Homes
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Lessons From a First-Time Home Buyer: The Spam and Scams Don’t Stop
When we closed on our house, our mortgage broker and the title company warned us that we’d likely be getting a bevy of junk mail related to our new homeowner status. That’s because, at least in Missouri, the transaction is public record. In turn, various companies take the opportunity to target us — and some of…
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Lessons From a First-Time Home Buyer: The Shifting Priorities Between Home Shopping and Home Owning
I have a love-hate relationship with the show House Hunters. Although I do find it entertaining and have been known to consume multiple episodes in a row (including a relapse of sorts during a recent trip to Kansas City), the people on the show bug me. More specifically, the choices the participants make often leave…
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Lessons From a First-Time Home Buyer: What I’m Most Thankful for As a Homeowner
Last month, in honor of Halloween, I shared some of the scariest things that have happened to us since we bought our home two years ago. Well, seeing as last week was Thanksgiving, it only seems appropriate that I look at the other side of the coin and celebrate the best parts of owning a…
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Lessons From a First-Time Home Buyer: No, You Don’t Want a 50-Year Mortgage
If you’re like me, one of the most frightening parts of buying a house is just the idea that you’ll be paying it off over the course of three whole decades! Now there’s talk of creating a new option that goes beyond the 30-year mortgage: a 50-year mortgage. On the surface, the upsides to such…
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Lessons From a First-Time Home Buyer: The 5 Scariest Things We’ve Experienced as Homeowners (So Far)
This week is Halloween! It will actually be our second as homeowners and, if last year is anything to go by, we can expect at least a handful of trick-or-treaters (after having none at our apartment). But that’s not really what I wanted to talk about. Instead, I thought I’d take this thematic opportunity to…
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Lessons From a First-Time Home Buyer: Two Years Since
It has come to my attention that I’ve reached a bit of a milestone. This week marks two years since my wife and I put in an offer on a house. Funny enough, shortly after we made that offer and it was accepted, we caught a flight to Hong Kong and continued the process of…
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Lessons From a First-Time Home Buyer: Can I Refinance Yet?
Last month, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by another quarter point. While that’s bad news for my high-yield savings accounts (which, in turn, reduced their APYs), the potential silver lining would be a dip in mortgage rates. As I’ve shared before, when we bought our house, we had to accept a rate of 7.999%.…
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Lessons From a First-Time Home Buyer: Do You Know Your Neighbors?
A funny thing happened to me as I set off on my way to FinCon last week. As I got into my Uber, the driver said, “We don’t know each other, but I actually live right over here.” By “right over here,” he literally meant two doors down. After making this realization, we chatted a…
