I originally wrote this a few months ago but only just now finished it. Some of the details in the post may be a little out of date but they were accurate at the time. I’m now working on the next article in the series and will have that up within the next few days.

This is the first in a multi-part series of posts on building up your credit lines. I’ve been reviewing the credit lines I have open and working to improve my credit scores as much as possible to prepare to apply for a number of new credit cards. The benefit of this is to both grab a bunch of account opening bonuses as well as taking advantage of 0% balance transfer offers.

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The international buyer fell through…not entirely surprising.

We did end up with another offer on the house that we’ve accepted. They are using conventional financing and are pre-approved for the purchase amount. The inspection happens next week and the closing is set for June 15th.

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So we’ve gone through the negotiations and have agreed to sell our home in Detroit… The final sale price is quite a bit lower than we’d hoped for ($375K) but given the market conditions and the limited time we have to take advantage of my wife’s relocation package (which covers commission) we felt it was the best deal we could make.

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This will be a short note as I am leaving for LA in a few minutes for a meeting with my largest client…

Just wanted to post to say we retired our HELOC debt this week! You may remember my post back in November about setting goals.

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I’ve been stuck inside all week with the flu (103.5 temps bring on really weird dreams…) Today however, I had a rescheduled (from Monday) appointment with an Oral Surgeon. It seems that at nearly 40 years of age it is now finally time for me to have my wisdom teeth pulled. Figuring out the schedule now but I am not looking forward to it…

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My Investment Experiment this year proved to be an expensive learning experience. While I have a few winners and a load of experience under my belt I made some costly mistakes.

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As I mentioned in an earlier post on Saving on taxes through additional retirement savings I’ve selected an administrator for our solo 401K. In the end after talking with nearly a dozen providers it came down to two choices.

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Apologies for not having this up first thing in the morning. There were a lot more submissions to go through than I expected…

Anyway, without further ado, I present the 80th installment of the Carnival of Personal Finance! I’ll be reading through the submissions I haven’t already today and moving the catagories or deleting irrelevant posts. If you find any problems, please contact me.

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When we moved to this house only 4 short months ago our only option for broadband Internet was via satellite. We’re about 3.5 miles from town and cable doesn’t come out this far. We’re also roughly 21,000 feet from our telephone Central Office. Normally DSL is limited to 18,000 feet but every month or so I tried qualifying for DSL via Verizon’s web site. To my surprise about 3 weeks ago the site responded that, yes, I could get DSL!

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This has been an extraordinary year for us. Between my wife getting laid off, moving to Illinois and the changes in my job I haven’t had a lot of time to plan things out. It’s mid-November already and time is running out to put plans in motion that will affect our taxes for the year.

Rather than one huge post, I thought I’d break things down into bite-sized chunks. The first post on reducing our tax burden through additional retirement savings will be posted later today.