My friend Christine just reached a pretty huge financial milestone… She and her husband have paid off their mortgage and now own their home free and clear! Woohoo! This is a life goal many of us strive for, so you’d think everyone would be helping her celebrate. But instead, she’s been receiving some interesting and discouraging feedback! Here’s her story ... ***** My
Home Ownership
How Big Should an Emergency Fund for a Rental Property Be?
I got the following note from a reader the other day... “Joel, I noticed you keep a big emergency fund for your rental property. 2 questions for you... 1) It seems like you have too much cash because shouldn’t you only need 3-6 months of mortgage payments as a cash reserve? 2) Also why do you keep this emergency fund separate from your personal emergency fund?” Great
Yes, You Can Buy a Rental Property in Another State
In 2015 my wife and I bought our first rental property together. We were living in Los Angeles at the time and couldn’t afford to buy anything locally, which prompted us to start looking at out-of-state investments. We ended up making a real estate investment in Texas! There’s a lot to share about our decision to buy a rental property -- I’ll start with numbers and then get
Can you retire with a mortgage? How about 15 mortgages!?
Good morning, all. Happy Monday! Some of you are excited to learn more about real estate investing. I’m no expert, but I do have a few rental properties and will share my experiences (and screw-ups) over time. I know real estate investing isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, so I'll keep posts like this light and sporadic. (Plus, J Money will kill me if I turn this site into a
Could you sell your house and all your possessions like Elon Musk?
Just saw this tweet and about spit my coffee out! No house!! Or possessions! From a BILLIONAIRE who can have anything and everything under the sun! Wowwww!!! So WHY???? "Possessions just weigh you down." BOOM. Damn truth right there. And of course he still needs a place to live and HAS to keep at least one of his own cars, right???!, but seeing how he's
Life on the other side of the globe!
Morning, guys!! Stumbled across an old comment on the blog I tagged to share some day, and decided today's that day before I forget again! :) It was dropped in 2018 so it's a tiny bit dated, but a majority of this still holds true and thought you might find it as fascinating as I did when I first read it... Amazing that no matter where you live, or who you are, you still
7 Ways to (Financially) Feng Shui Your House
If you ever wanted to talk about toilets on this blog, today's your day! Got this text from my Auntie who asked if I'd ever shared something like this on the site before, of which I could confidently tell her no - I had not, lol... But that changes today ;) Here's her text that opened up my eyes in more ways than one: She then sent me an article to prove that
Some life updates :)
Morning! Snagged that dollar up there at my local thrift last month - isn't it cool? :) Here's a bunch of updates on things we've blogged about over the months in case you were wondering on any of 'em... If I missed anything, just holler! Minivan -- Two months in now and still driving it! The newness has worn off and I don't enjoy it nearly as much as I was hoping
What are some of your controversial personal finance beliefs?
INSIDE: Do you have some personal finance ideas that differ from a lot of people? If so, then you have some controversial personal finance beliefs. Get them off your chest by commenting with them below! Answered this question on Twitter last year, then got re-sucked back into it all again when it bubbled back up randomly this morning ;) Now passing it on to you to give
Cheat Sheet on “The Automatic Millionaire”
Looking for "The Automatic Millionaire" summary? Here's a one-page cheat sheet for yousummarizing the classic personal finance book. If you've never read the classic $$$ book, "The Automatic Millionaire" by David Bach, today you luck out and get a cheat sheet on it to tide you over until you wise up ;) The winner of it from our giveaway just emailed me saying she devoured
