Real Estate

How This Family Slashed Their Mortgage Payment By $700/month

How This Family Slashed Their Mortgage Payment By $700/month

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 […]

A Landlord’s Worst Nightmare Comes True

A Landlord’s Worst Nightmare Comes True

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 […]

How To Save on Rent in Washington DC

How To Save on Rent in Washington 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 […]

How To Save On Furniture

How To Save On Furniture

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 […]

How We Bought Our First Home

How We Bought Our First Home

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 […]

Why We Don’t Buy Home Warranty

Why We Don’t Buy Home Warranty

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 […]

How To Navigate the DC Metro Housing Market

How To Navigate the DC Metro Housing Market

When Mr. FAF and I were looking to buy a house, we did a lot of research on the Washington DC metro area. We were young and wanted to locate to a big city with a lot of job opportunity. DC is THE place to go […]

Saving on Selling Agent Commission: 3% v. 1.5%

Saving on Selling Agent Commission: 3% v. 1.5%

This post doesn’t contain affiliate links and is not sponsored by any companies mentioned below. Mr. FAF and I love our house and want to keep it long-term as an investment. But we have also thought about selling it at one point and move to another […]

7 Lessons From Our 1st Realtor Experience

7 Lessons From Our 1st Realtor Experience

Mr. FAF and I decided to look into buying our first home in the summer of 2015. At first we just wanted to look at houses and weren’t sure if we wanted to invest our savings into such a big purchase. We didn’t tell a […]

The Pros & Cons Of Living In A Tiny House

The Pros & Cons Of Living In A Tiny House

I recently came across three Youtube channels that talk about the new Tiny House Movement and mobile life: Kirsten Dirksen, Tiny House Listings, and Exploring Alternatives. The essence of these videos boils down to three factors: — Avoiding mortgage/debt — Minimalism — Traveling After watching almost 100 […]

My 6 Favorite Real Estate Websites

My 6 Favorite Real Estate Websites

My interest in real estate investment has been growing since Mr. FAF and I bought our first house in 2016. I want to start buying rental property and get into landlording as a side business. As we were looking up houses in the DC area […]

Rental Property After Our House Is Paid Off

Rental Property After Our House Is Paid Off

Mr. FAF and I bought our first house in 2016. We’ve been trying to save up and put all of our extra income each month towards the mortgage. Our goal after our house is paid off is to either (1) buy a rental property or […]