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5 Reasons Why I Splurge On Travel

Misc

A street in Trinidad, Cuba. Trinidad has been ...
Image via Wikipedia

Guest Post Author Bio: Miss T blogs at Prairie EcoThrifter. She grew up in the Canadian prairies and still lives there today. She is passionate about saving money, being healthy, looking out for our environment, and most of all having fun. Her blog shares tips on how you too can live a green, debt free, and fun life.

This week I am participating in a Yakezie blog swap where I am to answer the question ” Name a time when you splurged and were glad you did.” I had to seriously think about this for a minute and then it came to me. What do I consistently spend my money on that brings me the most enjoyment? Answer: Travel.

To say I love to travel would be an understatement. Travel for me is a life changing experience that I desire to re-live over and over again. I can think of a million reasons why I love to travel, but I thought I would boil it down to five.

1. Learn about myself. When I travel I gain a deeper understanding of myself and the world in general. Much of the experience is dependent on how different the environment is from what I am used to. When I traveled to Europe the first time, I got to try some different food and see how great it was to have a siesta in the middle of the day, but the transition was relatively painless. When I traveled to Central America last year for my honeymoon, I was a lot more out of my comfort zone. I was sleeping with tarantulas and geckos and trying food I couldn’t even pronounce. Plus, I couldn’t speak the language.

When I am in this kind of situation, I encounter things that I have never encountered before. I am forced to be on the alert because I don’t have any prior knowledge to rely on. Since everything is new, I am automatically forced to try to make sense of it all.

For many of us we have never really looked inside ourselves and examined what we are made of. When we are somewhere new, we have nowhere to hide. This is the point where you become really intimate with the ideas you have of yourself, of your ego, of life, which you may have been really identified to, and derived your sense of self from.

Your ego is essentially your self image; it’s the persona you display to society. Your ego survives only by constantly seeking approval from that which it wants to identify with. This is the society you are raised in. What happens when your family, friends, and your typical environment is not there to reinforce the ideas you have of your self? You ego becomes shaky; it starts to lose it’s hold on you. By traveling to the unknown, your ego falls apart and the true you is given the chance to emerge.

You begin to challenge and question everything you have ever believed. If you can be brave and not run away and use this as way to grow, you will see that all your beliefs belong to society and that they were never really yours to begin with. This can be extremely scary, liberating, nauseating and a million other things all at the same time.

I remember going through this very process when I traveled to Cuba. I knew intellectually that there were people in this world that weren’t as fortunate as me, but I was never able to fully understand that until I saw how some people lived in Cuba. I couldn’t help but reflect on what it would be like to never be able to own a home because the government owned everything and personal freedom didn’t exist. I wondered what it would be like to be so poor that I would have to walk around grimy city streets barefoot because I couldn’t afford shoes and it wouldn’t matter how many cuts I would get from broken glass because I had to get myself to work everyday on foot. That trip really shattered my ego and my mental models and when I arrived back home, I approached my own life very differently.

2. To do what I love. Interestingly, there are very few other areas of my life where I feel more at home and happy then when I am traveling. I really enjoy experiencing the unknown and all of the possibilities it has to offer. I guess I feel totally free; free from obligation and expectation. I am able to explore on my own terms and be who I want to be without negative consequences. When I am planning a trip, my excitement consumes me. I can’t help but wonder; what am I going to see? Who am I going to meet? What am I going to learn?

3. Re-live my youth. Unlike many of my peers, I skipped the university experience. When I graduated high school I went straight to working full time at my family’s business. It wasn’t until later in my life that I went back to university and got an education and got the job that I have now. I never had the opportunity to have 4 months off for 4 years and travel when I was younger. I was too focused on making money and buying my first house. I wanted to be an adult as fast I could.

Traveling now allows me to capture some of those stolen moments. The best thing is I have more money and resources behind me now so I can travel without incurring debt and causing financial strain which would have happened if I had done it in my younger days. I also have a partner to travel with, my husband, which allows us to grow and experience with each other by our side.

4. Redefine my boundaries. Being in a completely different environment than what I am used to excites me. I am somehow willing to try anything, regardless of what the consequences can be. When I was in Europe for the first time, I decided to try para-gliding in Austria. It was an amazing experience. However, if you would have asked me when I was still at home if it would run off of a mountain and free fall to the ground, I would probably have said “no way”. Being somewhere different allowed me to push my boundaries and cast my fears aside. Not only was it liberating and a ton of fun but it has made me push myself harder and further in other areas of my life which has only led to success.

