Category: Home

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.

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.

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.

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?”

I really don’t like to write long-winded posts about anything, even if I sometimes do just that. But, sometimes there are subjects that do require that kind of detail. Like, for example, the subject of picking where to live. Maybe you never actually had to pick a place to live, but these days it has become a much more common thing to have to do, and that’s especially true in retirement.

I’m sure that there are plenty of good and obvious reasons why you live where you live. In retirement, many need to live in a less expensive place or a place closer to family. For others, it may be that they always wanted to live in a mountain area or a beach environment. Those are all good reasons to consider and get advice about.

There is an ongoing discussion about whether or not buying and owning a home is a really a good idea. I have been a homeowner myself continuously (with just a small blip on that screen while I recovered from my divorce) since 1976 and that’s roughly 40+ years, so I can testify that owning your own home has been a great move for me. That’s why I wrote about it several times (most recently with “Damn Those Skeptics: Owning a Home Does Build Wealth” in January 2018) and said it is definitely a good thing.

But, and here’s the big but, maybe not for everybody! Why? There is a list of reasons as to why home ownership may not be the right decision for you, but one of the most underestimated and overlooked is understanding:

What is the real price of owning your own home?