J Money recently sold a web property and is toying with the idea of using the proceeds from that sale to buy a real investment property. Bottom line up front: This is a great idea. My experience with owning an investment property has been great so far. Very smooth. I, like J Money, had heard … Read more
One of my office mates recently got another house that was closer to his family’s activities. From the looks of mortgage rates now it seems like he could have gotten quite a deal, even now! Rates have stayed down for quite a while — quite a bit longer than I had thought they would, I … Read more
Nine short days to the federal tax filing deadline on April 18th, 2011. This year, Uncle Sam has a $6,500 tax credit in store for those of us who bought a new home during the first part of 2010 after having lived in another home for a while. The instructions to Form 5405 call a … Read more
In my ten months of owning an investment property, things have run very smoothly. The mortgage is the same one that we had when we were living there; we had refinanced the loan in 2005 to cut 11 years off of our loan for only about $150 extra per month (we did a mortgage refinance … Read more
Although it’s not quite dinner conversation yet, talking about family finances with other people is getting to be less taboo. This is a good thing, because the forces at work that aim to part us from our money are more devious, stronger, and more numerous than they were fifty years ago. A big part of … Read more
It really disheartens me to see people go from some of the best kind of debt to have to some of the worst kind, at the worst possible time. Someone over at Basically Money was planning to do a mortgage refinance from a 30-year fixed-rate at 5% to a 5/1 adjustable rate mortgage at 2.7%. … Read more
I received a whole bunch of books, compliments of Jim Randel and friends, from The Skinny On series. I’ve read a few of them, not because I’m a particularly fast reader but because they’re super-quick reads. Truth in advertising: it even says so on the spines. The ones I’ve read so far are The Skinny … Read more
I was forwarded an article about a local woman whose bank, Bank of America, foreclosed on the house she and her family lived in only three months after her husband drowned in the river adjoining the property. Meanwhile, in other parts of Bank of America, foreclosures are being halted all over the country to make … Read more