5. Enhance my education. Learning through textbooks is not the same as learning hands on. I much prefer learning through experience. I find I never forget what I experience whereas I can forget what I have read.

Traveling allows me to enhance my education of the world around me through experience. I get to see first hand how something is made or used, or taste a food that I have never heard about before. I get to experience history by walking through castles and basilicas instead of reading about it or watching a documentary on TV. I get to discover the world for what it is first hand instead of through someone else’s eyes. I am able to learn about something honestly instead of through a tainted image painted by someone else.

The knowledge I have gained through my travels to date has enhanced my life and opportunities in so many ways. I have never learned something that hasn’t proven useful.

Travel isn’t cheap and to many is viewed as a luxury but to me it is something worth splurging on from one year to the next. The personal gains I get from my investment are invaluable!

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Money Problems – Day 1: Setting Goals

Finance

Today, I am starting a series, Money Problems: 30 Days to Perfect Finances.   The series will consist of 30 things you can do in one setting to perfect your finances.  It’s not a system to magically make your debt disappear.  Instead, it is a path to understanding where you are, where you want to be, and–most importantly–how to bridge the gap.

I’m not going to run the series in 30 consecutive days.  That’s not my schedule.  Also, I think that talking about the same thing for 30 days straight will bore both of us.   Instead, it will run roughly once a week.  To make sure you don’t miss a post, please take a moment to subscribe, either by email or rss.

In this, the first installment, we’re going to talk about goals.

First, we’re going to ask 3 questions.

  1. What is your financial goal?
  2. Why?
  3. How can you get there?

The first question is “What is your goal?” Of course, in this series, on this site, we’re only going to be addressing your financial goals.  Losing 300 pounds, growing wings, and flying to the moon may be an admirable goal, but it’s considerably outside of the scope of this project.

So, what is your financial goal?  Do you want to retire a millionaire, or become financially independent?  Do you want to pay off your debt, or save enough money to see the world?  Do you want to learn how to retire by 40?

Your goal does not matter…to anyone but you.  To you, though, it is terribly important.  Without a goal, how can you measure you progress and see what you have accomplished?  It’s easy to get frustrated and give up when you can’t look back and see what successes you have actually accumulated.

Whatever your goal, you have to do two things:

  1. Don’t let anyone tell you it is stupid or impossible.    There is a quote that I can’t find attribution for, other than as an old Chinese proverb: “Those that say it can’t be done should get out of the way of those doing it.”
  2. Write it down and hang it up.  This lets you see your goal every day.  It will be impossible to forget and difficult to ignore.  I have Dave Ramsey‘s Baby Steps hanging on my refrigerator where I see it a dozen times per day.

The second major question to ask yourself is “Why?”  Why is this goal important to you?  Why do you care?

If you can’t answer that, it’s time to sit back and think about it for a while.  Without a solid reason to succeed, you’ll lose motivation and fail.   Are you getting out of debt to give yourself a secure retirement?  Do you want to save to travel the world because you’ve been dreaming about it since you were in diapers?  Do you simply want to provide a secure future for your family?   Whatever your reason, it is–and should be–uniquely yours.

The third and final question is “How can you make it happen?”  That question has an extremely simple answer: read the rest of the series.

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Making Extra Money Part 3: Product Selection

Finance

When you’re setting up a niche site, you need to monetize it.  You need to have a way to make money, or it’s a waste of time.

There are two main ways to do that:  AdSense or product promotion.   To set up an AdSense site, you write a bunch of articles, post them on a website with some Google ads, and wait for the money to roll in.

I don’t do that.

I don’t own a single AdSense site and have never set one up.  This article is not about setting up an Adsense site.

My niches site are all product-promotion sites.  I pick a product–generally an e-book or video course–and set up a site dedicated to it.

Naturally, picking a good product is an important part of the equation.

