One of the best things I ever did was read Wall Street: A History: From Its Beginnings to the Fall of Enron by Charles R. Geisst. In it, I learned about the famous tulip bulb craze in 1630s. During that craze, people were buying exotic colored tulips like they were going out of style (which they soon would) and many folks ended up with little more than a couple pretty flowers (check Wikipedia for the full scoop).

Let’s compare that with the dot com bubble and the housing craze and see if there are any similarities. In the dot com boom, investors were putting money into companies that were little more than an idea and a URL. In the tulip bulb boom, someone was able to sell shares in a company that claimed to one day be involved in the trading of tulip bulbs (this is based on my memory of what was included in Geisst’s book, there’s no mention of this on the Wikipedia page), only to run off with the money. In the housing craze, people were given 100% LTV loans based on the magic lenders were able to make in the books and not based on the borrower’s actual ability to pay (in this case, the lender was the investor). So in all three cases, the bubbles formed because people were so greedy that they invested in the “symbol” and not the fundamentals.

The lesson here is that you shouldn’t let greed cloud your judgments. Remember that Rule #1 is “don’t lose money.” Warren Buffett is plenty rich and he basically skipped the dot com boom. Some had written him off because he missed it but he said that he was just fine. Buffett only invests in things he can understand. He couldn’t understand why people were paying these ridiculous valuations for companies that had zero earnings.

So, the next time you see people acting all crazy (how many people told you to invest in a hot stock or to buy a house because it can’t do anything but go up?), don’t jump in. Watch from the sidelines and you’ll save yourself a lot of money.

(Photo: powi)

Update: Lending Tree has developed a tool to help determine if you are eligible for an FHA loan.

This week, the Senate passed a housing bill a little over a week ago (the House joined last Wednesday) that seeks to give the housing market a shot in the arm. With 1 in every 171 homes going into foreclosure, the cries for help are getting loud and loud and, with the next year’s deficit nearing half a trillion dollars, we might as well pile it on. What’s another few hundred billion? Personally, I don’t like the idea but economic turmoil doesn’t help anyone. It doesn’t help the people who erroneously got themselves into bad loans, it doesn’t help the people who intelligently avoided them, and it doesn’t help everyone else standing on the sidelines. Considering we can’t pass energy legislation and likely won’t before Congress recesses in a week, we might as well take what we can get.

So, what’s going on? Here are the bits that are likely to affect you.

The Main Bailout

The FHA will be allowed to insure up to $300 billion in 30-year fixed mortgages for those at risk and who are living in owner occupied homes. The net result of this is that some loans will be restructured from their current state to an FHA insured loan. It’s help but it’s not a get out of jail free card, you’ll see why in the second paragraph of the gotchas section.

Who is qualified? You qualify if you have a loan that was issued between January 2005 and June 2007, must be spending at least 31% of your gross monthly income on mortgage debt, the total debt cannot exceed 95% of the home’s appraised value, and prove that they will not be able to continue to pay their mortgage. (LendingTree has a lending tool to help determine if you’re eligible) They can be defaulting or current, that won’t matter, but they have to retire all other debt on the home.

What happens? If you think you qualify, go to an FHA-approved lender and they will take it from there.
Any gotchas, catches, or tricks?There are two types of gotchas. First, in order for this go through, the lender will have to write down the value of the existing loan to 90% of the home’s current value and take the hit. Lenders won’t do this unless they think they’ll lose more than that, so you will probably really have to be in trouble to qualify.

The second type of gotcha is the restrictions and extra payments the borrower will have to bear. You can’t get a home equity loan for at least five years, you’ll have to pay the 1.5% annual insurance premium to the FHA for the guarantee, you’ll have to pay a 3% exit fee on the principal to the FHA if you sell or refinance, and finally you’ll have to give up all profits to the FHA if you sell or refinance within a year. After a year, you’ll only be on the hook for 90% of the profits and drops by 10% each year until it gets to 50%, where it will be forever. That’s a long time.

The Supporting Cast Measures

There are a few other additions to the bill that may be of interest.

