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Resolutions That Don’t Suck

Finance

a beautiful macro shot of Crystal Methamphetam...
a beautiful macro shot of Crystal Methamphetamine in a black background (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m not a huge fan of New Year’s resolutions.  Generally speaking, if you don’t have the willpower to do something any other time of the year, you probably won’t grow that willpower just because the last number on the calendar changed.

Seriously, if you’ve got something worth changing, change it right away, don’t wait for a special day.

That said, this is the time of the year that many people choose to try to improve…something.   Some people try to lose weight, other people quit shooting meth into their eyeballs, yet others(the ones I’m going to talk about) decide it’s time to get out of debt.

Now most people are going to throw out some huge and worthless goals like:

  • I need to lose some weight.
  • I need to save more.
  • I need to be a better person.
  • I need to shoot less meth into my eyeball.

The problem with goals like that is the definitions.  What is “some”, “more”, “better”, or “less”?  How do you know when you’ve won.

It’s better to take on smaller goals that have real definitions.

Try these:

  • I’m going to lose 20 pounds.
  • I’m going to save $1200.
  • I need to stop locking my children in the closet when I go to the movies.
  • I am never ever going to shoot meth into my eyeball again.

But Jason, I hear you saying, where am I going to find $1000 to save?  Well, Dear Reader, I’m glad you asked.  Next time though, could you ask in a way that others can hear so my wife doesn’t feel the need to call the nice men in the white coats again?

Let’s break that goal down even further.

Instead of saving $1200, let’s call it $100 per month.  That’s a bite-sized goal.  Some people don’t even have that to spare, so what can they do?

Let’s make that resolution something like “I’m going to have frozen pizza instead of my regular weekly delivery.”  If your house is anything like mine, that brings a $60 pizza bill down to $15 for some good frozen pizza for a savings of $45.  If you order pizza once a week, that’s $180 saved each month, double your goal.  That’s a win with very little suffering.

Now, you can take that extra $80 that you hadn’t even planned for and throw it at your credit cards.   That’s a free payment every month.  Before you know it, you’ll have your cards paid off and a decent savings account.

Then you can thank me because I made it all possible.

 

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Net Worth Update – January 2014

Misc

This may be the most boring type of post I write, but it’s important to me to track my net worth so I can see my progress.  We are sliding smoothly from debt payoff mode to wealth building mode.

Our highlights right now are nothing to speak of.  We did let our credit card grow a little bit over the last couple of months, but paid it off completely at the end of December.  It grew mostly as a matter of not paying attention while we were doing our holiday shopping and dealing with some car repairs.

That’s it.  We haven’t remodeled our bathrooms yet, but we have the money sitting in a savings account, waiting for the contractor.  We haven’t bought a pony yet, but we did decide that a hobby farm wouldn’t be the right move for us.  We’ll be boarding the pony instead of moving, at least for the foreseeable future.

Our net worth is up $13,000 since September.  Our savings are up and our retirement accounts are down because there are two inherited IRAs that we need to slowly cash out and convert to regular IRAs.

Net Worth Jan 2014

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Refinancing Your Existing Loan to Purchase An Investment Property

Finance

Many people are looking at the housing market slump right now as an investment opportunity.  Here are a few of the things that you need to know before getting a new home loan or refinancing your existing loan in order to make that happen.

 Amount You Want to Borrow

 A lot of borrowers go shopping for real estate and have exactly no idea how much money they can borrow. One of the first questions that you need to ask before going real estate hunting is how much can I borrow. You can ask a bank, lender, or financial institution to give you a ballpark figure of the amount of loan that you would qualify for. This will make it easier for you to narrow down exactly what type of property you can afford and what areas you can concentrate on.

 Amount of Interest You Will Pay

 Too many people are overly concerned with the purchase price of the home that they are buying. They fail to find out how much interest they will have to pay back to the bank in order to make their home ownership dreams come true. This is where a home loan calculator can be really useful. You can find out exactly how much interest you will repay over a 10, 20, or 30 year loan time period. You can also change the interest rate and down payment amount on those calculators to see if you can secure a lower monthly payment.

 Credit Score Needed to Qualify

 It doesn’t matter if you are buying a home for the first time or refinancing an existing loan. Your credit score matters. You need to start doing some research now if you want to secure a loan with a really low interest rate. This involves taking the time to see what credit scores traditional lenders are looking for and doing the work necessary to qualify for this loan. Your credit score will make a big difference in determining if an investment property purchase is a profitable endeavor or one that winds up costing you money. It will depend heavily on what kind of loan your credit score allowed you to negotiate.

 Make the Choice

 Once you know how much you will need and exactly how much you will be paying out over the life of another mortgage, you can decide whether you want to refinance your current home loan to get another one.  Adding on another huge debt to an existing one is a big risk.  Make sure to think it through fully before jumping in.

