Here are the posts from around the blogosphere that I think deserve most of your attention.

Tricia @ Blogging Away Debt suggests that you should let your kids make money mistakes. Trying to guard them too much doesn’t help in other areas of life either.

Jim @ Blueprint For Financial Prosperity gives five good reasons to start your own garden. We are on our way to do that, what about you?

Trent at The Simple Dollar shares good thoughts on The Value (and Cost) of Experiences.

You may want to check out my guest post at Cash Money Life. I am trying to figure out the remarkable approach to your finances. Patrick himself has published a great How to Become A Millionaire article series.

The DINKs have shared few good ideas for Inexpensive Organic Alternatives.

FMF asks Would You Like a Four-Day Work Week?. The post is from the beginning of the month, but you can still comment if you have something else to say.

Jeremy @ Generation X Finance warns about the Top 12 Money Mistakes Most People Make. Do you make some of them too?

I have one unfinished post about biotechnology investing sitting in drafts. I believe this is a very profitable niche. Henry @ Money Smart Life has been quicker than me and posted A Beginner’s Guide to Biotechnology Investments.

Pinyo @ Moolanomy has always been a great promoter of the idea to build streams of alternative income. Now he even suggests that this is the career of the future.

If you read the my article about India you may already think about riding a bike. David @ My Two Dollars thinks about applying the same strategy in USA.

Do you dream about passive income? David @ MoneyNing gives an intro to it and a lot more. That’s indeed a good summary.

And what can I say about Punny Money except that he’s always extraordinarily cool: Five Incredibly Stupid Ways People Are Trying To Save Money on Gas. Don’t ever think about skipping his blog.

There is a lovely guest post on Stop Buying Crap: Four Things That Are Crap. May I add some?

Another guest blog that deserves attention is published on The Difgerati Life – The Cost of Being Overweight. If you wonder if this relates to you, try checking with this overweight calculator.

And finally I want to finish with a must read article by Steve Pavlina – What I Learned From Going Bankrupt in My 20s That Proves to Be Immensely Valuable in My 30s.

Trent from The Simple Dollar is one of my favorite bloggers. Judging by the numbers in his Feedburner chicklet, he’s liked also from at least another 35,000 readers – Trent is quite a popular fellow. In 2007 The Simple Dollar got Performancing award for best business/money blog.

Besides the good posts there you will find some downloadables – just scroll the home page a little bit and you will find them at right.

Enough about the blog. Let’s try to have a look deeper inside Trent’s brain – get your scalpel and join me now:

SI: Man, I can count at least 10 financial mistakes you have done! (Oh, well, you have actually written about them in your blog). Do you regret making them? Don’t you wish you could go many years back and be a wise frugal guy with a white beard yet from the teen age?

Trent: “Bottoming out” taught me a lot of lessons about how I should live my life and what values I should focus on. I’m not sure that simply having all the right answers in college would have really taught me much of anything at all. When I was in college, I was already sure I had all the right answers, anyway, so I likely would have just ignored them – or implemented just enough to keep my head barely above water. I think the path I followed was the best one to follow.

SI Note: 1. But the girls in school would enjoy the white beard, no?
2. I can see myself doing some of the Trent’s mistakes, fortunately not all. What about you – can you look at your financial habits right now and say you have figured the right way?

SI: If I only have the time to read one single post from your blog, which should be it? Why?

Trent: This one sums up my whole personal finance philosophy in five simple images:
Everything You Ever Really Needed to Know About Personal Finance on the Back of Five Business Cards

SI Note: That’s indeed a must read post. Managing with our finance is really as simple as following the ideas shared there. Of course, implementation is what makes ideas work at the end.

SI: Let’s say I can offer you a job paying 10x times more than you make now from all your income streams. There is only one little catch: it’s a job that you really hate to do. Is it a deal?

Trent: It depends on whether that job can stay constrained to an eight hour day or not. If that job takes over my whole life, no deal. If I can keep it constrained to a nine to five, where I don’t have to think about it at all when I walk out the door, then sure. But a job with that kind of salary naturally does begin to take over your life – and right now, I wouldn’t trade my personal life for anything.

