17 November 2007 One Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

So I got a call early this morning, which woke me up by the way, and it’s the property manager I hired to take care of my parent’s rental property located out of town. It turns out that the party-loving tenants in one of the units got into some sort of argument and all of the windows are now broken. Now my job is to find out what in the world happened and to get them to pay for the damages before the city cites us. Thats one bad thing about owning rental property in the San Francisco bay area. Properties in good areas yield very low returns and to get higher returns, one must journey into areas which are not exactly the best. With that comes lower quality tenants. Keep that in mind when investing in real estate. Like any other investment vehicle, high rewards usually come with higher risks.

Anyway, lets see whats happening in the world of personal finance websites.

Saving Money on Books. Steve illustrates some great ways to save money on reading material. If you like to read, you can save some good money with these strategies. I don’t have a chance to read as much as I like nowadays. My book pile keeps growing and my RSS reader never stops feeding me new content. I hope Steve makes a post on how to find more time for reading.

Beware the Siren Song of Gift Cards. Gift cards aren’t always a good an idea as it seems. Nickel explains why in this recent article. I don’t know why, but I’ve become accustomed to buying gift cards all the time. I don’t even know if the recipient ends up using it or not.

The Psychology of Investing: Four Reasons why People Fail. Steve’s Property Pundit is quickly becoming one of my favorite sites. He’s got great info and not too many sites cover real estate investing. He presents an interesting take on why people fail in real estate. My thoughts: real estate is a great vehicle for wealth but its not for everyone.

Short Term Disability Insurance is for Old Married People. True or false? Money Smart Life tries to answer that question by presenting some real life examples. If you’ve got really big bills to pay which won’t stop coming regardless of your employment status, you may want to consider some insurance, otherwise I’d just stick with an emergency fund.