Our house in Michigan sits empty (aside from a bed and TV I left there for my visits for work.) It is on the market and priced competitively with other properties in the area but the housing market in and around Detroit is very slow at the moment. Between the Big-3 laying off workers and salaries stagnating or falling there just isn’t a lot of demand for housing. Many people are leaving the area as well (as we have) which has had the effect of increasing the supply of real-estate on the market. To top it off, foreclosures are at double the rate of the nation as a whole so banks are dumping these homes on the market as well, at much lower than previous market value.

We’ve had several people interested, but nobody with enough money to buy the place, or even justify a showing. It’s a great property and I know it is just a matter of time before it sells, but uncertainty is something I’ve never liked. I’d also like to have the cash to put into stocks as I think we’re on the verge of a very good market for the next year or two.

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As I posted about before we are buying a car from my dad. On top of the savings we’re getting by buying used I received another nice surprise today when I went to the Secretary of State (DMV) to register it. There is no sales tax on vehicles sold to family members. At $16,000 x 6% this comes out to $960 we didn’t end up having to pay. (Although I did have to pay $158 for the license plate… :/)

Since my dad tends to buy new cars every 2-3 years I’m thinking I should always buy his hand-me-downs…

New to us that is. Since my wife will now be employed and we’ll need two reliable vehicles it is time to retire our 1990 Honda Civic. It’s been good to us and well worth the $650 we paid for it (plus about the same for repairs).

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As I had mentioned in an earlier post my wife has been searching for a job for the last couple of months. She’s highly educated (pHd) and has a lot of experience (12+ years) and has not had any trouble getting interviews. I’ve been keeping things kind of low-key since her trip to Arkansas was cancelled but now things are looking pretty positive on two fronts.

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This seems simple but I too often forget to do it…

Some background first: I have a Household Bank credit card that pays me 2% cash back on all purchases. I use it to pay for just about everything until I max out the cash rewards ($400 per year). I especially like this card for business expenses I’ll get reimbursed for. Essentially, my company is spending part of the $20,000 a year I’ll put on this card and I’m making some free money on the cash back.

This is all well and good, but how can you make even more money on cash reward cards?

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If you work for a large corporation like I do chances are you could be saving some money and not realize it. Many companies, mine included, have group discounts in place with other businesses. For instance, the company I work for has discounts available for Cingular, Nextel, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, Apple, HP/Compaq and others.

I wasn’t aware of this until yesterday when I was told I had been granted some stock options and was surfing the HR portion of our intranet for the details.  I noticed a ‘Deals’ section and went there, wondering what it was.

Discounts vary but for Verizon the discount was 15% off of monthly rates. This will work out to roughly $15-18 a month on the two lines we have for my wife and I.  Not a ton of money but enough to fund a modest dinner out for the two of us.  (or buy a 1/4 tank of gas…

Check with your HR department, the couple of minutes it will take may pay off.

Last week while the market was going nuts I was attempting to buy back Gasco (GSX).  The Ameritrade (now TD Ameritrade) website was down for a couple of minutes (probably too much load) and I missed my price on the stock.  This caused me to miss out on a small profit from the trade.

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Building wealth is more about the money you keep than the income you generate. Even those with modest incomes can build enormous fortunes as demonstrated by many blog posts, books and articles. A key component to this in most, if not all of these cases is regular investing over time. You don’t need to invent the next great thing since sliced bread or invest in penny stocks with 1,000% returns to get there. Invest regularly and conservatively and put away as much as you can as early as you can. Given enough time and a surprisingly small investment you can generate millions of dollars. It goes without saying that the less money you spend on your every day expenses the more you will have available to invest. (of course you also need the discipline to actually invest - but that is for another post…)

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Quick post this morning because I am running late…

Since I started managing a team of developers almost three years ago I’ve found my coding skills have gotten a bit less shar than they used to be. While I’m still a developer at heart I spend too much time in meetings and have too many other responsibilities to write code on a regular basis. I still like to code and even find/make time to do so every now and then. I also pitch in on projects when the team is overwhelmed. While I’ve managed to put together a pretty decent library for the team, I often find that a quick, searchable resource is more useful.

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So, our mechanic took the Honda apart (we told him to take his time) and determined that

a) It was the timing belt that failed, and
b) It did not bend the valves.

We told him to go ahead and fix it.  Picked up the car yesterday and it’s running great!  Only cost $300 too which is $200 less than the other place wanted.  So we’re once again with two cars and not having to spend $thousands on buying something else.  I swear though, this is the last time I’m fixing that thing…