All Forum Posts by: Barry Robbins

I have a saver's switch on the A/C unit on our primary residence. A friend of mine told me he had asked a friend of his who is a HVAC professional tell him those hurt the life of your A/C unit.

I did a search for "saver switch" and "saver's switch" on biggerpockets and throughout the internet and I have not seen this mentioned anywhere else.

I thought it would be a worthwhile topic to get some input on as it's not worth the $60 savings a year if it's going to burn out my compressor.

Does anyone have any thoughts or experiences with this?

Thanks!

Thanks!

When you say unsecured do you mean something like a non-recourse loan where you would be putting something like 30% down?

I actually just renewed my lease, but I am doing some forward thinking about my dept so when the time comes I will be ready.

Thanks guys! Good to hear that I have options!

My only other dept is 900 dollars on a credit card. What other information would help paint a better picture?

My fiance and I are getting ready to purchase a new vehicle for us to share and split payments on. However, I remember something a past employer said to me once. They strongly suggested that I have any car loans paid off before seeking loans for a home. My fiance and I make around $105,000 yearly combined gross income. My fiance currently has a school loan taken out, but it is not in her name, however it is reducing her cashflow by $600 a month. Her credit score averages about 720 whereas mine is closer to the 780s. I will most likely be the one taking out the investment loan(s) but I'd prefer to put the car loan under my name for the better interest rate on the car loan. The car loan will be for around $12,000. What should I be considering when pondering who should take out the car loan and how this will affect my ability to take out an investment or FHA loan in the near future? Thank you for your feedback.

Hehe thanks for pointing out my typo Curt. I just fixed that tiny little mistake :). It's good to know you can do things both ways. But then again who said you couldn't?

Currently my fiance and I are renters. We have discussed buying a home many times but I have several lines of thought which I'd like to run by you all. Currently we pay $1180 a month to rent out a 1140 square foot town home and about $1536.00 after utilities. It is in the heart of the Denver Tech Center and we have been living here for almost 2 years. We enjoy the area very much and would like to stay near this area. I work in the Tech Center just 5 minutes from home and my fiance works about 15 minutes north of here.

Back when interest rates were around 6.5% I talked to some Mortgage Bankers / Brokers and estimated that if we bought a $150,000 house with a 3% down payment we would be paying the same as we are now after PITI minus tax advantages plus the increased utility bill we would be paying if we had a yard and extra square footage plus maintenance expenses. We had looked at many $150,000 homes and came to the conclusion that they were not in places we wanted to live or they did not have the space we desired (especially since we are talking about starting a family in 5 years or so). Our combined gross yearly income is approx. $95,000. Our combined income after taxes is approx. 68,400 (best guess judging 28% taken out of pay check). Right now about 27% of our combined net income goes towards rent + utilities which seems like a reasonable amount to me. My first question is, is it worth it for us to spend a little more of our income on a home and still continue to save or to stay where we are for awhile and save more each month for our future real estate investments? Should we focus on buying a home for ourselves first or purchasing an investment property first? My final question is, how will having an FHA loan affect our ability to get an investment loan? We have discussed buying a home and renting out rooms or purchasing a duplex, but the idea of sharing the house doesn't appeal to us and the latter doesn't make economic sense for where we want to live. Thanks in advance for all your responses and please let me know if any of these points need clarifying.

I had a question of my own concerning this worksheet. What is the purpose of adding back the principal payments and why does it affect taxable net income? Does this change year by year depending on how much each mortgage payment is contributing to paying down the principal?