Conforming Loans ceiling set to $625,500. A temporary measure increasing the maximum value of a “conforming loan,” or loans that would be guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, was increased and pegged to home prices in a geographic region. I mentioned it as the Little Footnote on the 2008 Tax Stimulus Package and it really was a boon for the higher end housing market. Well, it’s permanent now.

10% home-buyer “credit,” up to $7,500. It’s not really a credit, it’s a 15 year no-interest loan of up to 10% of a home’s purchase price, no greater than $7,500. I don’t know if this will induce many folks into buying, there’s no sense rushing to buy something if you think it’ll still go down in value. No one loses money by sitting on the sidelines in this market.

My Thoughts

Overall, I think the way the “bail out” was structured was reasonable. Borrowers might be bailed out, only if the lenders accept the writing on the walls, but they don’t get to reap any rewards on the back end. I like the idea that the government gets at least 50% of a bailed out home’s appreciated value if it’s sold or refinanced. That’s a hit and the cost of doing business. Qualified borrowers get to keep their homes, lenders don’t lose as much, both sides seem to win.

It appears that the only losers are those excluded from the deal (taxpayers included). Lenders may be stubborn and refuse to take the hit, borrowers may find themselves close but not quite over the 31% gross income rule, and others may be left out because of the date of issue on their loan.

You can’t save everyone.

(Photo: respres)

A while back I discussed how you could save some cash by cutting just one cup of coffee a week and by brownbagging it just one day a week. That’s when, in chatting with Paid Twice, she joking said “yeah… all these years of home brew coffee and packing lunches - explains why we’re broke. :)” She said it tongue in cheek but it’s a legitimate concern. So many people budget to a penny, diligently track their expenses, yet find themselves behind the eight ball and I suspect it has to do with expenses on the other side of the spectrum - the big ticket items. (I suspect this because that’s what happened to me!)

With respect to frugality, I see the world in two different categories. The first category is for those big ticket items where savings can be significant. Big ticket items are marked by lower frequency but high savings potential, such as a car. The second category are those smaller day to day expenses where there is a much higher frequency of expenses but lower potential for savings. Many times we focus on the small items because we deal with them every day but get panicky or pressured when we start talking major expenses, but those big expenses are the ones where the big savings are too.

Unfortunately, big ticket items aren’t things you can change overnight and they also tend to be more stressful. I recognize that. The two big ticket items most individuals have to pay for are housing, either renting or buying, and a mode of transportation, usually a car. The two are generally marked with higher levels of stress (what’s more stressful, buying a house or making your own detergent? duh!) in part because of the higher dollar values but also because of time constraints. With housing, you’re usually under the gun because you have to move by a certain date according to your lease or some other agreement. With a car, you’re usually under the gun because you need a car ASAP and the whole car sales business is a pressure cooker anyway.

So, how do you counter it? Remove the pressure and reduce those expenses as best as possible.

Remove the Pressure

Sales Pressure: With either a car or a house, there will always be a measure of sales pressure on the part of the agent or the salesperson. It’ll be far worse with a car dealership salesperson because they know they might not get you the next time in so they want you to buy now. Combat this by doing one thing… never sign anything the first time you walk into a place. If you meant to go test drive a bunch of cars, don’t buy that day. Always sleep on a decision and always get a second and third opinion from people you believe are both trustworthy and knowledgeable. You can save yourself from making plenty of bad decisions if you sleep on it and ask for second-party opinions.

Housing: You know when your lease will expire, so start your housing search as early as possible. If you’re buying, start it several months in advance of your move. If you’re going to rent again from another place, start a couple months in advance of your move. Chances are, if you’re renting, even if you can’t find another place to live, you can always go month-to-month on your lease and pay a small premium. Paying an extra hundred dollars a month for one month is far better than rushing into another lease or even a 30 year mortgage!

Car: What’s the worst thing that can happen if you don’t buy a car and your car is kaput? At best, you’re inconveniencing yourself and perhaps friends and family that agree to drive you around. At worst, you rent a car at about thirty or forty bucks a day until you settle on a car. What’s worse, overpaying a few thousand on a car or shelling out for a rental? There is no pressure to buy a car as soon as possible.