SI Note: It sound very tempting to me to accept such a job just for one year no matter how much it takes of your life. If you can get paid 10 times your current income for an year, such an offer would give you 9 years of freedom. There is one big problem though – when they taste the big money, most people can’t stop.

Liked what you read so far? Make sure to subscribe to Trent’s RSS Feed or his email newsletter. You won’t regret spending some time reading his posts.

I was on two week visit in South India (a very nice place). That’s my second travel in this area, but now for the first time I paid special attention to the financial habits of the people there. The majority of Indian people have never been too rich but seem to manage living a healthy and happy life. I’ll share few of the most probable “secrets” that they use for that.

People in South India eat rice

I know many frugal bloggers suggest eating more rice since it is a cheap and healthy food. People here take it to the extreme – they eat rice every day. The typical meal of the locals consists of plain rice, gravies and chillies. In the casual restaurants it’s called exactly like that – just “meal”. The people are given a big plate and one guy walks around the tables and gives rice to everyone who has paid for a “meal”. You can get as much rice as you want. The price of the meal in most places is 35 rupees (currently $0.8).
I was not very keen on their everyday meal, but due to the huge variety of other rice based meals I was able to eat rice each other day without getting bored. In most cheap restaurants you’ll find all kinds of rice:

• Fried rice which can be fried with chicken, egg, ginger, vegetables, spinach, fish or prowns
• “Biryani” rice – a spicy rice meal usually veg or with whole boiled eggs, chicken, mutton, paneer (Indian cheese) or fish
• Typical Indian rice – ghee rice, curd rice etc…

Just plain boiled rice is sold everywhere on kiosks so you can get it home and use with your own gravies. In the stores people can find 20kg sacks of rice for about 700 rupees ($16-$17).

Now on the video below you can see how they cook the rice in one “dhaba” (a cheap restaurant).

People eat mostly vegetarian food

A large part of Indian population are vegetarians. Usually their diet includes diary products, but there are many vegans as well. On top of that even the non-vegetarian eating people usually eat the typical veg “meal” described above at least once per day. So the overall consumption of meat is not high at all. Obviously along with the low food price that makes feeding a typical Indian family an affordable task even for these who receive really low income.

It seems that this diet is quite healthy because you rare see overweight people.

The families live together

The typical Indian family does not consist just of a couple and their kids. Many Indians live together with their parents and their brother’s and sister’s families. This means that most homes are inhabited by 8-10 people.

Most of us may not feel comfortable living like that, so am not advocating this. But it’s yet another way for Indians to cut their cost of living. However the primary reason for them doing it is not to save money. It’s just that their culture keeps healthy relations within the family members which use to support each other.

People ride bikes

One motor bike usually can go 50km (31 miles) with a litter of fuel. This is 3 or more times better than what most cars do. People in India ride motor bikes everywhere and as you can imagine their transportation costs are much lower than yours if you drive a car.

Here is a typical parking in Hyderabad, South India

Don’t forget that one bike can transport two people (well, in India it can handle a lot more than that), so even if you are carpooling you are not as frugal in transportation as them. Their use of bikes also reduces the traffic jams although that doesn’t seem to help enough at all. Watch this short video to get more idea how their roads look like:

Indians just live simple

Along with all that was said above, Indians just live simple life without feeling it as frugal. They just don’t seem to need much more than their everyday rice, “tiffins”, a piece of banana, a tap water (you should never drink it unless you are an Indian too), and a place to sleep. When we were going to the supermarket together with some Indians, I noticed they don’t have our European habit to hang around the rows and wonder what else to buy. Most of them just go inside, buy whatever they have planned to buy, pay and go out. Most of them don’t even go to the supermarkets often that’s why most of the stores there are much smaller and supplied with less variety of products than what we are used to see in Europe and USA.

If that draws too rural picture in your imagination, I need to add that they go to the malls and movies from time to time, play PC games etc. normal things that people in the West do. But most Indians don’t go to bars or expensive restaurants and don’t drink alcohol which of course is another way to save a lot of money.

The lifestyle of people in India may or may not fully suit you but nevertheless you can learn from them to manage a simpler life with less stress, less consumption and, it seems that, more joy.

