For some, the idea of walking away from a mortgage presents quite a moral dilemma. Others feel duty-bound to fulfill their contractual obligation to continue making payments to the lender, regardless of how much (or how little) their home is worth. Personally, I believe if one has the ability to pay ...

I have always had a general interest in real estate, which is a little strange, since until just recently I leased or rented homes, or shared one with a family member. Buying our first home was confusing enough as a first-time home buyer, but considering how to buy a foreclosed ...

It was not until I reached 30 that I started to turn my own financial life around. Unfortunately, by then, the damage was done. In retrospect, I often knew the decisions I was making were not-so-smart, but I did them anyway because I could always “pay it off later” or ...

You should know right up front that while my wife and I have a mortgage, one of our top financial goals is to have it paid off by the time our kids enter college (some seven or eight years away). To get there, we’ll have to invest a significant portion ...

These continue to be the worst of times for home sellers. The rate of foreclosures has fallen, yet RealtyTrac.com reported in early March that the number of homeowners facing foreclosure in February 2010 still was six percent more than in February 2009. That six percent was the smallest annual increase in ...

Home ownership has long been described as the American Dream. Some in the media have questioned that statement recently, and for good reason. For many, their dream has turned into a nightmare with underwater mortgage balances, mortgage rates adjusting, and ever-increasing property taxes. Still, most of us take great pride ...

Over the weekend I caught up on some blog reading and found an old post from The Simple Dollar where Trent discussed the differences in today’s budgets from those of our parents. It was an interesting post, and the comments provided more food for thought. I began inventorying our own ...

This is the fourth post in a series called Saving With Purpose: Living a More Intentional Financial Life. In this series, I plan to highlight a number of specific savings goals my family has identified we would like to achieve over the next few decades. In the last series post we ...

A few days ago I wrote about the pros and cons of renting versus financing a home with a mortgage. In that post I presented mostly advantages to renting: no debt, more flexibility, less costs for insurance, maintenance and taxes, etc. However, I failed to present one major advantage to ...