This is the home stretch, the final five rules of investing are here for your general consumption. If you’re interested and haven’t read reviews on Jim Cramer’s “new” book “Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World,” be sure to check out some of the reviews to see if this book is for you. While the past few articles and this one are summaries of these rules, the book goes into greater detail and may be worth checking out. Now… onto the final five rules:

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I’ve always thought developing photos online was tricky because you don’t get the opportunity to look at your film prints before you pay for them. If you go to a Costco or FotoHunt, you always look at the prints and have the option of discarding the ones that came out badly. Also, with online printers you don’t have the option of discard bad prints that turned out worse than what you anticipate from the screen. The only advantage of an online print house is in really in price (lower overhead) so I signed up for all the trial programs (except Winkflash) to see how they stacked up against each other in terms of quality. In this review, I’ll compare most of the major online photo printers against each other and some brick & mortar shops.

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Well, it’s official, I own a house and my girlfriend’s car is dead. In the coming week or so you might see some posts about our trips to car dealerships, used car owners, and CarMax’s (we went today, it’s a great place). Until then, here’s a recount of Friday’s experience at the closing table with the sellers, their agent, my agent, and the closing agent – a representative of the title company.

At the closing table, all parties get together, sign about a million sheets of paper (many of which are copies of each other), and learning that you owe a few hundred thousand dollars for the next thirty years. Other than that, it’s a pretty stress-less, relaxing experience.

The Settlement Statement, prepared by the Title Company, is the most important document there because it outlines how much money changes hands, why it changes hands, and, if nothing else, it should be triple checked by you. As I mentioned in an earlier article, the Title Company didn’t know I was a first time Maryland homebuyer and so on the Settlement Statement it showed I was to pay my half of the Maryland Transfer Tax (about $750). A quick phone call remedied that. It added a few more sheets to what I needed to sign, but I think the tradeoff was fair

The rent back made things a little more complicated but not much so. The sellers pay whatever it would cost me to live there, so it includes the mortgage (principal + interest), taxes (which includes the Columbia Parks and Recreation Assessment), and HOA fees. Utilities and water remain in their name and we need to transfer them prior to moving in. The sum is then divided by thirty days, always regardless of actual number of days, to calculate a “per diem” basis. The sellers prepaid June and, at the start of July, they will prepay part of July – however long they intend to stay.

I received a large enough gift from my parents that I could pay down a decent portion of the second mortgage and I intend to do so once the sellers move out of the house. I wonder if the larger interest payment they are making now, which is on a larger principal, will carry over to cover some of the interest in subsequent months because I’m paying down the mortgage. I’ll have to look into that and see how the interest-heavy payments work with respect to a declining principal balance. I do know that if I prepay enough to “overpay” the interest, I don’t get anything back.

Well, that’s about it… the settlement was a breeze. Nick, the mortgage lender, showed up and gave us a bottle of wine in congratulation and we talked about perhaps going to Atlantic City one of these days (he plays poker too). Nick came through on the two week closing deadline, which is what I needed him to do, with good rates too (certainly not the lowest of the low – but competitive with LendingTree at the time). He also gave my girlfriend and me two tickets to Saturday’s Orioles game against Detroit (they lost). All in all, Nick and Equitable Trust were really good to deal with and I recommend them – especially if you’re under a time crunch.

I’m soon going to be a homeowner less than 6 hours if all goes according to plan. There have been a few hiccups along the way including the roofing certification (not good enough), some fees (title insurance is 30% higher than the good faith estimate), and some minor mistakes all around. The only show-stopper is the roofing certification so I’m hopeful all can be resolved for the close at 4pm. On a semi-unrelated note, my girlfriend’s car overheated and was leaking “green and red” fluid which I took to mean coolant and perhaps transmission fluid. You might see a “buying a used car in under a week” article in the near future…

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Did you know that if the price on something you buy drops, within 30 days of your purchase date, Amazon.com will credit you the difference if you ask for it? It’s a not-advertised price drop policy that most people don’t know about and it’s saved me tons of money over the last few years. I didn’t know it was “secret” until I brought up recently and no one knew what I was talking about, so I thought I’d write a post all about how to take advantage of it. One of the great things about the drop policy is that it still works for orders where a coupon is involved or a “Buy Both and Save” deal is utilized. They only consider the individual item prices (based on the invoice) and not the final price after discounts!

The first step is to investigate which of your purchases may be eligible for a refund. Simply go into “Your Account” and look at all orders in the last 30 days. The items in your invoices are links so you can click on it and see if the prices match. If the price has dropped, you have a great candidate. Copy the order number because you’ll need it when you request the refund.

Then, go here: Return & Refunds Contact Form. You should see a contact form where you can now request your refund.

Change the Subject dropdown to “Refund Inquiry” and look to see if that order is one of the ones listed, check the boxes if they are. If they aren’t, you’ll have to paste in that order number in the “Other” box.