The most important part of product selection is that the product has an affiliate program. Without that, there’s no money to be made.     There are a lot of places to find affiliate programs.     Here are a few:

  • Amazon.   If you don’t live in one of the states that Amazon has dropped in retaliation for passing laws that attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court’s ruling on collecting sales tax, you can sign up as an associate and collect a commission on every referral you send that turns into a purchase.   That means you have a lot of product to choose from.   Unfortunately, your commission is small, so you need to promote fairly expensive products to get a decent return.   On the other hand, people trust Amazon, so that’s one less hurdle to making a sale.
  • Commission Junction.   These are the people managing affiliate programs for a large number of credit cards and banks.  If you’ve opened an account with INGDirect through one of my links, I got a commission for the referral. (Thank you!)   They have a lot of other products, too.
  • e-Junkie.  This one is a popular distribution system for bloggers.   It’s likely that, if you’ve bought an ebook from a blogger, e-Junkie handled the fulfillment process.   A lot of the products available there have an affiliate program, but that is up to the owner of the product.
  • ClickBank.  My favorite.   This is one of the largest affiliate networks specializing in electronic products, whether that’s membership sites, ebooks, or video courses.   Commissions are good, often 50-75%.   They also offer a 60 day guarantee of every product sold through their site, which helps soothe the wary customer.  This is the site I’ll be using for this series.

The first thing you need to do is sign up for whichever program you intend to use.

If you’re not going with Clickbank, feel free to skip ahead to the section on keyword research.

Once you are signed up and logged in, click on the “Marketplace” link at the top of the screen.

Clickbank

From here, it’s just a matter of finding a good product to sell.   Here are the niches we’re going to be looking for:

  • Back pain
  • Bankruptcy
  • Conflict resolution at work
  • Detox diets
  • Fat kids
  • Foreclosure avoidance
  • Job hunting
  • Weddings
  • Writing sales copy

I’m going to look for one or two good products in each niche.  When that’s done we’ll narrow it down by consumer demand.

For now, go to advanced search.

CBSearch

Enter your keyword, pick the category and set the advanced search stats.     Gravity is the number of affiliates who have made sales in the last month.  I don’t like super-high numbers, but I also want to make sure that the item is sellable.  Over 10 and under 50 or so seems to be a good balance.

The average sale just ensures that I’ll make a decent amount of money when someone buys the product.   I usually aim for $25 or more in commissions per sale.  Also, further down, check the affiliate tools box.    That means the seller will have some resources for you to use.

This combination will give us 36 products to check out for back pain, unfortunately, none of the results are for back pain products.    After unchecking the affiliate tools and setting the gravity to greater than 1,  I’ve got 211 results.    Sorting by keyword relevance, I see three products, two of which look like something I’d be interested in promoting.   One has a 45% commission, the other is 55%.  The X-Pain Method has an initial commission of $34 and claims a 5% refund rate.   Back Pain, Sciatica, and Bulging Disc Relief pays $16, which will make it a potentially easier sale.  I’ll add both to the list for further research.

I’m not going to detail the search for the rest of the niches.  That would be repetitive.  You can see my selections here:

Now we’re going to go through a few steps for each of these products.

The Sales Page

We need to make sure the sales page doesn’t suck.    If the site doesn’t work, is hard to read or navigate, has a hard-to-find order button, or just doesn’t look professional, it’s getting cut.

  • Raw Foods is eliminated.  The sales video is horrible and the order link is at the bottom of several screens worth of nothing.  It’s a crap site.
  • The 7 day foreclosure-avoidance product is out.  Site’s down today.  I want reliability.
  • Management Training By The Book is out.  I don’t like typos on the sales page, especially in the page title.

The Email List

If it has an email subscription form, we’ll need to subscribe, then double-check to make sure our affiliate information isn’t getting dropped in the emails.   If it is, the seller is effectively stealing commissions.  In the interest of time and laziness, I’m going to eliminate anyone pushing for an email subscription.  It’s harder–and time-consuming–to monitor that.  On of my niche site had a seller completely drop their product.  Instead, they pushed for email subscriptions so they could promote other products as an affiliate.  Absolutely unethical.

  • Wedding speeches is eliminated for  throwing a mandatory email entry into the order process.  There’s no guarantee they are up to anything shady, but I’m taking the simple route.

Checkout and Credit

Finally, we’re going to visit the checkout page.  You need to do this from every links in the newsletter and the links on the sales page, just to make sure you’ll get your money.

The way to tell who’s being credited is to look at the bottom of the order page, under the payment information.   It should say [affiliate = xxx] where xxxis your ClickBank ID.   Anything else, and the product gets cut from the list.

When you are checking these, don’t click on every possible link at once.  That confuses the cookies. Do one at a time.  I tried to do it in one batch for this post and lost half of the cookies.  If it weren’t for the fact that I already own one of the products and bought it through my own link and got credited, I would have been talking undeserved trash about thieving companies.

Other Factors

Sometimes, when you’re examining a product, it just doesn’t feel right.  When that happens, drop it.  There are millions of other products you can promote.   In this case, I’m dropping the anger management program because, in my experience, angry people don’t think they are the problem.  Here’s a life tip:  If everyone else is a jerk, the problem probably isn’t everyone else.