Reduce the Costs

The topic of how to reduce the costs of housing and a car, at the tactical level, is way too complex to go into in a few paragraphs here. If you want to know the best tactics for negotiating down the price of a car or a home/rental, you can find plenty of information online . I will however say a few words about how I view homes and cars from a philosophical level and I’m interested in hearing your opinion as well.

Housing: When I rented, I saw my apartment as a temporary location for, at most, a few years. Since it was temporary and I wasn’t building a long term solution, I tried to spend as little as possible on my housing. My end game was to buy a house, not rent a swank apartment, so I never painted or put up pictures. The point was to pay as little as possible so that I could put as much as possible towards a down-payment. To this end, I spent two years renting, always had the same roommate, and we tried to keep costs down as low as possible - I never paid more than $600 a month for rent. I’ve know people who have spent $1200 to $1500 on single bedroom or studio apartments because they wanted someplace nice. That’s $600 to $900 a month that person can’t put towards something else (which is perfectly alright, we all have our own tastes). However, if you are looking to save money, you have to make a lot of detergent to recover $600-$900 a month.

Car: My car gets me from A-to-B and I want it to be affordable, reliable, and fuel efficient. I know some people like to buy cars because it projects a certain image, they want to be able to drive their co-workers or bosses around in a nice ride, but luckily I never worked in industries where that mattered or could affect my future job growth.

Total Cost Considerations: This post is getting a little long winded but I wanted to throw in one last point about total cost. When you sign up for a house or a car, you’re signing up for years and years. A lease is often for twelve months minimum. When you make these purchases, remember to consider the monthly costs as well as the initial costs.

Don’t buy a home to make money because you won’t.

At the end of May, my wife and I will have owned our home for three years. It was a home that we purchased six months behind the burst of the housing boom and one that has still appreciated in the time since, a testament to the strength of the housing market in the area between Baltimore and Washington D.C. In our little development, similarly designed homes have been selling in the $310k-$320k, or about $15k-$25k more than what we paid for our home. Some of those don’t have the full basement renovation ours has, some don’t have new windows (which means they’re 25 years old), and so one might be tempted to say that those homes would sell for a couple thousand more if they did have some of those amenities. Even so, does that mean we “made” $15k-$25k on paper on our home investment?

Nope. We’ve spent $7,000 on new windows and sliding doors (a great deal I think), about $900 to carpet the basement, and will soon spend approximately $5,000 on a new roof. Total those up and you have yourself ~$14k of expenses. Okay, so deduct that from the $15k-$25k and you have an appreciation of $1k-$11k, not bad right? Then consider that we’ve paid nearly $35k in interest payments to the bank (of which a third is returned at tax time) and you see how this “investment” has actually lost us money.

Homeownership isn’t a short-term investment. Not only isn’t it a short-term investment, the majority of the “reward” derived from homeownership has more to do with living a better life than having more zeros in your bank account. Even though we have “lost” money (granted, we would’ve “lost” more had we been renting), we’ve made lots of great memories in the short time we’ve been in this house and had the pride of homeownership.

Life isn’t always about $$$.

This guest post comes courtesy of Fred at One Project Closer, a home improvement blog written by one of my friends. As a sign of how good of a friend he is, he still made to my wedding despite his basement being flooded by a burst water heater. And until I read his post, I had no idea he was late!

With rising energy prices, fear of a recession, and the stock market erasing the gains of the last six months, you’re probably looking to save wherever you can right? Well, today I have the opportunity to share ten fantastic tips you can use, many with hardly any up front investment whatsoever, right this very second to save yourself some money.