In the last year they’ve really streamlined this process, I believe all you have to do now in comments is write that the price of your item has dropped within the last thirty days and that you’d like a refund. The presence of the dropdown box probably means you can select multiple orders and just write a generic comment and it should get taken care of. In the past, I specifically called out item names, old and new prices.

Where this because beautiful, and I hope they haven’t changed, is when coupons are taken into account. If let’s say you purchase two Le Creuset pots that were $125 as a Buy Both and Save deal. Technically each pot costs a certain price if they were purchased individually (say, each are $99.99 which is not uncommon). You purchase them for a combined special price of $125, apply a $25 Kitchen and Houseware’s coupon, and have three hundred pounds of pot (ha, that sounds funny) shipped to you for $100 even. Now you find out each of the pots have dropped in price to $79.99 – simply request a refund and it will be granted, without any consideration to the Buy Both and Save Deal or the coupon!

You can request refunds on something repeatedly as long as it keeps dropping in price and no price drop sum is too small. When all it takes is an email, a mere fifty cents warrants an email to Amazon.

Want more Amazon tips? You can check Amazon Prices via your cell phone.

This is part four of five on alleged “25 rules of investing” that Jim Cramer has listed on his site, TheStreet.com, plus my own commentary. The first five were basically cute little catch phrases on some common-sense rules. Rules six through ten were a little more insightful, speaking to more subtle ideas such as not buying a crappy stock because you think it’ll be acquired (because it probably won’t). The early to mid-teens touched on some rules for the more experienced investor or someone who just needs a little prodding to ensure they’re looking at everything objectively. Let’s see what the next five yield…

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In the next few days I’ll be messing around with the layout and trying to make the site easier to navigate and read. Please excuse the mess and if you see anything out of whack, please let me know by leaving a comment. Firefox users will notice that now the main text pane now expands to the width of your browser instead of being confined… apparently IE doesn’t like the max-width and min-width attributes in the stylesheets so you guys are still stuck.

If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them. I want to make this site pretty.

Sorry to disappoint everyone (esp. FMF) but I wasn’t able to make it to the Howard County Tax Sale today. With an impending home sale, bad weather, and missing work yesterday to attend my sister’s graduation, I wasn’t able to make it to the sale. My plan was to just watch for an hour or so to see what actually happened and just report what happens.

The next possible Maryland Tax Sale I could go to is Anne Arundel County, being held on June 7th. Schedule permitting, I’ll try to make it – there are 1421 properties and over $2.2M in assessed value available. Anne Arundel County is right to the north of Howard so getting there shouldn’t be a problem.

Here is a report from someone who did make it to the Anne Arundel County Tax Sale.

I called up Geico, with whom I have an automobile insurance policy, to see about getting homeowner’s insurance because I’ll need a policy in place before we close on Friday. I was basically completely unprepared for the battery of questions the CSR asked me but we struggled through it and came up with a quote on a $295,000 policy with a $500 deductible of $843/year. I’ll be sure to compare that rate with other insurers but $70/month seemed reasonable to me at first glance but I have no experience with homeowner’s insurance. However, I probably answered some of the questions inaccurately so if you’re going to get a quote, here are the questions you should have answers to:

These were sent to me in an email by the CSR, who worked for Travelers (underwrites policies for Geico):
Here is a list of questions of good to know information because they will probably ask this of you.

• Address of home
• County
• Year of construction
• Type of construction
• Square footage of home
• Type of roof material
• Condition of roof (Excellent, Good, Fair)
• Type of heat (Oil, gas, electric, other)
• Any form of alternate heat (woodstove, kerosene heater, or electric space heater)
• Distance to fire hydrant (in feet)
• Distance to fire department (in miles)
• Is there a garage?
• Is there a porch, deck, breezeway attached? What dimensions?
• Security/protective devices:
• Deadbolt locks?
• Are there smoke detectors?
• Do you own a fire extinguisher?
• If home is older than 1990
  • Year roof was replaced or original
  • Year heating was updated or original
• Electrical service- circuit breaker or fuse box?
• Purchase price/Current coverage amount
• If purchase price- contact person for lender, phone # and if possible, fax #

I hope that comprehensive list is helpful for someone so you don’t sound like a dope when you call in.

One company I’ve been told we should check out is Liberty Mutual because they give discounts to my alma mater. I’ll probably give them and perhaps one other company a call just to get an idea of the quality of the $843 quote.

My girlfriend received the strangest letter in the mail at the beginning of the month, it said that her company’s Employee Retirement Savings Plan (fancy term for 401k) has a feature called [Company Name] Match. My interpretation of the letter was that if you don’t contribute enough pre-tax to your 401k, the company match feature will pay out enough so that you get the maximum company match had you contibuted more pre-tax. The letter came from the company servicing her 401k (T. Rowe Price Retirement Plan Services, Inc.). I’ve typed the letter in its entirety (removing company name and specific dollar amounts) and I want to know what you guys think. Does this sound too good to be true or have I misread it?

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