Jul 8, 2012
Today we’ve got a guest post from the esteemed Mustachian known as Arebelspy, who is also a Moderator over on the Money Mustache Forum. Since we’re both passionate about this particular idea, the article became a bit of a collaboration between Arebelspy and MMM. Mustachianism Can’t Work, Or I’d Have Heard Of It Before! There’s a…
Back in November, I read an article in the Economist with the tagline “House of Horrors: the bursting of the global housing bubble is only halfway through”. I usually pay close attention when the Economist calls a bubble, because unlike the daily rollercoaster of stock cheerleading and fear you read in most US newspapers, the…
It’s time to tie up some loose ends in my reporting to you about the Foreclosure Project. In the previous article, I mentioned that we had rushed to finish the interior work as the house got snapped up by an eager family for a late December move-in. I posted some hasty photos from the few…
Since the last update in this series, there has been a certain amount of drama on our latest road to Real Estate Riches. There’s always drama when you buy a house, because relatively large sums of money are involved, and the sale involves a large number of people working together. A buyer and seller, real…
While we were all sitting around anticipating the upcoming closing on the bank-owned house down the street, a comment came in on that first article in the series. A guy named Joe told us this: “This house is cash flow negative with 100% financing (and the many issues you are ignoring like maintenance/repairs, vacancy,…
You and I are about to embark upon an adventure together over the next few months! Have you ever wondered what is involved in buying a bank-owned home at a massive discount, renovating it back into nice condition, and then selling or renting it out at a highly profitable rate? Well, a friend and I…
As dedicated MMM readers already know, I have fiddled around a bit with rental property ownership over the past six years. In that first article linked above, I had a somewhat neutral view on the practice, figuring it was definitely good money, but it took real work to get it. But I’ve been noticing an interesting trend in recent…
A little-known fact about the MMM household is that Mrs. M. actually holds a real estate license. She got this a few years ago as a way to help us both explore our shared interest in houses (buying, selling, renting), and as a way to help a few customers to find homes in our area…
We’re diving into a fundamentally new field here – the field of actually increasing your income, which is quite different from the cutting your spending I usually advocate. For most people, the cutting works much better because they already have a shortage of free time, and a surplus of income compared to what is actually…
So far, I’ve complained about the excessive spending we do on cars, driving, gifts, cable TV, electricity.. all without even mentioning housing. Why? Housing is the biggest expense for most people, and there are some retirement/frugality/simple living blogs out there that advise you to live in an absolutely minimal house or even an RV. It…
“I drive a pickup truck because it’s comfortable and sometimes I need to haul things on the weekend” “There’s nothing in the fridge right now so let’s just go out for dinner” “I’ve read that Mr. Money Mustache claims to save $94,432 every ten years by riding a bike, but I don’t HAVE a bike,…
