Personal Financial Advice from a former Certified Financial Planner
The stock market dipped below the magic 20 percent needed to call it a bear market yesterday. Media outlets were quick to throw up their bear market headlines, but the markets rallied and exposed the headline game as a gimmick with flashy words.
Some of you have followed along as we try and sell our house without a real estate agent. I have documented how we were using Iggyshouse.com to this. But, the site has been down for the last several days. I was finally able to find this article suggesting that this is not a temporary glitch. Needless to say, we are re-evaluating. Even if it does come back online, this is disconcerting to say the least. If we were off MLS for even one weekend, that might have cost us a sale. So, I cannot recommend using iggyshouse.com at this time. Stay tuned. I’ll post a follow up when I have more details.
These days, medical expenses are a big burden to many family’s budgets. Unfortunately, it isn’t always easy to figure out just how and when you can save money without endangering your health. However, here are some tips that could save you plenty of money on your prescriptions. Costco, Sam’s Club, and Other Warehouse Clubs It is no secret that places like Costco and Sam’s Club have pharmacies, and yes, they have good prices on prescriptions as well. Not a member? No problem. Most states have laws requiring any business establishment to permit public access to the pharmacy. In other words, you can march right into Sam’s Club without a membership and have your prescription filled. Just tell the person at the door that you are having a prescription filled in the pharmacy and they’ll let you right in. These places tend to train their people pretty well on this rule so they don’t get into trouble. The one catch is that both Costco and Sam’s Club have restrictive payment options so make sure you have the right kind of credit card or are prepared to pay by check. For more expensive prescriptions this may not be a very palatable option, …
Use the new Credit Card Lab on Capital One’s website to make a great rewards card, or to compare other rewards cards.
The U.S. Supreme Court in a 7-2 decision upheld the central tenant of most state’s municipal bond tax policy, specifically that a state can exempt it’s own muni bonds from taxes while taxing the interest on other state’s muni bonds. So, nothing changes from before. If you live in California, the only way to avoid state tax on bond interest is to buy California Municipal Bonds. If you buy bonds from Texas, they can tax that interest. Taxes and Bonds Because interest on bonds is taxed as ordinary income, avoiding taxes on that interest is more important to investors than avoiding taxes on dividends paid by stocks. Most corporate bonds are taxed at both the federal and state level which reduces the real rate of return to the investor. Municipal bonds issued by states are exempt from federal income tax because one branch of the government cannot tax another branch. Whether or not the state municipal bonds are exempt from state income tax is determined by the laws of the states they are issued in. Most states make their own bonds tax-free as a way to make them more attractive for purchase. This tax-free status, plus the relative safety of …
Ok, I’ve stopped daily updates about selling our own home. Truth is, there just isn’t that much action in real estate to justify daily postings. However, today we have 3 showings scheduled, so that is very good news. We haven’t got much in the way of feedback. One of the downsides about selling your home without a realtor is that other real estate agents won’t talk to you in the same way. It isnt’ anything against people selling their homes themselves, it is just that they can’t be sure that the homeowner understands the code that goes along with giving feedback and might use something that is said later in a way that another realtor wouldn’t. So, we put out sheets to solicit feedback. That way either the client or the realtor can jot something down if they feel so inclined.
Waiting 1 day for every $100 an item costs can help control big spending impulses. If you have more trouble with letting those “little things” pile up into a big thing, then this cash system might work for you.
I’ve become obsessed with themes in WordPress. Nothing seems to be exactly what I want, although there are a lot of great themes out there. Currently I’m using this grid based theme (see credit in footer). I’ve been hacking at it for a while now, and I’m not sure it looks as good as the one on another site of mine Undefeated Daddy which is using the WP Premium theme with virutally no hacking (just to make things work in my file structure). So, it continues…
As you may have noticed, we are getting ready to sell our house. After living in our first house for about 7 years, we’ve been in our last two for 2 and 3 years respectively. The interesting thing is that each time we have made a lot of money. The past two times we’ve used this new wealth to buy more expensive houses. This time, we’ll be trading down, but we will also be paying off every dollar of debt we have other than the new mortgage. This isn’t insignificant when you consider that we are in our early thirties and both had to go to college on the back of student loans (including the wife’s three years in law school.) Looking back, I’ve noticed a parallel to the stock market. In the stock market, there are day traders. You probably remember more than one or two friends who tried this way to easy wealth in the late 90s. Only, it turns out it isn’t so easy, and ironically, that most of the people who thought they were day traders really weren’t. A day trader buy and sells positions within the same day. The entire concept is based upon taking …
Ok, so nothing at all on the house for two weeks. It was very weird because we were having a few showings every weekend day and one or two the other days with an off day every now and then. Then, all of the sudden, nothing! I checked everything out to make sure a phone number wasn’t wrong or anything. We panicked and called our realtor friend. She said not to worry and that these things go in cycles. Incidentally, this kind of hand holding is part of what you pay a real estate agent for. Anyway, the funny part is that the day she got back to me, I get a call. They want to setup a showing for…NOW. Oh, great, thanks for the notice. So, I race around and clean up the place (baby toys EVERYWHERE!) Then, two showing for Saturday. So, hopefully everything is still on track.