March 2010

Taking Care of Business

March 30, 2010

Hello Folks, If you’ve been following this blog you’ll know that we’ve been working on closing on another property in the district. Well last night we sold our stock to raise the down payment funds. The closing date is April 13th, but we wanted to have the funds in cash so there won’t be worries [...]

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Dealing with Competing Goals

March 29, 2010

Hello Folks, Lets face it, many people have aspirations that are often at odds with each other. For example a typical conundrum that many people are faced with is balancing their retirement savings needs with non-retirement financial goals. Since most people are constrained in their ability to do more than one thing with their money, [...]

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Real Wealth Requires Sacrifice

March 28, 2010

Hello Folks, So, I was browsing through a copy of Felix’s Dennis’ How to Get Rich. If you haven’t read Dennis, its well worth the time to do so. At any rate, whenever I come back to Felix’s book it makes a ton of sense to me. For example, check out this quote: “Never yet [...]

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Investing In REITs

March 26, 2010

Its trite and tired, but if you want to invest in real estate and don’t want to deal with directly managing your property, then your best option is a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT). If you feel your portfolio could use some exposure to real estate, here is a quickie from Kiplinger to get you [...]

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Four Reasons Why Gift Cards Are A Bad Idea

March 25, 2010

Hello Folks, When it comes to gift cards, forget the card: give cash. There are a ton of reasons why you should give cash instead of cards. Here are four: 1) People Don’t Use Them: According to a 2008 consumer reports survey, nearly 1 in 4 Americans didn’t use their gift cards. This is up [...]

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Evaluating Small Business Investments

March 23, 2010

Hello Folks, At some point you may have the personal finance basics covered – got your debt paid off and have an emergency fund built up – and may be looking to juice your bottom line beyond what vanilla investments like stocks and bonds can offer you. In this case, you may be considering investing [...]

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Getting A Mortgage Today

March 22, 2010

Hello Folks, I’m getting slammed at the University and won’t get a chance to put down a longer, more substantive posting today. Instead, here is a video from Kiplinger’s personal finance. Its on the topic of how the mortgage market has changed in recent years. Some of the highlights: its harder to get a mortgage, [...]

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Housing Market To Double Dip?

March 20, 2010

Hello Folks, This quick video from Meredith Whitney caught my eye. Just as a reminder, Whitney is an independent analyst who called the housing bubble and subsequent crash back in 2008. She’s a smart cookie. In this one her comments echo what I’ve been hearing from Mortgage lenders in the DC area, so it might [...]

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Are You Sure You Want to Invest In Real Estate?

March 18, 2010

Hello Folks, Since we’ve been in the process of buying an investment property, it occurs to me that not everyone realizes the difference between getting an investment and buying a home for yourself. Also, sometimes it seems like new real estate investors often fail to appreciate the complexities and hassles involved in owning property. In [...]

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Economics of a POW Camp

March 16, 2010

In case you were wondering…here is a write up of the some of the basic economics of a World War 2 era prisoner of war camp.

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