Personal Finance Advice

If you’re a potential first time homebuyer, you may be confused about those mysterious closing costs — the expense that means that when you think you’ve finally saved up enough for a down payment, you really haven’t. Closing costs can add 2% to 5% to the purchase price of your home, which is especially painful [...]

The first time a realtor explained the home inspection process to me, I thought, “What a load of crap! I can test the dishwasher and make sure all the outlets work myself! Why would I pay someone else $450 to do those things?” If you, like me, aren’t sure why you’d want [...]

My wife loves the smell of lemons so she incorporates them whenever possible to make our house smell lemony. An added benefit is that using lemons instead of store bought house cleaners and fresheners is a lot less expensive and better for the environment. Here are some of many ways she uses lemons around our [...]

When you’re in the market for a new home, it’s easy to spend hours pouring over online listings. But don’t get too excited about that dream home that meets all of your criteria on paper: the listing is just the beginning.
Think of the MLS (Multiple Listing Service, an online database of homes for sale) [...]

Hold on and gain your breath. Before you discount this idea from the beginning simply from the title, bear with me on this one and know that this does work. Most people have to step out of their comfort zone and even those of you who consider yourselves outgoing, might feel a bit odd about [...]

There is yet another shady deal going around with mortgage loans these days. If you receive an offer from a lender or mortgage broker under a “Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) Program” endorsed by the Federal Reserve Board, raise that red flag right away. First and foremost, the Federal Reserve does not endorse or sponsor any [...]

One of the problems that we have had to solve at our house is the quality of the air during the winter months when the windows are rarely opened. My wife suffers terribly from poor air quality (not to mention the cost of trying to treat the conditions which result from it) so we needed [...]

I have mentioned previously that there are times when it makes sense to buy certain items to save money. Along these lines. PECO has announced they are selling a $25 (plus $2.87 shipping/handling) energy saving kit that should save you between $125 to $250 a year in energy costs. The kit includes the following:
Earth Massage [...]

Looking to spruce up your house with a little paint? Why not insulate the walls at the same time with the same brush stroke. I happened to be looking for paint and insulation for a home improvement project when I stumbled upon insulating paints. It’s a less expensive alternative to placing standard insulation materials in [...]

If you are planning a home improvement project in the near future, here id a huge money saving tip you may be able to utilize. Even with the ever expanding reach of large discount home improvement stores over the last decade, repairing and fixing a home is still an expensive proposition. If you don’t think [...]

I can tell that fall is here and winter is just around the corner. The leaves outside are yellows, oranges and reds while the days are getting colder. Last night my dad decided to have a fire in the fire place since it was just that kind of night. Instead of getting a few logs [...]

I always like finding new ways to look at numbers when it comes to personal finances (yes, I’m a geek in that way). It was with this in mind that I read an article over at Mises.org about how the expansion of monetary policy has had a significant impact on the prices that we pay [...]

My sister, her husband and their one-year-old girl who have been living in San Francisco are all moving to Canada (Victoria on Vancouver Island) in October. It has been an extremely busy week as I have spent a lot of time helping them get packed for the move. Some observations that are pretty obvious, but [...]

I was looking at the back yard today and thinking about lawn mowers. I started thinking about this because our neighbor across the street has a riding lawn mower. Now we live in the suburbs and while he has a large house, his lawn area is minimal. He obviously doesn’t need a riding lawn mower [...]

In the below video, the smaller, older houses are selling for about $800,000 while the bigger houses are selling for over $1 million - crazy. The skinny lot at the beginning of the video is on the corner of Pasadena and Olive and has a value of $882K while the other is on the corner [...]

One thing that I have learned over the years is that if you try to do something that is beyond your skill level, it will likely cost you money in the long run. That being said, you probably can do a lot more than you think you can. I am by no means a handyman, [...]

My mom wants to get a new deck for her house. The old one is quite old and really needs to get replaced. She wants it to be a good medium grade redwood. The problem was that I had absolutely no idea how much a deck should cost.
The first thing I did was make [...]

I went to a San Francisco Giants Game baseball game today and while walking from BART to the stadium, there were several harbors with a large number of sailboats docked there. My dad loves sailboats, so of course we had to go and take a closer look at some of the betters ones. That’s when [...]

One of the best investments that you can make is to get a set of basic tools for around the home. I spent a good 4 hours yesterday helping my father put in a new fence in their yard. Esimates from others to put it in were from $3000 - $5000, but we managed [...]

A big hand to Kyle MacDonald who turned a common household item which virtually everyone has lying around (one red paper clip) into something many of us spend years of our life paying for (a fully paid for house) in a matter of 14 trades. That’s right - one red paper clip man managed to [...]