A house or real estate property is by far the best investment to make if you can afford to right now.

Benefits of Owning a House or Real Estate Property

1. Forces you to put away money in the form of mortgage payments.
2. Houses generally and mostly do not go up and down as the stock market does.
3. Most of the time a house always continues to build up equity.
4. If you live in the house, you get the added benefit of enjoying it as well.
5. Later on you can sell it and cash in or turn it into a revenue generating cash box.

If you cannot afford one right now, you should save as much as you can on a weekly basis or a paycheck basis. Save like 20%-5% into a secret account in which you pretend to forget about then throw that money into the stock market and the bonds market.

Simply invest 40% into iShares Lehman US Aggregate Bond Fund (AGG) and put the other 60% into SPDR Trust, Series 1 (SPY).

Keep saving and compounding and you will get there.

Popularity: 29% [?]

I recently had a huge problem with a home that I purchased in Orlando, Florida. About 6 months they raised my house taxes and my mortgage payments jumped by $800.00 per month. Talk about a disaster because that is enough to be another rent payment.

Now fast forward to today and when I logged into my Countrywide account to schedule the next payment, I saw a $400.00 decrease per month. I jumped for joy and called my wife immediately

After the mortgage mess houses started going up for foreclosures left and right. Then apparently the feds decided to drop house taxes and instead start charging taxes on services that are not necessary. No problems there for me since that is not my primary residence.

Countrywide pays my taxes through my escrow so I received the rebate immediately. Now I can take a breather to see my next move.

Should I sell the house or keep it until the economy sorts itself out? The economy might take close to 2-4 years to sort itself. I will weight my options then see my next step.

Popularity: 27% [?]

The buzz is that there is a contender to Quicken and it is web based and free. You can check your finances anywhere and at anytime you wish. It has a nice look and feel with speed from the Ajax backend that it was built on. I am no super finance guru but I will give the review that I feel best with for average to intermediate users.

Advantages

• Fast.
• Free.
• A rival to Quicken even in its beta stage.
• Easy setup.
• Accessible anywhere.
• Beautiful Ajax design.
• Tons of graphs and charts.
• Easy way to see trends.
• Nice feature named “Ways to Save.”

Truly one of the best rivals to Quicken and it is free to use with no installs to worry about. It is built on a web technology that allows it to load various parts of the web page in an auto update way. I just added my user name and password for my various accounts and waited a short minute or less for account history to be updated; then I was ready to rock. They added a plethora of charts and graphs to show spending habits in a glance. You can even check spending habits as easy as just viewing your personalized trend reports page. Mint.com truly tries to make personal finance as easy as checking your email. A good feature that I really like is the “Ways to Save” money section. I love it because what it proposes to do is automatically check different banks and get you the best rates that it can find all automatically. I feature still has some bugs but it shows a lot of promise.

Disadvantages

• Didn’t know my credit card info like interest rate and total rewards.
• Misclassified a Countrywide Mortgage Payment as an Electronic Boutique Purchase.
• Still in Beta.
• Suggestions to save money section named “Ways to Save” needs work.

With all good things there are the disadvantages or the minor short comings. I plugged in my information for one of my credit cards and up to now it doesn’t know the exact interest rate or APR. Mint.com also tries to categorize all info automatically but still false short in this aspect as well. One of my mortgage payments was classified as a Electronic Boutique purchase but was then replaced by transfer. The suggestions to save money is still a major point but however still needs some work as well. I don’t want to be too mean because the web application is still in beta.

Conclusions

All I can say is try it out and see what you can get from it. It’s free and over round pretty good. Just remember that it is in beta still so don’t go by everything that it has to say without first thinking it thoroughly through. That goes especially for the ways to save money section.

Popularity: 76% [?]

The best way to acquire wealth is to purchase a home. But when you do actually get the house you must use a mortgage lender in order to finance the purchase. They love to lend you money because they gain up to 3x times the amount back on the interest that they originally helped finance. The goal is to pay back this money with the least amount of interest payments that you can. You can win the lotto but for the realistic this is not an option. There are some strategies that you can incorporate to cut your loan term down by as much as 2/3 of the time thus paying back less interests.

The 10% Principal Rule

This is one of the simplest ways to cut the term by as much as 66% less and save you a bunch in interests costs. Simply every month that you pay your mortgage, add 10% – 20% extra and add it to the principle. Lets say that you have a mortgage of $2000.00; add $200.00 and make it an additional payment towards your principle.

Another slower way is that you can do this once a year like around the time that get your tax return back. So lets say that you still have a $2000.00 mortgage, at the end/beginning of the year send a one time payment to go towards principle only for $2400.00.

Advantages

1. You are in control.
2. Limited possibilities for late payment.
3. You decide how much or when to pay extras.

Disadvantages

1. Not automatic, all responsibility is left on you and your discretion.

This is the absolute simplest and safest way to reduce your mortgage term. I used this method on a property and sometimes I put the extra towards principle every month but I also put extra in bulk one time a year. The property is a little over a year old and I reduced my years by 3 1/2. My monthly interests deductions from my mortgage payments has reduced and my regular monthly principle monthly has increased.

Bi-Weekly Factor

This is a method that makes it automatic but some lenders charge hidden fees for this so be careful. All you have to do is set it up with your mortgage lender that you want to pay basically twice a month. This will hit your cash flow a little hard and it will become mandatory to pay this at said times.

Advantages

1. All automatic.

Disadvantages

1. You are not in control.
2. Increased possibilities for late payments.
3. Everything is fixed.

I love looking at my monthly statement and realizing that I am cutting down my mortgage on a monthly basis. I personally use the 10% Principle Rule combined with an extra month worth of mortgage paid directly toward principle. Use these steps and pay off for your home in no time so that you can start on your new home/property purchase.

Popularity: 73% [?]