When my wife and I first got married we made about $60,000 per year combined. We are now at $160,000, and haven’t really changed our spending habits. At $60k per year we didn’t save much. Now we save a lot.

I was just talking about this the other day with a friend. I’m pretty frugal, but primarily when it comes to big ticket items (especially car/house etc). I bring my lunch (and coffee!) to work most days from home, but I also don’t mind occasionally dropping $100+ on dinner, or other indulgences. However, my wife and I…

Depends. I have a desktop and regularly do it in pieces. The only thing you really have to do multiple things at once is the processor - because then you usually need to upgrade the MB for newer chipsets. Other than that you can recycle most parts for a while. Especially SSDs and RAM, where you don’t see the regular…

Of all the places I have lived two have had decent drivers.

Note that the tax deduction phases out at an income that, if you have a college income and a professional job, is relatively low.

Classic asymmetric information problem.

Add in replacement/repair costs, taxes, and insurance and it gets much higher. Looking at just the roof costs, assume a new roof is $15k and lasts 20 years. That will cost you $750/year, or about $63/month. On top of that you have many other replacement costs (water heater, furnace, painting, etc to name a few). You…

I just refinanced last week into a 15 year fixed. It was 2.625% APR (after rolling in fees points etc). I was pretty amazed.

Sorry I may have misspoke. I did not go through a recruiter on this job. The hiring manager (meaning person I would be working for), did not ask, we just negotiated salary directly. Afterwards someone from HR followed up to verify a bunch of things, and that was when they asked salary for verification purposes. The…

I think you usually provide consent in either the job or loan application. I just refinanced my mortgage and HR told me they called for verification the other day. I’m assuming I probably consented to it in the loan app, though to be honest, I don’t recall if I explicitly signed off on that.

Thanks for the info. That all aside, I personally would never lie on a job application for the reasons you stated, as well as the fact that you don’t really want to look dishonest starting on day one of a new job. I have been requested to divulge this information as part of a job, though it actually occurred after we…

I was going to say the same thing. That being said, I think this is usually one of the last steps in the hiring process, so I don’t know how many companies are going to kick it back to a new hire unless the number is really out of wack. I think most hiring managers are going to assume the number was somewhat padded,…

Timely advice on the mortgage points. I’m closing a refi right now (so will not impact 2015 taxes, but will next year) and I will have to make sure to amortize the points. The fact that I’m refi-ing into a 15 and not a 30 doubles the benefit!

Not going to lie. I’ve sort of been hoping the result of a “brokered convention” is that Trump is given NFL commissioner. I don’t think he could be worse than Gooddell, and seriously, it would be pretty fun.

Cool bruh

Should fly Southwest

30% is also the rule of thumb for most government programs.

In that case you should probably live with roommates. In real cities (like LA New York and San Francisco) that is what people do.

This is how I read it.

In most markets in the long run your taxes and repair costs will roughly track rent appreciation.