Yet another nice guy from the IT business comes to share his view about personal finance this week. David writes the Money Ning blog. He has a very interesting story explaining why he is interested in the money related topic. This is one of the reasons why I did not asked him such a super innovative question like “How did you decide to write about personal finance”. Oh well, I came up with 3 other questions instead.

David doesn’t speak too much, but who says that quality equals quantity? Let’s hear his words:

SI: So you want to be rich… Do you have an idea when you will be rich enough? Don’t you afraid you can be chasing the dream of riches all your life instead of living simple and enjoying more free time?

David: My goal of being rich is to have my passive income greater than my foreseeable expenses on a monthly basis. I just got married, so at this point in my life, my expenses will increase as I build a family, have kids, buy a house etc. Once I grow through that phase and have a better gauge of what my expenses will be, I will have a more quantative answer for myself (and another else who asks me).

SI Note: Hopefully he’ll know when to stop. Many miss that moment and keep going just to turn back one day and see how their life is gone while they have been trying to be rich.

SI: What works better on building wealth – saving or making more money? Which would you concentrate on more?

David: Dollar for dollar, saving money works better at building wealth because of all the taxes and social security payments that Americans inevitably have to give before our earnings reach our own pockets. However, saving money is not something you necessarily “concentrate” on. You have to train yourself to have the mindset of not being wasteful with money. Once it’s ingrained into you, then you focus on making more money. In short, I’d say concentrate on savings first so your money doesn’t leak unnecessarily. Then once you have the right mindset, then concentrate on making more money.

Si Note: Of course if you are barely making money for food and are already as frugal as you can imagine, you’d better concentrate on making more first. That’s obvious anyway.

SI: Imagine you can give only one financial advice to your kid – an advice that should guide him or her in their entire life. What is it going to be?

David: If there is only one financial advice I can only give my kids (or anyone for that matter), it’s “live with your own means”. Spending less than you earn is the key to financial well being.

SI Note: I am sure he’ll be able to give more than one, but most kids won’t listen much. That’s why you better give them one many times so they really remember it. Hmm, should I start a blog about teaching kids in financial intelligence?

If you want to read more from David, don’t forget that this is his blog and there is an option to subscribe by RSS and email.

Do you sometimes get bored by the “blogosphere”? No matter what is the topic you read blogs on, most of them are all saying the same: Tips on how to do X and Y (tips that you know for years), “news” that you can read everywhere, contests, and same old talk. I don’t mean to offend you if you are a blogger – certainly there are some interesting reads and some very creative bloggers. But they are the minority.

Photo by jimw at Flickr

It wouldn’t be boring if all people who write blogs had something to say

Most bloggers don’t blog because they have something to say. They blog because they think they must blog – usually because they want to make money.

What does it take to make money blogging? Most recipes say: blog every day, publish a lot of how-to articles, lists, controversial stuff, interact with other bloggers, get linked, get RSS subscribers, get on Digg, and so on. What the recipe writers miss to tell you is that’s this is a damn hard and inefficient way to make money (online or not). It’s hard unless you are a genius or at least very creative – but then you will have something to say to the world and would not blog primary for money.

Blogging for the money leads to several crappy outcomes that you notice every day in your feed reader:

• Many boring blogs
• How-to stuff that you know
• X reasons that… that you don’t care about
• Mindless interviews
• Pointless contests
• Biased product reviews
• Rehashed stuff that you have read many times

Look at your own blog and honestly say how many of the above paddings you post on regular basics. If there are more than 3, chances are you are blogging for money and your blog is boring.

And how much do you make from it?

There are better ways to make money online and offline

Honestly I don’t know where that idea about “make money blogging” come from. My bet is that some of those boring “make money online” gurus has come with it. And he has really made money from his blog on “how to make money blogging”, because few million newbies subscribed to his feed, clicked on his ads and bought the recommended e-books.

Since most bloggers make less money in a month that they would do for a day by cleaning windows, it comes to my mind that there are much better ways to make money (like cleaning windows for example). If you are so freaking fiery on making the money online*, there are much better ways to do it. Just look at the list and if interested, search Google for more info:

• Affiliate marketing
• PPC marketing
• Selling on Ebay
• E-commerce
• Freelancing and consulting
• Telecommuting
• Making niche sites and earning from ads
• Keyword sniping, spamming, scamming, black hat, porn, warez (all the gray stuff)
• Creating membership services
• Writing e-books and selling them

I came up with this list in just 5 minutes. Certainly there are more. I have not tried all the methods, but all of the several ones I have tried make more money easier than blogging.

