Search Results for “ignore-your-budget/how-much-should-you-tip/medical-costs-and-choices/budget-lesson-part-1/selling-your-home-the-real-estate-agent”

Selling Your Home: The Real Estate Agent

If you are not able or willing to sell your home yourself, you’ll need to find a real estate agent. A realtor is someone who deals with all of the hassles involved in selling your home in exchange for a fee of up to 7% of the selling price.

The hassles include marketing, an objective price analysis, advertising on the internet and in newspapers, providing a yard sign, negotiating the sale price, reviewing and filling out the contracts, and navigating the entire process for you. The aren’t meaningless duties, so make sure you are getting what you pay for. You need to find the right realtor for you.

The key to to ask questions, particularly the right questions. You can ask the wrong ones if you’d like, but they tend not to help much.

Helpful questions include:

“Can I call your previous clients?” If the answer is no, run away! If the answer is yes, get the list and call them.
“Have you sold any homes near here recently?” Get the names and numbers of the customers and call them. Find out how it went and what they wish would have happened differently. If the realtor hasn’t sold nearby homes recently, keep looking.
“Will you put your sales strategy in writing?” If it’s not in writing, you may be left paying the full commission, without getting the full promised service.
“What will you tell a potential buyer that wants to negotiate?” Make sure you and your realtor are on the same page.

Now for some secrets that realtors will not volunteer.

The selling fee is negotiable. If you live in a popular development, or if nearby homes have sold quickly, you should be able to get your fee reduced a couple of points.
You don’t have to sign an exclusive listing agreement. With an exclusive agreement, you will pay the realtor a fee if the house sells. Period. With a non-exclusive agreement, you can list with several agents and only pay the one who actually sells your house. If you find the buyer, you won’t pay a selling commission at all.

Selling your house can be intimidating and realtors are there to make the task easier for you. Have you had any problems with real estate agents?

Make a Budget

Finance

: Image by r.lovewell via Flickr

In the past, I’ve gone through a detailed series of budget lessons demonstrating how to make a budget and showing my personal budget spreadsheet template. If you weren’t here to see them develop, you probably haven’t seen them at all. I’ve never built an actual index for those posts.

This is the master index of my budget planning resources. As I develop more, this will grow.

Budget Lesson #1 – In this lesson, I go over how we handle discretionary income and I explain our modified envelope system. The discretionary budget contains things like our grocery bill, or the clothes we buy. We have near-total discretion over what is purchased, hence the name.

Budget Lesson #2 – Lesson #2 contains the details of our monthly bills. These are the ones that are consistent, predictable, and actually due each month. Most people take these for granted as the bills they have to pay, but it’s not true. You can get almost all of your regular bills reduced just by asking. You would also be surprised what you can do without, when properly motivated.

Budget Lesson #3 – This is where I explain how we deal with the non-monthly bills. That is, the bills that have to be paid, but are not due on a monthly basis. I also share the personal budget spreadsheet template I developed. I am working on a few sample templates to match various imaginary scenarios. If you’d like to be an anonymous case study, and get free help setting up a budget, let me know, please.

Budget Lesson #4 – In this lesson, I describe our “set-aside” funds for things that will need to be paid eventually, but not on a set schedule. Sometimes, they are never actually due. We set aside money for the parties we throw, for car repairs and for a number of other things. A few of these items are outright optional, but they are part of what makes life fun. You can’t make a budget without including some of the extras.

Budget Lesson #5 – This is the companion piece to lesson 2. Learn how I’ve reduced–or attempted to reduce–each of these bills. For the better part of two years, I called Dish Network every few months to ask for a discount. For almost 2 years, it was granted. Then one, day, they told me they were putting a note on our account to keep us from getting any more discounts, so I canceled. 100% discounts help us save more.

Budget Lesson #6 – This is the reduction companion to lesson 3. These bills are harder to reduce. Have you ever successfully gotten your property taxes lowered?

Budget Lesson #7 – This is the reduction companion to lesson 4. Notice a pattern, yet?

Budget Lesson #8 – Here, completely out of order, is the reduction companion to lesson 1. Watch as I magically reduce–or rationalize–our discretionary budget.

So, dear readers, what part of budgeting should I address next?

Medical Costs and Choices

Finance, Parenting

: Image via Wikipedia

I’m not a bad father.

Last spring, we noticed my son had a wandering eye. One of his eyes would just drift when he was looking at something. It was happening consistently, so we brought him to the eye doctor. After an exam, we found out that his eyes were 20/100. The doctor said that getting him classes may be enough to fix the wandering eye problem. The theory was that his eye was drifting because his eyes weren’t able to focus. Bringing the world into focus could have let his eyes train themselves to work right.

Nine months with glasses later, the problem hasn’t gone away, so we went back to the eye doctor.

He’s got alternating exotropia. His eyes aren’t working well together. One eye will focus, and the other will drift. So now we’re looking into vision therapists.