  • Another important factor is the sales page itself.  If it doesn’t make you want to buy the product, why would anyone else?
  • Amazing Cover Letters is eliminated because it’s too easy to overlook the buy link.  If I have to hunt for it, it’s losing customers.
  • Amazing Wedding Planning is getting eliminated because I don’t like the sales page.  The buy link is easy to overlook, and it doesn’t compel me to buy.

Now we’re down to 10 products in 6 niches.    At this point, we’re comfortable with the sales pages and we know that they are crediting commissions.   As it stands right now, all of the products are worth promoting.

We’ll make the final determination after doing some heavy keyword research in the next installment.   That’s where we’ll find out how hard it is to compete.

Any questions?

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How to Have a Perfect Life

Life

A few years ago, my wife and I were discussing life improvement, the options in front of us, and our future goals. She said she felt trapped by the scope of our goals and didn’t know where to start. That led to a discussion on

goal
goal (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)

achieving our goals, which led to this.

Examine your life. Take stock of every aspect of your life. What pleases you? What upsets you? What do you do that adds no value to your life?  Or worse, removes value?  What do you do that adds the most value? What would you like to change? Eliminate? Improve? Count the small things. Nothing is insignificant. Write it all down and be specific.

Analyze your list. Are there any obvious patterns? Is there a single thread that is making you miserable or affecting multiple other items? Would eliminating 1 factor improve 90% of the rest? Is there a bad job or a toxic relationship ruining your happiness? Be honest and be critical.

What are your dreams? Where would you like to be in six months? A year? 5? 10? How would you like to retire? When? Write it all down. This is now your life plan.

Set goals. Set concrete, definable goals. Set goals that have an obvious success point. When you reach your goal, you want to be able to point it out. “Lose weight” is not a goal. “Lose 50 pounds in the next year” is a measurable, definable, concrete goal. Set incremental goals to reach your larger goals and, more importantly, your dreams.

Here’s an example:

Dream: Retire at 50.

  • Incremental Goal: Get a 10% raise within 6 months
  • Incremental Goal: Eliminate debt within 3 years
  • Incremental Goal: Max out 401k contribution
  • Incremental goal: Save 150,000 within 10 years
  • Incremental Goal: Save 45k each year after that.
  • Retire

When you are setting up your goal plan, make sure to include the analyzed items mentioned earlier. These are the things that will make today happier for you.

Now, you have examined your life. You have analyzed the results. You’ve gathered your dreams and compiled a goal plan based on your hopes, dreams, goals and desires. What’s next?

We’re going to take a page from David Allen. It’s time to Get Things Done. What do you have to do next to reach your goals? What is the next step? Don’t let yourself be overwhelmed by the scope of the entire list. Select one single item from your plan and look for the one single next step to make on the path to that goal.

Going back to the retirement goal plan, the next step towards a 10% raise could be researching salaries for your job description in your area to give you ammunition in the meeting with your boss. It could be updating your resume to hunt for a better paying job, or even just studying up on some resume tips.

If you want to run a marathon next year, the next step is to start walking every day to train your body.

If you want to improve communication with your spouse, the next step is probably to let her know.

If you want to eliminate debt, the next step may be setting up a budget or canceling unnecessary services like cable.

Every goal has a path leading to it. If that’s not true, you haven’t defined a concrete measurable goal.

Examine your life. Analyze your situation. Know WHAT you want. Know what you want to change. Set goals to get there, one step at a time. Take a single step towards your goals.

Then take another.

What are you doing to reach your goals and improve your life?

Make Extra Money, Part 6: Setting Up a Site

Business, Finance

In this installment of the Make Extra Money series, I’m going to show you how to set up a WordPress site.   I’m going to show you exactly what settings, plugins, and themes I use.   I’m not going to get into writing posts today.  That will be next time.

I use WordPress because it makes it easy to develop good-looking sites quickly.   You don’t have to know html or any programming.   I will be walking through the exact process using Hostgator, but most hosting plans use CPanel, so the instructions will be close.  If not, just follow WordPress’s 5 minute installation guide.

Installing WordPress

Assuming you can follow along with me, log in to your hosting account and find the section of your control panel labeled “Software/Service”.  Click “Fantastico De Luxe”.

Fantastico

On the Fantastico screen, click WordPress, then “New Installation”.

