And liquor. What about liquor?

Itemize before they buy a house or after? If I don’t already itemize (i.e. if my deductions don’t already exceed the standard) before I buy a house, then I don’t save the full amount as would be expected. E.g.:

For married couples, the standard deduction is $12600. The point is that you only benefit by the amount you exceed the standard deduction. That entire $7K is not “deductible” if you currently only have $1000 in itemizable (sp?) deductions. None of it if you’re married. Very important to remember this when determining…

You can only deduct your mortgage interest and property taxes if you itemize deductions. If all your deductions do not exceed your standard deduction, you gain nothing from them. If they exceed it by a dollar, you only get an extra deduction of a dollar. This is something that people frequently overlook.

Don’t forget radon test as part of a pre-sale inspection. If it comes back high you can get the seller to cover the mitigation system.

Protip: make sure you take this into account when buying front-loaders. Not all of them have reversible doors.

ummmmm, no.

The shoe-spike aerators are a waste. You need a plug aerator, which makes real space by pulling plugs out of the turf. All these do is compact the soil around the holes more.

The shoe-spike aerators are a waste. You need a plug aerator, which makes real space by pulling plugs out of the…

Not to make you feel bad, but Pat Conroy (The Great Santini) makes a point of reading 200 pages a day.

Mothers have known about this technique for more than a few years now.

Continuing in the same theme:

Folks:

2012 here and I have none of these. I do clean my eyeglasses though, does that count?

I have a long history of paying back, both with credit card and mortgage, and my score was north of 820. It was the lack of active accounts that was the issue.

You’re right, and I’ll never go with that lender again. But by that time we were too far down the road to pull back, although I thought about it. It all worked out in the end.

I have a long history of charging things to my one credit card and paying it off in full every month, same with my mortgage. I was specifically told “you don’t have enough active credit accounts” for us to make a judgement. I was kind of floored. In the long run we did get approved, so it all worked out, but still.

I’m on timgray’s side.

What about investment of time/stress/hassle? Maximizing the amount of money you end up with is not the be all and end all of life. If it was then we should all live in tents under freeway overpasses, eat Kraft dinner every night, and squirrel away 90% of our salaries. I own my home and I am glad to do it, but I can…

Are you including maintenance costs in that $1300? Both ongoing (repaint the porch railing) and one-time (replace the furnace/water heater/roof).