After realizing that Mr. FAF and I will become millionaires by doing just one thing – maxing out our 401(k) and 403(b), I have been wondering why many people don’t pursue this route. According to a 2017 Vanguard study, only 10% of Americans maxed out […]
Decision on a whim This past weekend, Mr. FAF and I decided to get adventurous. We went to check out free new development communities in the DC areas. That’s right! We’re thinking about buying a second house. We sort of made that exploratory decision on […]
Have you ever wondered if you can buy a rental property in a faraway city where the housing prices are much lower than those where you live? I have entertained that thought from time to time, especially given the expensive real estate market in the […]
Have ever found yourself in a real estate scam and questioned your passion as a result? I once went to a supposedly free seminar at a fancy hotel only to find that it was the intro to a series of expensive courses on real estate […]
When Mr. FAF and I were two poor graduate students, our biggest wish at the time was to get a full-time job. We would love to have a good salary, but as they say, beggars can’t be choosers. All we wanted was a stable source […]
Mr. FAF and I bought our first home in early 2016. We went from being long-time renters to home owners over night. Though excited, we were also aware of the huge mortgage that we had gotten ourselves into to make one of our biggest dreams […]
Real estate investment is one area I have been itching to get into in the near future. I’ve felt the urge to buy rental property ever since I was in college. That urge intensified after Mr. FAF and I bought our first home in DC […]
I moved to Washington DC almost four years ago for grad school and have been living in the area since. Before moving to the city, I had done some research on the cost of living in DC and worked like crazy to save up. But […]
Frugality enables Mr. FAF and me to simplify our priorities. Buying expensive furniture to adorn our house to the max is just not one of them. I am not a minimalist, and neither is Mr. FAF. We keep what we need and will need in the […]
I recently received an email from a reader asking for tips on how to buy a house in an expensive area like DC. It was my first time receiving a direct message from one of you. I was so excited I told Mr. FAF right […]
When Mr. FAF and I bought our first home, it came with a $459 home warranty plan purchased by the seller. By then we had never heard of or understood what home warranty was. “How is it different from home insurance?” We asked ourselves and […]
I just realized today that I have a retirement account fully invested in a mutual fund with Vanguard. I contributed nothing to this account, didn’t monitor it, didn’t know the rate of return or what it consisted of, or that it even existed until today. […]