Install WordPress

On the next screen, select your domain name, then enter all of the details: admin username, password, site name, and site description.  If you’ll remember, I bought the domain  http://www.masterweddingplanning.net.   I chose the site name of “Master Wedding Planning” and a description of “Everything You Need to Know to Plan Your Wedding”.

Click “install”, then “finish installation”.   The final screen will contain a link to the admin page, in this case, masterweddingplanning.net/wp-admin.  Go there and log in.

Configuring WordPress

After you log in, if there is a message at the top of the screen telling you to update, do so.   Keeping your site updated is the best way to avoid getting hacked.  Click “Please update now” then “Update automatically”.  Don’t worry about backing up, yet.  We haven’t done anything worth saving.

Next, click “Settings” on the left.  Under General Settings, put the www in the WordPress and site URLs.  Click save, then log back in.

Click Posts, then Categories.  Under “Add New Category”, create one called “Misc” and click save.

Click Appearance.  This brings you to the themes page.   Click “Install Themes” and search for one you like.   I normally use Headway, but before I bought that, I used SimpleX almost exclusively.   Your goal is to have a simple theme that’s easy to maintain and easy to read.  Bells and whistles are a distraction.

Install a theme

Click “Install”, “Install now”, and “Activate”.  You now have a very basic WordPress site.

Plugins

A plugin is an independent piece of software to make independent bits of WordPress magic happen.   To install the perfect set of plugins, click Plugins on the left.    Delete “Hello Dolly”, then click “Add new”.

In the search box, enter “plugin central” and click “Search plugins”.    Plugin Central should be the first plugin in the list, so click “install”, then “ok”, then “activate plugin”.  Congratulations, you’ve just installed your first plugin.

Now, on the left, you’ll see “Plugin Central” under Plugins.  Click it.  In the Easy Plugin Installation box, copy and paste the following:

 All in One SEO Pack
 Contact Form 7
 WordPress Database Backup
 SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2
 WP Super Cache
 Conditional CAPTCHA for WordPress
 date exclusion seo
 WP Policies
 Pretty Link Lite
 google xml sitemaps
 Jetpack by WordPress.com


Click “install”.


On the left, click “Installed Plugins”.   On the next screen, click the box next to “Plugins”, then select “Activate” from the dropdown and click apply.


Activate plugins


Still under Plugins, click “Akismet Configuration”.  Enter your  API key and hit “update options”.  You probably don’t have one, so click “get your key”.


Tools


The only tool I worry about is the backup.   It’s super-easy to set up.   Click “Tools”, then “Backup”.  Backup


Scroll down to “Schedule Backups”, select weekly, make sure it’s set to a good email address and click “Schedule Backup”.   I only save weekly because we won’t be adding daily content.  Weekly is safe enough, without filling up your email inbox.


Settings


There are a lot of settings we’re going to set.   This is going to make the site more usable and help the search engines find your site.  We’re going to go right down the list.   If you see a section that I don’t mention, it’s because the defaults are good enough.


Writing


Set the Default Post Category to “Misc”.


Visit this page and copy the entire list into “Update Service” box.   This will make the site ping a few dozen services every time you publish a post.   It’s a fast way to get each post indexed by Google.


Click “Save Changes”.


Discussion


Uncheck everything under “Email me whenever…” and hit save.   This lets people submit comments, without actually posting the comments or emailing me when they do so.  Every once in a while, I go manually approve the comments, but I don’t make it a priority.


Permalinks


Select “Custom structure” and enter this: /%postname%/


Click save.


All in One SEO


Set the status to “Enabled”, then fill out the site title and description.  Keep the description to about 160 characters.  This is what builds the blurb that shows up by the link when you site shows up in Google’s results.


Check the boxes for “Use categories for META keywords” and “Use noindex for tag archives”.


Click “Update Options”.


Date Exlusion SEO


Check the boxes to remove each of the dates and set the alt text to “purpose” or something.   This will suppress the date so your posts won’t look obsolete.


Hide Dates


SEO Search Terms 2


This plugin reinforces the searches that bring people to your site.   It’s kind of neat.  Skip the registration, accept the defaults and hit save.


WP Policies


Scroll to the bottom and click import.  We’ll come back to this.


WP Super Cache


Select “Caching On” and hit save.


JetPack


Across the top of the screen should be a giant banner telling you to connect to WordPress.com and set up Jetpack.  You’ll need an account on WordPress.com, so go there and set one up.   After authorizing the site, you’ll be brought back to the Jetpack configuration screen.   Click “Configure” under “WordPress.com Stats”.  Take the defaults and hit save.


