Finance

• What to Look for in a Real Estate Agent

  You have decided to put your home up for sale, and look for a new home better suited to fit your growing family. You flip open the Yellow Pages, to find hundreds of real estate agents, all seemingly the same. How do you whittle that number down to find someone who has all that you need to sell and buy real estate?

• The Specter of Creative Financing

  Though not quite as contemptible as obscene four-letter words, the term “creative financing” comes close. Those two words acquired a stigma over the decades. It’s the rare advisor that fails to caution homebuyers about the dangers of a risky loan. Unfortunately, after the utterance of the warning, the counselors are remarkably imprecise as to exactly what defines a risky loan. Is a home bought with no down payment and a loan equal to 100% of the purchase price a hazardous way to buy? You’d certainly think so from the articles I read. And what about interest-only loans, where no principal payments are made during the early years? The suggestion normally conjures up predictions of impending disaster.

• Teaching Teens the Value of Money

  It isn’t easy raising teens in today’s materialistic society. The older they get, the more expensive the things they want or think they need. If they don’t learn how to manage their money at a young age, they won’t be able to make it in the real world.

• The Complete Guide to Buying New (Or Old) Furniture

  If you are like me, your investment in furniture has to last! It has to be durable, beautiful and a good buy for my money. You all know that a good buy doesn’t necessarily mean cheap, but it does mean that the value in years of problem-free use. I want to know that the furniture will last at least as long as it took to make the money to buy it! (And in some furniture I have seen, it was a distinct possibility that it wouldn’t survive the trip home!)

• Home Renovations That Pay

  In a buyer’s market, how do you make your home more attractive, how do you make it stand out amongst the herd? One way is to add renovations to your home that set it apart from your neighbors’ homes.

• Marriage And Money

  Money may not be able to buy happiness, but managing it correctly can certainly make married life less stressful. Too many marriages die an early death at the hand of financial mismanagement and others stay together but live in misery. What makes this even more difficult to stomach is that applying the basic principles I’ll discuss in this article can prevent this tremendous strain on marriage relationships.

• 3 Secrets to Reduce Stress In the Home Buying Process

  It has been said that buying a home can be one of the most stressful experiences one will go through. It’s right up there with career change, divorce or illness. Fact is, you can reduce your stress while going through the home buying process with a few simple strategies.

• Choosing a Financial Advisor: Five Things to Consider

  It’s not hard to find information on how to select a financial advisor. A visit to either of the search engines Google or Yahoo, in which you enter the words “Financial Advisor, Choosing,” provides you with about a quarter million references, many of them highly prestigious. As you browse through the first hundred or so, as I did, you’ll find remarkably consistent advice in abundance. You want an advisor that understands your goals, can recommend securities to fit your needs, that will help you allocate your assets, who possesses the proper credentials, and above all, someone with whom you can place your confidence. I’ll admit that this sounds reasonable. So, with all this well-documented guidance, why do you need my counsel? I’ll tell you why. Because, although the recommendations presented on the sites I visited seemed vaguely incontestable, none go beyond generalities. However, the world of investment is hostile, and on advisor selection you need specifics. Let me fill in the details on five vital concerns that you’ll not find elsewhere.