All Forum Posts by: Aaron Taylor

I keep wondering if people's homes in California are going to get so expensive that they literally can just sell them and retire in the midwest.  I think some people don't even realize how cheap you can live out in small towns in like Nebraska, like $100 rent or sometimes even free.  I remember some friends of mine from high  school were staying in a house (4 of them) for $50 a month...COMBINED, lol.  $12.50 apiece.  The towns are shrinking and rather than let the house fall apart, people will just let other people stay in them just to keep it up.  Not that it would be the most ideal thing for most people, but if you're idea of paradise is a house overlooking a lake on farm within an hour of a major city, those are in ample supply all over the country for a fraction of California prices.

I find that Denver is one of the nicest places I've been.  But so does everyone else unfortunately.  Skiing at Breckenridge is awesome. 

My guess is that the next time the economy goes south @Scott Trench you'll have a lot better chance of getting a discount. I've noticed that as the economy has been getting stronger the number of coupons available has diminished significantly. Basically, they've got all the bargaining power right now. However, economy goes south and they need sales, then I bet they'd be all over it.

I just buy coupons off ebay for 10% off.  Either a coupon for the store itself or a competitor's coupon, both usually work.  

I do this for every store, not just hardware stores.  Ebay is a goldmine for cheap coupons that can save you a ton of money.

This is just a general question, but I see it discussed on here a lot that your rental properties are under a different insurance company than your primary residence (and other items) because usually your main insurance companies aren't great with investment insurance.  The question I have is, I have an umbrella policy through my main insurance company, is there any issue with having the rentals using a different company?  I'd like to save money but not if it's going to cause me headaches down the road.  Looking for some advice.  Thanks

I know this is unrelated to SoCal, but in my suburb area outside KC I've seen the market go cold.  It was white hot all spring, then it was like instantly cold second week of June, inventory is piling up.  I don't know why at all, prices aren't too high, and there's nothing from an economic standpoint that would have stopped anyone except for possibly the rate hike.  Nobody has really lowered prices much yet though, so it's kind of at a standstill for now.

 That is exactly what happen to me on my personal residence.  We'd been using the same company for years, always treated us fair.  In fact we had a very similar deal, compressor went out, guy said it would be $5500 to fix or a new system for $8000 (system was 11 years old, heat pump).  Called another place, they replaced the compressor for $3k, been working fine now for 5 years (still under warranty too).  

Next time it has a major repair we'll probably replace it, but I'm of the mindset that as long as the repair average per year is less than the new system, just repair it while you can.  

But definitely get additional quotes.  I really couldn't believe the first guy tried to gouge us that badly.  I don't know if he was hard up for money or what, but disappointing.

There's actually another option to consider.  Sometimes farm houses come with a decent chunk of land that the homeowner doesn't really need or want.  So you may have a $300k house with $100k of farmland but when combined it's only a $350k property because the house hunter doesn't want to pay extra for the land and the farmer doesn't want the house with the land.  You can sometimes:

a)  sell the land to a neighboring farmer

b)  if close to a city, subdivide the land into acreages for people to buy and put a house on

So you might be able to save $50k on your house by selling the farmland for $100k and still get the farm life.  Not all farms are like that though, and you'd want to talk to neighboring farmers beforehand probably.

I know that in the midwest that isn't likely to work.  Land price is too high for what you can make on it as a farmer, so most of the time your cash rent won't even pay for the mortgage payment (it probably would eventually as crop prices rise over the years, but not to start).  I looked into it (my father farms part time) and there was no way to make the math work where he lives or where I live (Nebraska/Kansas).

The Acer I mentioned above works decent for video editing.  I've made about 160 videos on it (older version of that one).  To be honest though desktops typically work better for video editing if you're going to do a lot of it, bigger screens + faster.  I only did it on the laptop because I like sitting in a recliner.  :)

 You could go with something like this from Amazon (it's not on sale now so you can get it cheaper sometimes, but you get the idea):

https://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-i5-8250U-GeForc...

Has 8 hour battery (it says 15 but let's be real here lol), good graphics card, ssd, etc.

Macbook Air's are a pretty decent deal too if you want to go Mac.  They also have a SSD.  That's the most important thing, gotta have a SSD, otherwise your laptop will be super sluggish no matter the manufacturer.