Once again, think if you are writing your blog because you have something to say or you are writing it because you hope to make money. If it is the latter, stop blogging today and try something else. Well, except your idea about making money from the blogs goes behind direct monetization. Read below what I mean.

Blogging as a business

I don’t think there is anything wrong with trying to make some money from your blog. There are few ads on this one as well (and they are making money for few burgers as you can expect).

But the main reason to run a blog should never be ads. If you blog for business reasons, so be it – use the blog to profit because of it and not directly from it. What do I mean? Blogs are good social marketing tools. Your blog is efficient for showing your expertise, for networking with other people, for building a subscribers list and for receiving genuine feedback.

When you have a successful blog with a good number of subscribers and regular readers, you are ready to establish and promote your paid products and services. It sounds like using the blog for advertising, but it is not. It’s the authority of your blog that will help you build a business around it – it’s not only the number of readers that can directly receive the message.

Said in other way, if a popular blogger goes to another blogger and asks for a joint venture deal for his new product or service, chances are the deal will happen (unless the offer is crap). If “Mr. Noone” goes to let’s say Lifehacker blog and offer them a deal, his offer probably won’t get any attention.

* As I am in the software field and software is easily distributed online, it comes natural for me to look for ways to make money without leaving my desk. “Online” fits that well. But I will never understand why wouldn’t someone who knows best how to fix cars open they own offline car fixing service instead of trying to write a blog about fixing cars? If I drove a car I would prefer a good professional to fix it for me instead of reading how to fix my car on his blog. He will make $0.05 from my visit to his blog, I will lose my time reading it and trying to fix my car myself. And finally I’ll end up paying to another professional to fix the stupid car. Me and the blogger are both fooled because he wants to make money online. Seriously, WTH?

The following is a guest post from Ben at Trees Full of Money

Most financial planners will advise you not to borrow money from your 401k with the concern that you may “miss out” on market gains. However, if you need cash and your financial situation leaves you no other alternatives, borrowing money from your 401k might help you get your financial life back on track.

Each 401k plan is different so be sure to read your plan’s terms completely before taking a loan.

How Does it Work?

In general when you borrow money from your 401k the funds are directly taken from your account balance. For example, if you have $50,000 in your 401k account and you borrow $10,000, your account balance becomes $40,000. You then begin paying the loan back through additional paycheck deductions depending on the term of the loan. The obvious drawback here is that $10,000 is no longer working for you in the stock market (or bond fund) and potentially loosing out on any appreciation.

On the other hand (in most plans) the interest that you pay on the funds that you borrow goes directly back into your account. That’s right, you are paying yourself interest! When I borrowed money from my plan 6 years ago the interest rate was 8%. Ironically, during the payback period, the stock market lost value and I came out ahead.

Typically, you pay the loan back with after tax money subtracted directly from your paycheck in addition to any other contributions you normally make to your 401k. In other words, if you are already contributing $100 a paycheck (before tax) to your 401k, you will still have that deducted from your paycheck in addition to the monthly payment amount for the loan.

What Are the Drawbacks?

As mentioned earlier, borrowing money from your 401k is discouraged because you are missing out on potential market gains that have historically been above 11% per year. You may get lucky like I did but chances are that over time you will loose money.

Also, consider that if you quit, are laid-off, or fired from your job, the balance of your 401k loan may come due immediately, otherwise it will be considered an early distribution by the IRS and is subject to a 10% early withdrawal penalty in addition to any regular income tax that may be due on the proceeds.

There are additional fees associated with processing a 401k loan as well. Fidelity charged me a $35 upfront fee as well as $3.75 per quarter to cover “administrative” expenses.

When to Borrow From Your 401k

Only borrow money from your 401k (or other retirement accounts) as a last resort. I made the decision to borrow money from my account after realizing the foolish mistake that I had made when I leased my Toyota 4Runner. I borrowed the difference that I was upside down on my vehicle sot that I could get a better term on my auto loan. Borrowing money from your 401k for medical expenses or to avoid foreclosure are other obvious times that it may make sense to you.