1. Insulate Your Hot Water Heater ($20.00 investment). Unless you have a newer tankless model, your hot water heater has a large reservoir of water it keeps constantly heated. Traditional hot water heaters are constructed with a relatively small layer of insulation between the inner water reservoir and the outer metal shell, requiring the heater to run frequently to keep the water hot. Manufactures under-insulate hot water heaters to keep the units small enough to fit into tight spaces. For about $20.00, you can find a hot water heater insulation wrap at your local home improvement big box. Upon installation, a typical homeowner will save between $3.00-5.00/month on energy costs.

2. Turn Down Your Hot Water Heater Temperature ($0 investment). Most people are very conscious of raising/lowering the thermostat on their central AC/heating system, but haven’t even considered lowering the temperature on their hot water heater. Your hot water heater should always be set to the lowest temperature that provides your household the hot water you need. Lowering the water temperature from 125 deg. to 115 deg. saves a typical homeowner about $3.00-$10.00.

3. Don’t Let the Water Run While You Wash Dishes ($0 investment). It sounds silly, doesn’t it? But the reality is that nearly all of the cost of running the water is in heating the water. Leaving the water running for 30 minutes could cost you as much as $3. Instead, use your dishwasher (just don’t use the built drying heater or a water heating option like sanitize rinse). Dishwashers use less than half of the water to perform the same task. Or, better yet, fill your sink basin and wash dishes with the water turned off. That method uses less than a quarter of the water of the first method.

4. Don’t Use Your Fireplace on Extremely Cold Nights ($0 investment). Traditional wood fireplaces require an open flu to allow smoke to escape. The air that’s leaving the house with the smoke has to be replaced with air from somewhere else. In most traditional setups, replacement air comes back into the house through pores open to the outside (outlets, leaky windows and doors, attic accesses, etc). On very cold nights, the cold replacement air coming into the house more than offsets any heat gained from the fire itself. As a result, using a fireplace on a cold night could cost $1.00-$3.00 in energy just to replace the lost heat.

5. Caulk Your Attic Access Door ($3.00 investment). Gaps in attic access doors allow heat to escape from the upstairs of your house. Since you don’t go up into the attic much anyway, caulk the rim of the door to prevent your energy from floating away. Estimated savings: $2.00-4.00 / month.

6. Replace Your Light Bulbs with Energy Efficient Models ($20.00-80.00 investment). Compact Fluorescent (CFL) technology has come a long way in the last 5 years. More than ever, CFLs look and behave just like incandescents. These bulbs use about 23% of the energy of their incandescent counterparts and last about 20 times longer. One 100-watt equivalent CFL can save a homeowner more than $60.00 over the course of its life. You shouldn’t wait for your incandescents to burn out either. Every day an incandescent burns, it wastes nearly 80% of the energy it uses. Since you’ll have to replace it when it burns out anyway, you should make the switch today.

7. Consider Replacing Your Refrigerator ($700-1000 investment). Refrigerators that are more than 10 years old use about 50% more energy than their modern counterparts. The older your model, the more inefficient it is. For models that are more than 20 years old, a homeowner can expect to recover the investment in as little as 2.5 years. If you can find a newer model on Craigslist or in the classifieds, you might realize a recovery period of as little as 1 year.

8. Change the Filter on your HVAC every 3-6 months ($5 investment). HVAC filters remove dust and allergens from your house as your HVAC circulates air for heating/cooling. These filters get dirty, eventually restricting air flow. When this happens, your furnace has to work harder to achieve the same temperature change - wasting energy. Changing the filter takes only minutes. If you haven’t changed your filter for more than a year, you can expect a ~$5.00/month savings in months where you run your HVAC the most.

9. Install (and use) a Programmable Thermostat ($50-$100 investment). Programmable thermostats allow you to adjust the temperature in your home based on the time of day, and day of the week. If no one is home during the day, it simply doesn’t make sense to keep the house at the same temperature. Typical homeowners can expect to see $10.00-$40.00 / month savings after installing these nifty little devices. Remember that a programmable thermostat will only save money if it’s programming features are actually used. So, get a programmable thermostat that’s easy to learn.

10. Set Your PC to Auto-hibernate ($0 investment). A computer, monitor, and printer can easily draw 300 watts. With electricity as high as $0.15/KWh, this equates to more than $1.00/day. If you only use your computer for 2 hours a day, setting the system to auto-hibernate (instead of leaving it on) saves as much as $25.00/month.

