Lower Electricity Cost
December 28, 2007 :: Home and Real Estate :: 5 Comments
I got a strange call yesterday -- yes, a cold call. Wait a minute...did my do not call status expired?!? Anyway, the guy claimed he works for Ambit Energy, and he wanted to put me on a savings plan that will shave 7% off my Con Edison electricity charges ...
Home Renovation Nightmare on Elm Street
October 31, 2007 :: Home and Real Estate :: 19 Comments
I hope this will be our last renovation for a very very long time. Our horror story began in late August when the contractor came to our house and quoted $6,000 (labor only) to repair our clogged backyard drain, hang new doors, and overhaul our bathroom. The estimated ...
Little things you can do to save money and our planet
October 15, 2007 :: Frugal Living, Home and Real Estate, Life, Family, and Health :: 19 Comments
Well today is Blog Action Day and a lot of bloggers are blogging about our environment today. Being a personal finance blogger, I am going to make this one related to money...again. A lot of people think that being Green is expensive -- e.g., you have to buy Energy Star ...
Mortgage Refinancing That Nearly Cost Me $370,000
September 18, 2007 :: Home and Real Estate :: 4 Comments
I mentioned previously that I made many financial mistakes in the past. One of the more serious ones was refinancing my mortgage from 30 years to 15 years in 2003 (about 4 years after I purchased my home). On the surface, I did a brilliant job of saving ...
How I estimated my house value at $625,965 for August 2007
September 4, 2007 :: Home and Real Estate :: 8 Comments
In my net worth report, I estimated my house at $625,965 for August 2007. I figured I should go into more detail about how I did this. I have to say that I owe this method to The Dough Roller's 10 Fun and Free Websites to Lookup the ...
Throw Away Junks, Organize, and Save Money
August 20, 2007 :: Frugal Living, Home and Real Estate, Productivity :: 7 Comments
Right now my house is in the midst (mess?) of a renovation project. We are updating our bathroom which recently sprung a leak due to an array of broken and rusty pipes. We are also converting our dining room to a dual purpose "home office-guest bed room" ...
Paying Too Much Rent? Charging Too Little?
July 26, 2007 :: Home and Real Estate :: Leave a Comment
Do you ever wonder if you are charging too little for your rental property? Likewise, if you rent, do you ever wonder if you are paying too much? Today, I stumbled upon this site called Rentometer. Just enter your zip code, rent, the number of bedrooms, and the number of ...
