Hunting Happiness

SomeGal and I took a vacation last week and had a horrendous car rental experience.  We arrived after midnight and there were two counters open and seven or eight in line in front of us.  An hour later, we finally got up to the counter and then had another 10-20 minutes despite having a reservation.  […]

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CNN has an interesting article about myths that purport to but don’t actually save gas.  Much of it is “borrowed” from this Consumer Reports article.

Filling up in the morning.  The theory is that the metering mechanism in pumps is calibrated for around 70F and temperatures in the morning have been lower overnight and therefore the […]

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Money Under Thirty is hosting the Carnival of Personal Finance this week and was kind enough to include some of my posts on Real Estate.

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Borders has a decent credit card offer through VISA.  It includes a free $20 card and 1,000 free points.  Purchases of $1 at it and affiliated stores earns 3 points, gas and groceries earns 2, and everything else earns 1.  There is no limit on points earned.

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It is hard to read or listen to any news without gloomy proclamations that prices are spiraling out of control on essential items like gas and groceries. Stories abound telling of families unable to buy sufficient groceries, or having to cut back hugely on driving.
Rather than look at prices for essentials, I […]

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I have written a couple posts about our first foray into real estate investment. The first post details the reasons we did it and will continue to, and gives some hard numbers.  The second post details some of the gotchas and surprises.  Overall the results are very positive, increasing our net worth by $25-30K. […]

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CNN Money has a story about America and the potential recession we’re in. A recent poll shows 79% of Americans believe we’re in a recession now. It goes on to given the correct correct definition of recession as determined by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) which I highlighted in my post […]

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I posted many details of our first investment property and getting a lease-option tenant placed in a generally positive article here. But it wasn’t all fun and games; there were some negative issues that had to be dealt with as well. Some of them are probably obvious and others not. […]

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We have our first investment property now officially done. A family moved in on a three year lease-option program. We took a lot of cues from Scott Frank and Andy Heller’s “Buy Low, Rent Smart, Sell High”.
The family is pretty much the ideal tenant both from the book and in common […]

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