Contact


On the contact configuration page, copy the code in the top section.  You’ll need this in a moment.


Contact form code


Pages


Now, we going to create a couple of static pages.   On the left, click “Pages”, then “Add new”.


Name the first page “Contact” and put the contact form code in the body of the page.  Hit publish.


Menus


Under Appearance, click “Menu”.   Enter a menu name and hit save.


Then, under “Pages”, click the box next to “Contact”, “Disclaimer”, and any other policies you’d like to display.  Hit save.


Widgets


Also under Appearance, click “Widgets”.   This is where you’ll select what will display in the sidebar.   All you have to do is drag the boxes you want from the middle of the page to the widget bar on the right.   I recommend Text, Search, Recent Posts, Popular Search Terms and Tag Cloud.  In the text box, just put some placeholder text in it, like “Product will go here”.   We’ll address this next time.


Posts


We’re not going to worry about getting posts in place, yet.    That will be the next installment.  However, the steps in the next installment could take 2 weeks to implement, and we want Google to start paying attention now.  To make that happen, we need to get a little bit of content in place.   This won’t be permanent content.  It’s only there so Google has something to see when it comes crawling.


To get this temporary, yet legal content, I use eZineArticles.  Just go search for something in your niche that doesn’t look too spammy.


Then, click “Posts”, then delete the “Hello World” post.  Click “Add new”.   Copy the eZine article, being sure to include the author box at the bottom, and hit publish.


To see your changes, you may have to go to Settings, then WP Cache and delete the cache so your site will refresh.


Congratulations!  You now have a niche blog with content.   It’s not ready to make you any money, yet, but it is ready for Google to start paying attention.    In the next installment, I’ll show you how I get real unique content and set it up so Google keeps coming back to show me the love.


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It’s Better to Buy a House than Rent


Finance
This guest post is brought to you by Lender411.com.


The debate is ongoing about whether it’s better to rent a home or buy one.  Which is best?


To start, identify your goals.  This includes short-term goals and long-term goals—anything relevant to your living situation or your finances.  Are you someone who likes to move around and explore new areas, or have you put down strong roots in a specific location?  Are you planning to raise a family?  Is that family going to grow over the years?  Do you plan to build up wealth?  Are you aiming to retire a few years early?  Work these things out as best you can.  You need to know where you’re headed.


Beyond these life considerations, there are some specific facts about homeownership that typically make buying a house a better choice than renting one indefinitely.  Specifically, you’ll save money in the long run if you buy a house.  Studies have shown that if you plan to remain in a residence longer than five years, you’re better off buying than renting.  Here’s why.


Equity.  When you own a house, every dollar you put toward paying off the principal of your mortgage is actually going right back to your pocket in the long run.  A house itself is an investment—it is a thing that holds value and, in fact, often gains value over time.  It’s almost like a savings account.  When you put money into a savings account, it stays there.  Sure, you don’t exactly have access to the money, but it’s still there and, in the long run, it’s still yours.  You don’t gain this value when you’re renting a piece of property.  The money you pay out is simply gone.


Value.  As mentioned above, a house, like any other financial instrument or investment, can actually increase in value over time without any effort on your part.  Sometime property values just go up.  Historically, in fact, just about all property gains value in the long run—often significant value.  Real estate is a very popular form of investment even separate from the fact that it provides your family with a place to live.  Even with a mortgage, the ultimate return you can get for your money is typically very good, especially if you’re able to find the best mortgage rates when you enter the loan.  Renting doesn’t give you this opportunity to someday capture increasing property value.


Stability.  One of the most appealing perks of home ownership is the consistency of payments month to month.  If you have a fixed rate mortgage, your monthly payment is locked in at a certain amount for the next thirty years or so.  This can be extremely comforting for some people and extremely helpful when it comes to budgeting long-term.  When renting, prices may fluctuate from lease to lease, or you may move from one place to another and constantly have to readjust your budget and lifestyle.  Also, mortgage payments on a house will, at some point, end.  When those thirty years are up, chances are you won’t need to make any payments toward your house beyond property taxes from then on.  Renting, however, never ends.  You’ll never truly have a place of your own.


Despite the strength of these three facts in favor of home ownership over renting, the choice is ultimately one that must be made by individuals and families.  Everyone has different long-term goals, and those goals must be identified first.  But make the decision wisely.  From a financial perspective, home ownership is the better of the two options long-term.


Update:  I just realized I didn’t include the link to the Festival of Frugality that included this post.  That’s fixed.