PITI

Before you buy a home, you should obtain a pre-approval letter from the mortgage lender that states how much you’re eligible to borrow. This provides you with two important information: (1) the price range that you should be focusing on, and (2) the starting point for your monthly mortgage payments calculation. You can use an [...]

The M-Network Vacation Guide
This week, members of the M-Network did a series on vacationing. Frugal tips, ideas, experiences, personal accounts…everything. You can see and read all of our articles in the M-Network Vacation Guide on our network blog.

Giveaways
There were several giveaways announced this week, please take a look:

Blog Anniversary and Free Gas Giveaway at Single [...]

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 estate investing. So far, the [...]

For someone who doesn’t carry a lot of debt, I didn’t give Debt-to-Income Ratio a serious thought until I start lending money on peer-to-peer lending networks — i.e., Prosper and Lending Club. The truth is, DTI is important; especially in the business of borrowing and lending money.
Definition of Debt-To-Income Ratios (DTI)
Debt-to-income ratio, or DTI ratio, [...]

The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80-20 rule or the law of the vital few, is an observation that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. I often use the Pareto Principle in my job, especially when we work on quality or process improvement projects. A nice thing about Pareto is [...]