One of the less often discussed effects of the subprime lending crisis and falling home values is the effect lower home values will have on property taxes. While a drop in home values is bad for a homeowner, a lower property value assessment is sort of like the silver lining. Unfortunately for homeowners, counties and states aren’t so good at lowering assessments. So, if you suspect your home has recently fallen in value, consider fighting your next assessment.

As an aside for any Maryland homeowners, you will have to apply for the Homestead credit this year if you want to stop your property taxes from shooting through the roof. The state discovered that lots of investors were getting tax breaks through the Homestead Tax Credit and have instituted a one-time application process. If you own your home and are living in it as your primary residence, they’ll approve you. With property taxes going down, they’re looking to squeeze out tax revenue from wherever they can find it. For more information, read this FAQ on the Maryland Homestead Tax Credit.

The follow seven tips come straight from Money but I can boil it down into something a little simpler.

How does your county assesses the value of homes? Two common ways are with comparables (or “comps”) and with replacement/rebuilding value (very similar to how banks appraise homes). With comparables they just look at similar houses and what they recently sold for. With replacement/rebuilding value, they “guess” based on how much they think it would cost to replace it. After you figure that out, request your assessors evidence so you can examine it for any errors. Chances are the assessor didn’t walk through every room in your house (or even enter your house) and is basing it on public records. Did he or she put the correct number of bedrooms and bathrooms? Is the square footage correct? Any discrepancies can be used to adjust the value of your home.

Build a case for a lower property assessment and do it quickly. Most places have a time limit for an appeal, Money says 60 days it the norm but I’ve seen places with 45 days and 90 days. Your case will be based on how your county assesses home value. If they use comparables, get some comparables and use them as ammunition (get 5-10, more is better).

Meet with the assessor first, then file an appeal. If you can convince the assessor that he or she assessed your home higher than he or she should have, it’ll help your case when it comes time to appear before the review board because they’ll be there. If you convince them, they’ll put up less of a fight. At the appeal board, prepare an 8-10 minute presentation with pictures of the comparables and a spreadsheet of the data. Think about what you would want to see if you were on the board. If you’ve done your homework, act professionally, then you have a good shot.

What if you lose? They recommend you move up to the state board and then to court if that fails. Money says that going to court will require a lawyer but that counties and states will often want to settle just because it’s just as expensive for them as it would be for you. They might not give up all of it, but they could give up a big piece.

Good luck!

Two nights ago my fiancée and I discovered that the carpet in the upstairs office was a little damp. After a little investigating, we discovered that the wall was soft! We tore down the drywall, removed the soaking wet insulation, and realized that our roof was leaking. After a restless night, I woke up the next day, called up three contractors, and eventually had some repairs done. The culprit appeared to be the flashing around the chimney and the tin covering on the chimney. The final bill was $675 (though I worked out something with the contractor where I’d get that rebated back on a full blown roof replacement, which I know I’ll need) and a weight off our shoulders. I still need to replace the insulation, drywall, and paint that office… maybe the painting will happen after the honeymoon. (I’m also a little hesitant to put everything back up in case our repairs didn’t solve the problem…)

Ugh…

On a happier note, I discovered a cool site called FreeRice.com through BzzAgent. I’m a BzzAgent, which means I occasionally get free products, give them away to my friends, and write about their reactions to them (if you want to join, email me). I’ve given away gum, yogurt, etc. etc. Anyway, one part of the site involves talking about cool websites that have tried to improve their online exposure through BzzAgent. Until today I hadn’t written anything about any of them because they didn’t really appeal to me, until FreeRice.com. You answer multiple choice vocabulary questions and they donate 20 grains of rice for each correct answer. You don’t sign up for anything, they don’t send you anything, and they donated 149,541,380 grains of rice donated yesterday (Valentine’s Day). Give it a whirl, maybe you’ll learn a few words and someone gets a bowl of rice.