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How We Handled The Windfall

Finance

Landlord
Landlord (Photo credit: FletchtheMonkey)

Three years ago, my mother-in-law died.  She didn’t have a will, but that’s a story for another day.

My wife, being an only child, inherited everything.  All of the assets, and all of the problems.

She inherited the house, which was completely paid off.  That was nice.

My mother-in-law was a hoarder who didn’t buy into the idea of maintaining your property.  That was not nice.

Between the life insurance policies and the ready cash, she inherited about $60,000.  Also nice.

It’s all gone.  Not so nice.

Now, I know you’re asking where it went.  Lucky for you, that’s what this post is about.

We paid off the last $10,000 of our credit card debt, and haven’t accumulated a balance since.  Now our cards are paid off in full every month.

We put $5,000 down on the Chevy Tahoe we bought in 2012 and paid off in full 9 months later.

Every last cent of the rest went into the house we inherited.

Huh?  45 fricking grand to get the house ready to rent?

Yep.

  • $3000 to clear out the brush and landscape the yard
  • A few hundred to have the hardwood floors sanded, stained, sealed, and buffed
  • An intense carpet-cleaning
  • Painting every single room
  • 3 large dumpsters to handle the garbage we pulled out of the house
  • New refrigerator
  • New washing machine
  • New boiler
  • New stove
  • New patio door
  • New locks for the doors and windows
  • Security lights
  • Food for all of our helpers whom we can never thank enough
  • Finishing the basement

All of that pretty, pretty money, gone in less than a year.

What did we get out of it?  A rentable asset that is bringing in $1200 every month, with minimal work.

We could have chosen to sell the place, but we would have had to do nearly all of that work, anyway, so it wouldn’t have saved anything.

I like having the new stream of income, even though it will take several years to turn a profit.  That house isn’t going anywhere, and since it’s only 3 miles from Minneapolis and 5 miles from downtown Minneapolis, it will always be an in-demand area for renters.

It was just a lot of work turning it into a useful property instead of a year-long drain on time, patience, and money.

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Get Age on your Side

Misc

Albert Einstein.
Albert Einstein. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of the best ways in the early years of your career to provide for your long term future is to have a 401K for your retirement where your employer will match your own contributions up to a certain figure. Your contribution is pre-tax incidentally. Albert Einstein once said that compound interest was the ‘eighth wonder of the world’ and it is compound interest that will help even small amounts to grow into a substantial figure on retirement if savings begin in your 20s.

It is worth illustrating this with real figures. A figure of $4,000 a year saved between the ages of 25 and 35 with no further contributions after that will produce a larger final figure at 65 than someone starting at 35 and contributing $4,000 per annum for 30 years. The latter has invested three times as much as well. The factors that decide this are time and compound interest. The whole total of former is working for him or her for 30 years. A fair amount of the second example is only ‘working’ positively for a limited time. Start early!

An Illustration

It is worth looking at examples to see what size of fund is realistic. 8% is not an unreasonable sum to put away on a salary of $40,000 a year, a salary that grows at 2% per annum for 20 years. If the employer pays 3% in addition and growth is a modest 7%, the fund at the end of 20 years would be around $210,000. If you can put 10% in instead, or if you extend the saving period to 30 years the fund rockets to over $500,000! It’s time and compound interest again because in the example over 20 years you will have only put in just under $80,000 yourself to have a fund two and a half times bigger.

A Couple of Observations

Can there be a bigger argument for saving from an early age than that? Surely not! The question is how to manage your money well enough so that you can start to save in the early years of your career. You may well have a student loan to begin to pay off. Probably two of the most important things to do with realisticloans.com, or not to do depending how you look at it are:

  • Credit Cards. Avoid building up debts by buying things you cannot afford. The interest charged on outstanding balances is penal. If you have a balance, perhaps as a legacy of subsidizing your student life, take out a personal loan to clear it. It is much cheaper in terms of interest rate and repayable in monthly instalments over a fixed term
  • Resist the temptation of trying to impress with material things. Impress people by who you are and not a new car or the latest fashions.

Expenditure

There is no doubt that you may well have monthly expenditure you did not face before, especially if you have relocated to start work. Such expenditure is unavoidable but you should spend some time on researching whether you are getting the best deals. That applies to a number of significant things such as utilities, insurance and telephone. There are comparison websites that do a good deal of research for you and at least will provide you with a short list to look at further.

The aim is to create a regular surplus that can be transferred out of your checking account when your monthly pay comes in to work positively for you and your future. You will need to apply self-discipline to your finances but you can see from the example of ‘time and compound interest’ what they benefits are for being in control. It really is not much to sacrifice.

There will be times in the years to come when you have big financial decisions to make. Real estate comes to mind immediately and a long term mortgage can reasonably be regarded as positive debt because it should produce good growth over the term you have committed yourself to. With real estate often comes marriage and a family; and all the expense that involves. Yet that responsibility is yet another reason to start young in saving for the future, and your possible dependents.