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Posted
May 06 2008, 03:29 PM
by
Karen Datko
If you don't want your house to sell, make sure it looks like some of the houses featured at snarky I Can't Sell My House, a blog that's essentially a pictorial history of our current housing woes. You know that look -- a Christmas tree still on the curb four months after the holiday season, an overgrown lawn, or a few grocery carts parked near the driveway. Inside, make sure buyers can immediately identify what kind of pet you have -- just by gently inhaling. If you really want to sell your house in this tough market, read The Wisdom Journal's "52 tips to make your home irresistible to buyers." Ron shares more than the obvious in this post.
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Posted
May 03 2008, 05:47 PM
by
Karen Datko
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Former baseball star Jose Canseco is walking away from his 7,300-square-foot mansion in a Los Angeles suburb. But did you know he's only the latest celebrity who has faced foreclosure? In fact, the Los Angeles Times blog L.A. Land has an occasional feature called "Celebrity Foreclosures," and so far has written about such notables as Canseco and Marion Jones. The most recent installment includes suggested headlines about Canseco like "Jose walks" and "Canseco took a walk, but was called out at home."
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Posted
May 01 2008, 12:49 PM
by
Karen Datko
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It used to be that if you wanted to buy a house, you simply talked to a lender. "This is nice, if you have an honest, unbiased broker," writes Jonathan at My Money Blog. "This is also how people got talked into 0% down, subprime adjustable-rate mortgages." If you are thinking about, saving for or on the verge of buying a house, we strongly recommend that you read Jonathan's two-part series on shopping for a mortgage. We've been through the house-buying process three times and wish we could have read these posts before we did.
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Posted
Apr 29 2008, 05:33 AM
by
Karen Datko
This post comes from partner blog Blueprint for Financial Prosperity. Back in the days of personal checks and monthly bills, "doing the bills" was an arduous task that took hours and hours. Back in the days of check registers and balancing a checkbook, doing the bills was like accounting lite. With the advent of online checking and electronic bill-payment systems, there isn't any logical reason why you should be spending an hour or two each month dealing with bills. By setting up your bill-payment details and conducting your transactions entirely online, you can add months to your life.
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Posted
Apr 28 2008, 04:47 AM
by
Karen Datko
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This post comes from J.D. Roth at partner blog Get Rich Slowly. I wasn't raised in a culture of saving. My parents never made it a habit, and so could not pass the skill on to me or my brothers. In fact, I didn't establish my first savings account until three years ago, when I was 36 years old. (I had a passbook savings account as a young boy, but it never had more than $5 in it.)
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Posted
Apr 25 2008, 03:55 PM
by
Karen Datko
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"Fox" at Squawkfox emptied her purse the other day, and it wasn't a pretty sight. Honestly, Fox, do you need to carry wadded-up paid and unpaid bills, expired coupons, chocolate and dental floss, not to mention mounds of makeup and assorted other girl things? "Are there things we should never carry in our purse or wallet?" she says. "Certainly, bringing bags of bills along with me every day is silly. But seriously, could a cluttered purse or wallet cost you if lost or stolen?" Oh yeah, and No. 1 among those things that should be left at home with the bills is your Social Security card.
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Posted
Apr 23 2008, 03:31 PM
by
Karen Datko
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Credit cards are about to get smarter. A story in BusinessWeek reports that MasterCard is about to introduce the inControl card for corporate clients, which will allow the boss to limit how, where and when employees use a company card on business trips. This has prompted one credit card expert to ask why the technology isn't being offered to regular consumers who have trouble controlling their credit card use but aren't willing to cut them into tiny pieces.
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Posted
Apr 17 2008, 02:58 PM
by
Karen Datko
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This guest post by "paidtwice" at I've Paid For This Twice Already won the personal-finance bloggers' March Madness competition hosted by Free Money Finance. I have had several questions lately about snowflaking -- what is it, why do I do it, can we see examples of it -- so I thought I would write a quick primer answering those questions and more.
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Posted
Apr 16 2008, 06:43 AM
by
Karen Datko
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This post comes from partner blog The Dough Roller. As much good as he does, Dave Ramsey drives me nuts with his extreme views on debt. Ramsey, as he readily admits, did some really stupid things with debt. Leveraged to the hilt on bad real estate deals, he went bust in a way most of us could never imagine. As a real estate investor, my leverage and borrowing comes nowhere near the toxic level Ramsey went to. Why? Because Ramsey's personality is one of extremes. Much like an alcoholic, he could not control his use of debt. He got one taste of that leverage, and he was borrowing before noon ever day. Dave Ramsey is a recovering debtaholic Now he is a recovering debtaholic. Like a recovering alcoholic, he should never borrow again. Why? He just can't handle it. Put Ramsey and debt together, and something really ugly develops. OK, fine. But why should that apply to all of us? It's as if a recovering alcoholic were telling the rest of the world never to have a glass of wine. In other words, what works and doesn't work for Ramsey may not apply to everybody else. Of course, there are those who, like Dave, can't control debt and should avoid it just like he does. But debt, if used wisely, can greatly improve your finances, can increase your financial freedom in the long run, and can greatly improve your balance sheet.
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Posted
Apr 09 2008, 12:55 PM
by
Karen Datko
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Seb at Pinching Copper apparently said aloud what other people have been thinking when he wrote "There are no victims in the housing bust." He's tired of all the media stories about "innocent" people who suddenly find out that they can no longer afford their homes. "So who do you blame in all this?" Seb wrote. "The bank that approved the loan? The TV show that pumped homeownership? The Realtor who sold the house? In the end, the only person to blame is the one who signed the mortgage document. "The media can portray these people as victims, but the sad truth is that the vast majority of people who are being foreclosed upon could never afford a home to begin worth," Seb said.
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