A friend went through something similar with his kid, so I asked him for the name of the doctor he used. He gave it to me and told me the clinic was the best in the business, and I would be paying for that. I asked about the cost and was handed the doctor’s spiel about how sad it is that parents focus more on the cost of care than getting the best possible care.

What a load of crap.

First of all, that’s a sales pitch. Of course the doctor is going to defend his prices. If his prices are exorbitant(I don’t have a basis for comparison) and he can’t defend them, people will go elsewhere. $3000 isn’t pocket change. That’s a significant chunk of change. Refusing to look at your options is irresponsible.

Second, price does not equal quality. There are a ton of things that are overpriced garbage. Not only do scam artists abound, but some legitimate things are are horribly overpriced at one location and reasonably priced at others. To stay on the vision theme, my $10 glasses are every bit as high quality as any $400 pair I’ve ever owned. The difference between generic and brand-name drugs? The label and the price. The FDA requires they be chemically identical to be sold. If you insist on the brand name because it’s “better”, you are flushing your money down the toilet. If you live by “you get what you pay for” you are guaranteed to get ripped off.

Third, balancing cost and treatment doesn’t mean I care less. Yes, I am killing my debt as fast as I can right now. Even when I was willing to use a credit card, I wouldn’t drop $3000 without considering my options. I have an entire family to consider, not one problem that my kid doesn’t even notice. Grr. I hate getting told–implicitly or otherwise–that I am a bad parent because I don’t choose to waste my money the way other people do. I’ll check out my options first, thank you.

Now, I will pay for the best when it is warranted. My wife wants Lasik and mentioned some sale some company was having. No. The guy sticking a laser and a scalpel in my eye will not be the lowest bidder. When I left the gene pool, I went to one of the top guys in the state for the procedure. When those things screw up, it’s permanent.

Vision therapy? Not so much. If it comes to surgery, we’ll go with the best. But it’s not there, yet. My kid is going to get a series of eye exercises, no matter where we go. Even if I go to some back alley vision therapist with a degree from a Nigeria U, what’s the worst case scenario? We may have to try someone else. Since I will be doing a bit more research than that, odds are better that my kid will get exactly the same therapy regimen for 1/4 of the cost. That’s the difference between a perfectly competent doctor and a perfectly competent doctor who convinced some trade magazine to write him up as the best in the business.

What do you think? Am I neglecting my kid by wanting to save some money for his braces, too?

Selling Your Home: For Sale by Owner

Finance

: Image by Casey Serin via Flickr

When you’re preparing to sell your home, your first instinct is often to rush straight to a realtor. There are benefits to using a trained real estate agent, but it isn’t always necessary.

The biggest motivation to skip the realtor is avoiding the fees, which can run as high as 7% or more in some places. What does that 7% get you?

First, it gets you experience. Realtors know which hoops you have to jump through, from both a legal and a marketing perspective. Do you need an inspection? How much of your stuff should you move to storage? Are you comfortable with high-dollar negotiations?

Time is another critical item in the fee. Do you have a minimum of an hour to dedicate to advertising and screening potential buyers? Every day? Do you have a flexible schedule to show your house at times convenient for the buyers?

The third element is access to the Multiple Listing Service(MLS), which lets other realtors see your home listing. There are alternative listing services you can use, but none are as widely know as MLS.

There are some good reasons to use a realtor, but none of that means you can’t sell your home yourself. FSBOs are done every day.

If you are nervous, your local community education program may have a course on selling your home yourself. These courses are usually very affordable.

Some tips:

Be objective about pricing. Look at the selling price of similar homes in the area, NOT what your dream price is or how much you have spent on improvements.
Always keep your home ready to show. Keep the dishes done, everything put away, and the floors mopped. The “lived-in” look will not help your house sell.
Keep track of the potential buyers. Put the name, address, phone number, and any identifying notes in a spreadsheet so you can follow up later if your house doesn’t sell.
A bid is not binding. Don’t stop advertising until you close on the sale.
Make a fact sheet and blank purchase agreement that potential buyers can take home.
Hire professionals where necessary: lawyers, inspectors, and closing agents.

Selling your home yourself can be intimidating, but it is a job you can tackle yourself for a significant savings. Would you try it?

BUYING LIFE INSURANCE ONLINE: THE PROS & CONS

Finance, Life

This is a guest post.

English: $10,000 life insurance policy for Pre... — English: $10,000 life insurance policy for President James A. Garfield, the twentieth President of the United States. Discovered in a family scrap album dating from the late 1800’s. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In today’s day and age, nearly everything that we do in our day-to-day lives can be done online and we’ve come to not only expect that, but somewhat rely on that convenience. Insurance, however, is kind of a grey area when it comes to online purchases – no matter what kind of insurance you’re purchasing. After all, an insurance policy is no small purchase; it’s major and can have a profound financial effect on your life, and the lives of your loved ones.

