Category: Home

Save money buying or renting a home, maintaining, improving or decorating a home, or even selling or renting one out

Home, Retirement

When Does Having a Mortgage Really Suck?

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Let me be the first person (today at least!) to tell you that owning your own home is a great idea. If you are looking to help build your financial wealth over time, then buying a home is a great way to build equity. It also has lots of money-saving benefits for you as well.

Mortgages are great in that they let many people afford homes, but at a certain point in life, they suck. Having a mortgage in retirement should be avoided.

The alternative to owning your own home is of course renting. Renting is very much like having a big hole that you keep pouring your money into and it never gets filled up. Even in 2020, and with my 70 years on planet earth, owning a home is still a pretty desirable goal to have and a good way to build wealth.

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Cars, Entertainment, Frugality, Home, Shopping

Buy Everything You Need When It’s on Sale

Yes, it’s your biggest dream and a worthy goal. Only buy the things you want and need when they are on sale and always get the best deal when you do it! If only, right? Well, you may not be able to guarantee it, but you can at least try. And that leads me to my mantra and it must always be yours too: Never, ever buy any appliance, furniture, or any other item if it’s not on sale!

To save money on what you need, always buy on sale! Here's when and how to buy everything from homes and cars to clothing and home furnishings.

That must be your number rule if you wanna be “a star in my show”. And guess what? Retailers know you understand that and so they will use every way they can think of to trick you!

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Home

7 Tips to Get Your Home Ready to Sell

For today’s guest post on getting your home ready to sell, please welcome Logan Allec from Money Done Right.

Selling your home can be a time-consuming process, and you can typically increase the sale price by making a few last-minute changes. Depending on the home’s current condition, your real estate agent may recommend drastic transformations or just some simple adjustments.

If you're getting your home ready to sell, it's important to spruce it up a bit to maximize your home's value. Here are some of the best ways to prepare.

This article will cover some of the best ways to prepare your home for sale and maximize its market value. Again, you should talk about these ideas with your agent—they have the knowledge and experience necessary to identify the most effective strategies for your unique situation.

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Debt, Home

How to Choose a Great Home Lender for Your Mortgage

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Once upon a time, getting a home loan was as simple as walking down to the local bank, sitting down with the manager, shaking hands, and presto! You’ve got a home loan and your local bank was your home lender. That’s pretty much the way it used to be.

With low interest rates, it's prime time for getting a mortgage or refinancing your home. Here's how to find the right home lender for you.

Today, with the advent and popularity of online lending, times have really changed. Borrowers are now spoiled with so much info and so many choices! Right now (and how many times have you heard it over and over again in recent years) mortgage and refinancing rates are at really low numbers. With so many different lenders beating a path to your door and giving customers so much different information, how do you know when you’ve chosen a great deal from a great home lender? Well, wonder no more!

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Home

20+ Ways to Reduce Energy Costs and Relieve Financial Pressure

Are you sick and tired of stressing about money all the time? One of the biggest challenges in personal finance is figuring out new ways to spend less money and one of the best ways to accomplish that is to cut down on your regular monthly expenses, such as reduce energy costs. When you do that, the pressure on your budget is relieved.

It is possible to reduce energy costs and save some money on a regular monthly bill. Here are more than twenty ways to help you save on energy.

Even though some of your regular bills might seem small and insignificant on their own, their cumulative effect can be enormous and become a huge drain on your financial resources. And the weirdest part of it all is that we just don’t try to stop that bleeding because they are regular routine bills we get on a monthly basis and it seems like they are all required and we have no options about them. But I am here to say that some people proactively look for ways to cut these routine expenses.

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Food, Frugality, Home, Shopping

Stop Buying These 8 Things and Save $6,320 This Year

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There are lots of articles about how you can save money by changing your lifestyle, sometimes even turning it completely upside down. I have even preached about such things as downsizing your home and even giving up your car and of course when you do those things you will save a ton of money. Those are real ways to do it if you are ready to really make big changes in your life like when you are entering into retirement or after the kids are gone and off on their own.

You can save money by making big changes or by cutting every luxury. But if you simply stop buying these 8 things, you can painlessly save more than $6,300.

Yet there are other little ways to save a lot by cutting out just a few of the small guilty pleasures in your life. People also write about some of those obvious money wasters and non-essentials such as Starbucks lattes and the high cost of cable premium channels that can really add up your expenses every month. But, life is too short to give up all of the little perks in life you love, isn’t it?

So what can you really do to save big money right now?

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Budgeting, Cars, Food, Home

3 Things You Can Learn From Early Retirees

Your retirement is something you think about with a smile and some pleasant thoughts even though it might seem like it’s light-years away. But if you get to your golden years with insufficient funds, it’s guaranteed to be a nightmare and very unpleasant! You don’t want to live through that scenario, I promise you.

If you're having difficulty saving enough money for retirement, take a lesson from those who have been there. Here's what you can learn from early retirees.

Saving up enough money over a 45-year career to maintain your lifestyle in retirement is pretty challenging. But there’s a lot to be learned from the people who have managed to hit their savings goals well before that point, people who then retire early. You can learn a lot even if you haven’t been bitten by the early-retirement bug. That’s why it’s important to concentrate and learn about these three things you can learn from early retirees when you think that your retirement is at hand. But before you find out the answers…

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Home

We Purchased New Laminate Wood Flooring and Here’s Why

We have lived in our current home now since 2007. That’s just over 12 years and during that time we haven’t done much to the floors around here. We had new carpeting in our living room, dining room, and hallway when we first moved in and truthfully, they’ve been looking pretty worn and stained to the point where it was really bothering us. After all, it wasn’t the finest carpeting when we purchased it and it really didn’t owe us anything after 12+ years of use, did it? It was time for an update and we decided on new laminate wood flooring.

It was time to update our floors and after considering our return on investment, we purchased laminate wood flooring. Here's what went into our decision.

When you do any home improvement, you often hear the abbreviation ROI (return on investment) mentioned. That’s why when we decided to make a change we asked ourselves this question:

“What might be the ROI if we purchase new flooring and besides the beauty aspect, does new flooring mean an increase in the value of our home?”

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