Real Estate Investing

On this day before Thanksgiving, I don’t have the heart to talk about how bad the economy is.  Instead here’s a link to the MSNBC.com news story Slew of Reports Reveal Battered Economy so you can go read it for yourself.

Instead, here are reasons I am thankful today to be a Realtor:

1. I am essentially self-employed.  While I answer to state law and to my managing broker and the company that has graciously allowed me to work here, the ability to set my own hours to extraordinary.  I do put in plenty of time here at the office, but if I wake up feeling sick or if my child is sick, I don’t have to beg a boss to give me an excused absence (which I’ve had to do before).
2. I am thankful I get to be with people as they buy their first homes. Watching them sign their loan papers and receive the keys to their first house - and many times witnessing their tears of joy - is wonderful.  Two weeks ago on a beautiful fall day, a client sent me a text message, “Is so beautiful here today. Thanks again so much.”
3. While it’s heartbreaking at times, I am thankful that I can help people facing the difficult foreclosure process.  During this painful time, they deserve to be with a caring, compassionate professional to smooth the transition.  I try to keep them from being jostled and bullied.
4. I am incredibly grateful to work with my fellow agents. We get into good-natured arguments over politics, who’s smarter, and silliness like that, but we can count on each other for advice in unique situations, for marketing ideas, for help with computers, and so much more. The people I work with are like family and it’s a great feeling to have that.
5. I am so relieved that gas prices have dropped to affordable levels.  Maybe now we can afford Christmas or other holiday presents for our families!

I hope your Thanksgiving Day is happy, safe, and amazing!

As Monty Python says, “And now for something completely different.”  We’ve talked about the housing market and you can’t even go online to any news site without reading about the economy.  So to mute the noise coming from the constant buzz about the financial crisis, let’s pull up our bootstraps and do something about it!

I found the Milk Your Money site a couple of months ago, but was waiting for a perfect time to use these 27 tips for around the house!  Try as I might, I can’t limit to just “house” stuff, so here you go!  Some of the 27 tips…

1. Newspaper weeds away: Start putting in your plants, work the nutrients in your soil. Wet newspapers put layers around the plants overlapping as you go over with mulch and forget about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic they will not get through wet newspapers.
2. Squirrel Away: To keep squirrels from eating your plants sprinkle your plants with cayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper doesn’t hurt the plant and the squirrels won’t come near it.
3. Get Rid of Ants: Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants. They eat it, take it ‘home,’ can’t digest it so it kills them. It may take a week or so, especially if it rains, but it works and you don’t have the worry about pets or small children being harmed! (Also try dry Grits, when the ants eat the dry grits, the fluid in their stomachs will cause the grits to expand blowing up the ants and the colony.)

Read more here!  And visit the whole Milk Your Money site to see tips on saving gas money, dealing with your cell phone company, what to do with your IRA’s, and more!

PS - Here’s another site that says grits don’t work on ants!