Think about it like this – how wary are you of even just making a small eBay purchase? Most of us look at the seller’s rating, read their feedback, and try to accurately gauge what the risk is compared to the reward. This same mentality should apply to making a life insurance policy online and is far more deserving of it. You can follow this link to learn more from Suncorp today.

This isn’t to say that making an online life insurance purchase can’t be beneficial; depending on your situation, it can be very beneficial, indeed. However, it is going to take substantially more research on your part to get to where an insurance agent might be able to get you, sometimes in half the time.

Pros of Buying Online

One of the most alluring reason for life insurance seekers to buy online are the prices, the comparing conveniences, and sometimes the lack of medical exam. There’s plenty of aggregator sites out there that can take a sampling from across the internet and return you a quote within a matter of seconds – how’s that for convenience?

Probably the most favored feature, though, is the comparison shopping. Once an aggregator provides you with a slew of options, with a wide variety of price points, you’re able to compare all of the details among them, quickly and easily. Something that would easily take your hours if you were having to do all of that research yourself, one by one.

At the minimalist level, though, you’ll often find that some individuals just truly feel more comfortable making insurance purchases from the comfort of their own home, without any agents or appointments. Either because these situations make them nervous, or because they simply don’t have the time to sit down with an agent.

Cons of Buying Online

One of the big ones revolves around the last “pro” that I mentioned – if you don’t have the time to sit down with an agent for a limited amount of time, and let them do all of the work from there, you certainly don’t have the time to handle all of the research that comes along with going through this process on your own.

Also, you shouldn’t always assume that shopping around yourself is going to save you money with it comes to life insurance – after all, life insurance agents have personal connections, favors to call in, and think-on-their-feet knowledge that might drum up an innovative solution; something that online aggregators can’t do.

Furthermore, building that one-on-one relationship with your life insurance agent can be incredibly beneficial. For one thing, you can have every last little thing that you don’t understand about the fine print thoroughly explained to you – this is a big one. Another thing is having such a relationship with you agent, that you can call them at any time, when anything comes up, or when you need sound financial advice. Try calling an aggregator and see if you get much beyond the auto-answering system – I assure you, it’ll be a challenge.

If You Do Decide to Buy Online…

Don’t Give Out all of your Personal Information – No matter what the insurer tells you, you don’t need to provide any crucial personal data just to obtain a quote.
Enlist the Service of an Aggregator that Can Give You a Wide Variety of Options – Comparing an insurer there and an insurer there, means very little actually. You need a plethora of results in order to make a decision that will best be tailored to your situation.
Don’t Get Swindled – Make sure that you’re getting the right information, from a reputable company, that doesn’t deal in the ole’ “Bait-and-Switch”; which refers to when crooked life insurance agents inflate your worth and buy you either a higher policy than requested, or even a different policy entirely – all for their commission!
Thoroughly Research all Potential Candidates – Obtain the financial rating of any establishment, online or otherwise, to find out more about the reputability of both.

Ignore Your Budget

Finance

For the first year of our journey out of debt, we had a strict budget, with all of our discretionary money spent out of an envelope system. We had an envelope for groceries, one for discretionary spending, one for clothes and one for baby crap. At the beginning of the month, we’d divide the money into the envelopes according to our budget spreadsheet. If we used a card for anything, we’d take a matching about of money out of the appropriate envelope and put it in a box to get reconciled the next month.

Ugh. Almost 2 years later, it has turned into too much work and too much nagging about everything either of us put on a card.

We decided to simplify the system a few months ago. Now, we still have a budget. It’s even a zero-based budget, but we ignore it. We only look at it if something changes for the worse. If something changes for the better, the extra money just gets automatically rolled into our debt snowball, so there’s no need to worry about updating the spreadsheet.

Instead of envelopes, we kind of eyeball it. We budget $450 per month for groceries, so we aim to spend $100 on our weekly grocery run. That leaves some room for losing track of how much we are putting in the cart, or a last minute addition to the list. It also leaves room for our secondary grocery trip to buy bread and milk later in the week. We do go through a lot of milk at my house. We budget $55 per month for diapers, but the deal we are currently getting with Amazon Mom is only costing us $30.79 for 6 weeks of diapers. We ignore the difference.

This—and our heavily automated bill pay and savings—lets us keep our finances on track, without stressing over every dollar or fighting over every little thing that comes home unplanned. I used to fire up Quicken and balance the checkbook every week. Now, that happens at the beginning of the month, usually. If I forget, it doesn’t matter. At the beginning of February, I balanced the checkbook for the first time in almost two months and we never came close to exercising our overdraft protection account. In fact, we had some extra, so that got sent directly to our debt.

Overall, it’s been good to test out a new system. We have almost no financial stress and managing our money takes about a couple of hours per month instead of per week. It’s all win.

Search Results for: ignore-your-budget/how-much-should-you-tip/medical-costs-and-choices/budget-lesson-part-1/selling-your-home-the-real-estate-agent