THAT is where money is created (and destroyed), not the mint.For some perspective on all this "doom and gloom" regarding our increasing money supply, look at this recent graph of the M-2 supply (used for forecasting inflation).As you can clearly see, the M-2 supply is growing in a nice steady linear fashion (gray area), not skyrocketing off the chart.

The old-fashioned solution to something like this would be drapes that were lined.Sometimes being old-fashioned has benefits.

There are times that we have actually purchased a property and just waited 4 to 6 weeks to get started so that we would not have to be concerned with the 90 day rule and to line up with more favorable selling times.We list our homes on the MLS.

Intel really stole the show during the recession by working hard on their R&D while other companies cut back, but what do you do if x86 dies in favor of ARM and x64?

Raise Taxes#1 would require majorly slashing discretionary spending (defense, entitlements, etc) and changing the laws to slash mandatory spending (SS, medicare, etc), and would suck for a lot of people...but oh well...it's a sacrifice for the good of the nation.In general, I'm against #2, but think it needs to be done solely based on the situation our politicians have gotten us into over the past 30 years.And I'm NOT in favor of doing #2 if we don't do #1...you either do both or neither (and if you do neither, we need accept that we're screwed long-term).Btw, if we can do #1 and then:1.

And on top of all, "investing" in gold is not favored by the IRS (unlike businesses or real estate).

My motivations are two folds: I would like to own (and grow) real estate as part of my overall financial portfolio, and second, wait for more favorable market conditions to sell any portion of real estate that I acquire in the near term.

There are two separate issues here.First, typically the laws -when you rent to someone in your own home- are more favorable to the landlord.

They do it for their tenants, so it's like returning the favor.

Established LLCs will use commercial lenders, though, and some lenders will have more favorable terms when you have a track record with them and tangible assets/cash flow.