<$Wednesday, January 30, 2008$>
Because free money beats borrowed money any day.
| As helpful as Husband's student loan checks are, it would be nice if he could find scholarships that he's eligible for. With his grades (straight As!), I wouldn't think that would be hard. Add in his disability and his bout with cancer, and you'd think there would be organizations out there that would throw free college money at him. We haven't found any so far, though. Even so, I plan to keep looking. Like I said, the loans are a help, but we're only delaying having to pay his tuition by a few years. It would be really nice to get some financial aid that didn't have to be paid back. Labels: disclosure, education, loans |
<$Friday, January 25, 2008$>
Real Estate Investing 101
| *Sponsored Post* At any rate, real estate is definitely an investment that we'd like to make someday. I don't know if we want to make careers out of it, but it would definitely be a nice source of supplemental income. So I'm wondering about the benefits of Nouveau Riche University. They were recently featured in the magazine Your Business At Home, which lends them a sense of legitimacy in a field that seems to be pretty rife with get rich quick scams. From what I understand from reading the articles, they are an accredited university, developing distance learning program, and what you get for the fee that they charge looks like a pretty good value. I don't think we're prepared to go as far as going back to college to learn about real estate investing just yet, but we are pretty clueless about what all it entails and exactly what opportunities are available. So it's nice to know that resources like this exist. I'd like to hear your opinions on whether a program like this would be a good investment of time and money. Labels: disclosure, education, investing, resources |
<$Tuesday, January 22, 2008$>
Catholic Homeschooling Made Easy
| *Sponsored Post* My husband and I have pretty much already decided that if we ever have kids, we'll most likely home school them. This isn't a decision I take lightly, nor is it one I ever thought I would make; but there are a lot of motivations behind it. Some of them are practical: if our kids take too much after me, they're bound to have special needs, and I feel like I'm the best qualified to teach my (hypothetical future) children how to cope with them. Some of them are fear-driven: whether it's rational or not, I don't want to put my (hypothetical future) children in a position where they might get shot. And some of it is, of course, religion-driven. Although my husband and I are Protestant Christians and plan to raise our children in that tradition, I think the St. Gabriel Catholic Academy looks like a great resource for home schooling. They provide access to online teachers and homeschooling portfolios and resources that cover a full curriculum. They include catechism training, but I would think that as the creator of your child's curriculum, you would have full control over how much of that, if any, that they receive if you're not Catholic. And even if you are, I think exposure to different traditions helps to create a well-rounded, solid foundation on which faith can grow. Labels: disclosure, education, resources |
<$Monday, January 21, 2008$>
Kicking around some ideas
| I've been planning for a while now to take some online classes in web design. My company will foot the bill for any education I receive while I work here, so it seems pretty foolish not to take advantage of that. I've just been waiting until we a) replace our ancient computer and b) move to an area where we can get high speed internet access. However, lately I've been having some doubts. Web technology moves so fast that anything I learn in a formal setting is bound to be out of date by the time I learn it. Also, back when good web design just involved HTML, basic CSS and a little bit of javascript, I taught myself by reading books and studying source code of other web sites, and managed to create some pretty nice looking web pages, if I do say so myself. I have no doubt that I could learn advanced CSS and PHP the same way; and once I learn, as long as I can create a good end product, potential freelance clients aren't likely to care where I learned how to do it. And that's what I want to learn it for--freelance work. I plan to be a work-at-home mom one of these days, and I want to have something other than writing lined up to bring in extra income. I was mentioning all of this to a coworker--a mechanical/electrical drafter--the other day, but as soon as I mentioned taking classes in web design he cut me off: "You want to become a designer? That's great!" He didn't hear the "web" part and, being that we work for an engineering firm, he assumed I meant becoming a drafter/designer. Instead of correcting him, I paused, and a light bulb clicked on. Why not? This is a question I've been pondering ever since that conversation. I can think of plenty of reasons why: Like I said, I already work for an engineering firm. Getting a degree in drafting and design would put me in line for a major promotion and a substantial raise. I don't believe my current position is going anywhere any time soon, so I'm not too concerned about layoffs, but I could definitely stand to earn a higher salary. I don't see myself being able to quit working outside of the home anytime soon, at least not until my husband finishes school and finds a job with health benefits as good as the ones I get, and that will take a few more years. And as much as I don't hate my job, I don't love it, either. It would be nice to be qualified to do something other than either social work or glorified secretarial work--both of which tend to be underpaid and under appreciated (although the latter seems to be an exception at my company--they treat us project admins great, and pay us pretty decently, too). My biggest why not is the ADD factor: what if I don't enjoy it enough to be able to stand to do it all day? At least my current job only requires short-term tasks that match up pretty well with my attention span. What if I don't have any downtime in which to write? I had made up my mind to pursue a more creative career, knowing that kind of work makes me happier; what if I don't find this sufficiently creative to stave off boredom and keep from making me miserable? I guess my best advice to myself is to go ahead and take a class and see how I like it. After all, since my company will pay for it, I've got nothing to lose but time (although time is pretty valuable to me, so that's a pretty daunting loss), and if I don't like it I don't have to commit to pursuing it further. Of course I've got until the A and B up there in the first paragraph happen to make a final decision; but this is definitely something under consideration. *** Speaking of moving, another thing my husband and I are starting to consider is buying a duplex. I already mentioned that we're planning to buy a house this year. While looking at the listings to see what kind of housing is available in our price range, I noticed a few duplexes in the listing. This almost seems like a no-brainer: we could live in one side and rent out the other half for the cost of our mortgage payment. Meanwhile, we could make improvements to our half, so that when the tenants move out we can move to the other side and rent out the improved half for higher rent and work on fixing up the other side. Then when we're ready we can buy a proper house and draw rental income from both sides of the duplex. It all sounds pretty good on paper. In reality, though, we don't know anything about being landlords. We've never even owned property, let alone rented it out. I suspect we still don't have a full grasp on what all it entails to own a house. Owning somebody else's house might be deeper waters than we're ready for. Fortunately, my older sister and her husband got into buying duplexes last year, and they now own several. Husband and I have discussed taking them out to dinner to get their opinion on whether they think we could handle it. I ran the idea past my sister when I saw her the other day, and she seemed to think it was a good idea. Her husband is pretty handy, though, and able to complete most repair jobs himself; we're both pretty useless in that area, so we'd almost certainly have to hire someone to do repairs. There's also all of the legal stuff to consider. Not only renter's rights, but would we be allowed to handpick the tenants we believe would make the best neighbors, or would that be somehow considered discrimination?* I think all of the cons I've thought of so far are things we could overcome simply by getting educated. Otherwise, it sounds like a great way to increase our earnings. I suppose I really should complete my mortgage application and see just how much we're eligible for before making any decisions in this regard, though. It could all be rendered moot pretty quickly. Labels: education, extra income, goals, house-hunt, investing |