Posts in category 'Financing And Mortgages'

While living in a tiny cabin (~300 sq. feet) over in Lincoln, my bathroom was literally in between the living room and bedroom. Needless to say, privacy was not on the menu when I had visitors. Convenient escapes out to the kitchen (or my truck) offered a little more of a buffer and made the space tolerable. For the price I was paying, it was worth the hassle. Today, I have 4 bathrooms to clean and I'm (sort of) lamenting those simpler times.

While a bathroom is not the most prominent room in your North Conway NH home, there's no reason it can't stand out (in a good way!). We've all had small, large, cramped and expansive bathrooms in our lives. Today I'd like to explore a...

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I enjoy cleaning the house. OK, to be clear, I enjoy the feeling of HAVING a clean house and the best way to get to that goal is to actually clean. I'm not fancy enough (yet) to have my own housecleaner, but that's on my bucket list for sure. Imagine combining my love of a clean house with simply coming home to a house that has been cleaned. I'm giddy at just the thought. But with all that said, there are some myths floating around about cleaning that I'd like to shed some light on. Some are simply helpful to avoid and others are downright harmful to your North Conway NH home. Let's get scrubbing!

The first myth is about the valu...

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If you happen to be reading this on Sunday, you'll think I'm crazy. If you are reading this on Saturday, we're good! Fall is a time of roller coaster weather in the northeast. One day you are soaking in the sun on an awesome bike ride or hike, shorts and t-shirt blowing in the breeze. The next day you're packed under long johns and your favorite wool sweater, watching a high school football game huddled under a blanket. I just visited a friend in Boulder, Colorado and on Monday of this past week, helped him shovel 6" of snow off his front deck! It truly is the most amazing time of year.

My friend has lavender plants growing down below his deck and the wet heavy snow wreaked a bit of havoc on those poor unsuspecting bushes. It made me think of my own fledgling shrubs ba...

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Before the turn of the century (Sweet Moses, that sounds awful!) I lived in Portsmouth with 2 roommates. For reasons that have left my memory at this point, we all participated in a "fast" for an entire week. This meant nothing other than water and tea for a full 5 days. (We weren't about to cramp our weekend style!) There were two prominent lessons we all seemed to pick up from this experience. First was how easy it was. Sure we were hungry through the first 36 hours or so, but after that the hunger dissipated. The second lesson was how much extra time we had in the day. Removing shopping, cooking, eating and cleaning from the day freed up at least 2-3 hours. In the end, we learned more about what we could live without and a ton more respect for those who don't go hungry optio...

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For some reason, I have stumbled across a handful of articles lately about investment properties. Never wanting to be left out, I figured now is as good a time as any to join the fray. Even if you are not in the market for a new home, how about exploring the possibility of buying a home as an investment.

If, after all the facts were in and all the calculating and figuring was done, you could own a piece of real estate while having someone else pay the mortgage; would you do it? I think most of us would say a resounding "Yes!". There are a few more factors to the equation than just the financials, so let's take a look at a few of them.

Time: When I purchased my first investment property it was a 2 family home in Southern New Hampshire. All wa...

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