Buying One Property While Selling Another

Most people don’t stay in their first house their whole life. At some point, they want to move to a different home. There are several ways to approach the transaction, but you have to decide which way fits you. You can approach it with an idea to maximizing profit, maximizing cash flow, maximizing speed, minimizing …

Surveillance – Should it be Illegal?

Balloon Juice has a piece on how you can get anyone’s phone records for just over $100. And this evidently surprises not only him but the place he got it. Since the 1970s, the technology has existed to monitor every conversation in any room that has windows from basically any distance. The great defenses have …

My Favorite Investing Books

A week or so before Christmas, I got an e-mail asking me what my favorite books for investors and real estate folks were. My response? Unless you’re going to practice professionally and undertake the study necessary to do a good job of it, personal financial advice books are largely a waste of money. The only …

Mortgage Life and Disability Insurance

Every few days, I get junk mail wanting me to buy Mortgage Life and/or Disability Insurance. Buy regular policies instead. These are not, in general, good policies of insurance, because the benefits go straight to someone else. Mortgage Life Insurance is straightforward enough. It’s decreasing term insurance – the insurance company’s favorite kind of policy. …

What I Look For In a Mutual Fund Family

Reading the papers, I see all kinds of garbage about mutual funds. Probably the biggest single piece of garbage is that only the so-called “no load” funds are any good. They focus only on the cost of the “loaded” fund, as if there is no benefit to be had from the fact that the “load” …