Category: Investing

My Best Advice for New Home Buyers

I am absolutely in love with the house I live in…most of the time at least. There have been things I never realized I’d love so much and others that I wish I would have considered more thoroughly.  Right now we’re planning to live here for quite some time, but I still wonder if we would do things differently if we had the opportunity to turn back time.

Hindsight is always 20/20 though, so in reality I’m lucky we had such great advice going into our purchase.  If it hadn’t been for our parents and a great realtor, God only knows where we’d be living.  So for those of you about to make this huge decision, here’s my best advice and some important things to consider:

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The Life-Changing Power of Goal Setting

I know this sounds ridiculously corny, so I’m hesitant to even write an entire post about it, but I’m telling you – this one simple activity is how my husband and I have (and are) achieving all of our dreams in record timing.  It’s why I’m able to stay at home with my son, how we bought two investment properties, are learning a second language, have spent our summer traveling, have become vegan, the list goes on and on…

So here’s the really simplistic, dumbed-down gist of how we’ve made it all happen:  Every few months (if we’re lucky, weeks), we sit down and formally Goal Set.  I’m emphasizing formally and capitalizing Goal Set on purpose – it’s that big of a deal and that big of an event for us…it’s better than a date night (actually, we love it so much that it basically is a date night). But most importantly, it consistently and reliably always works – sometimes it’s scary how much so.

So here’s what we do, and how you can (and should) do it too:

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7 Important Reasons to Pay Off Your Mortgage

Why Paying Off the Mortgage is Important

For the most part, the classic American dream includes home ownership. A comfortable job, a vacation once a year, and a place to call home. What’s funny is that the vast majority of us are relying on 30-year mortgages to “own” our homes…but no one ever talks about the reasons to pay off your mortgage early.

So, in some sense, we really aren’t owning our homes – we just feel like we are. And it’s so commonplace to have a mortgage that nobody really second-guesses it.

To be fair, there are some benefits of having a mortgage. But does that really mean that it’s a good idea for everyone? Should it be the norm?

I’m not convinced. Here are some of the biggest reasons to pay off your mortgage early (and why we’re doing it):

Related post: How to Pay Off the Mortgage Early

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How We Bought Our First Investment Property

Investing in real estate is an amazing way to diversify your portfolio and ironically it is much easier than most people think.  In this day and age it can be nearly impossible to build wealth from a paycheck alone, so most of us need to think outside of the (career) box if we really want to live the comfortable lifestyle that we all dream of.

My husband and I purchased our first investment property 3 years ago and it was one of the best decisions we ever made.

We rarely even think about it nowadays, yet it is still making money for us behind the scenes.  We aren’t handy-types or real estate experts, yet it still was a great investment choice.  I

t is honestly something that anyone can do, as long as you make smart decisions in the beginning.

So here’s what we did to buy our first investment property:

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6 Reasons You Should NOT Pay Off Your Mortgage

I recently wrote about some quick and easy ways to pay off your mortgage early, but talking to everyone about that made me realize one important thing – there are some really good reasons to NOT pay off the mortgage too.

In fact, for some people paying off the mortgage may do more harm than good.  And for lots of people hanging onto the mortgage may actually help to grow their bottom line.

Here’s why:

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8 Different Ways to Cut $100 in Expenses Every Month

One of the best ways to build wealth quickly is to find big ways to save every single month. Check out this list to see if any would be easy for you!

Recently, I wrote about the plan my husband and I have to pay off our mortgage in the next 10 years.  Hearing all of your comments and ideas got me sooooo excited that I started thinking about how we could get it paid off in 5 years instead of 10.  So we started talking about all the different ways we could convert some of our expenses into making larger principal payments – easy ways that would at least cut $100 in expenses each month.

Well, we came up with some pretty exciting ideas! Here’s what we’ve got:


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