When Not to Borrow From Your 401k

As you may of guessed, borrowing money from your 401k for a family vacation, new plasma TV, or paying for VIP seats at the Super Bowl is not a wise financial decision!

Remember to read your plans literature carefully as each plan has different rules. Hopefully you’ll never have a legitimate reason to borrow from your 401k but if you are considering it good luck!

Have you read Jim’s profile? There is some very good stuff in it. I hope you don’t think I am done with the profiles just because I had the most popular personal finance blogger here. There are plenty of other interesting people to interview, and Jaimie from PaidTwice is here to prove that. Her blog shares one reasonable and down to earth approach to money and life.

Ok, enough intro, let’s give the word to Jaimie:

SI: What’s wrong with debt? Some people live in debt all their life and always get into more debt – and they all seem to be happy. Why do you choose to get out of debt?

Jaimie: Well, that may be true – they may be happy, but we weren’t happy. Debt made us feel trapped, anxious, and on edge, and like we were practically drowning. And, truly, we were one step away from a major disaster for a very long time. Things are deeper than the surface – we may have looked happy, but we certainly didn’t feel happy.

SI note: She is right, but how many people get it? The advertising everywhere is washing your brain and telling you to be happy buying things with loans. It’s not very easy to reject the offers, is it?

SI: What made you stop using credit cards in 2003? Did you change your mind and turned away from the consuming culture or you have always had your view about finance but couldn’t stop using credit earlier?

Jaimie: For me, I finally realized what credit card debt was doing to my emotional well-being – I felt anxious, trapped, and practically hopeless. I honestly didn’t really realize what I was doing to myself until I started to get out of debt. I never saw it as not being able to stop – more not realizing that what I was doing was not working for us. Eventually I saw the light so to speak, and we started slowly getting ourselves out of debt.

SI note: Can you tell how many credit cards you have without checking your wallet? Many people go far beyond Jamie’s situation in 2003 before they realize that getting the next credit card is not exactly the way to solve their financial situation.

SI: Do you see a connection between growing financial intelligence and personal development? How did your decision to solve the financial problems changed you as a person?

Yes, I definitely think there’s a connection between my own financial awareness, and then intelligence, and my personal development. This process has made me really think about what I value, and question all of the assumptions I had held for so long. It has been for me more of a financial awakening than anything else. I really spent a lot of time very clueless about the whole idea of finances and I have grown tremendously in the process of organizing my finances and organizing my life.

SI note: That again makes me think if you are in financial trouble, you’d better concentrate on your internal assets rather than rushing to make/save money. Of course if you are in such a trouble that you have nothing to eat, this may not work great (unless you can learn how to live without food at all)

If you want to read more from Jamie’s ideas, views and advice about personal finance, don’t skip reading her blog. The best option always is to subscribe by RSS or email.

The following is a guest post from Rob Bennett. He writes the “A Rich Life” blog. He is the co-developer of The Stock-Return Predictor.

Lots of people read Robert Shiller’s Irrational Exuberance. I’m different. I took what the guy said seriously.

Shiller taught me how to value stocks in a way that makes sense. Lots of people use the Price/Earnings Ratio. Shiller explains why that doesn’t work (changes in the economy cause earnings to go through shifts from artificially low levels to artificially high levels and that throws the valuation numbers off). He instead uses P/E10 (today’s price over the average of the last 10 years of earnings). That has always done a good job of warning investors when stocks are priced so high that the long-term value proposition is poor. So P/E10 is what I use too.

I am the co-developer (with John Walter Russell, owner of the www.Early-Retirement-Planning-Insights.com site) of The Stock-Return Predictor, a calculator that uses the P/E10 tool to tell investors how stocks are likely to do over the next 10 years, assuming that stocks perform in the future anything at all as they always have in the past. People look at the numbers that apply when we are at today’s valuation level (one of the highest ever seen on record) and call me a “bear.” That hurts my feelings. I am not a bear.

I am not.

Really.

I’m kidding around a bit here but in an effort to make a serious point. Does it make someone a bear for that person to report how stocks are likely to perform over the next 10 years? It shouldn’t. Most people think of bears as being pessimistic. Is it a pessimistic act just to report what the numbers say about how stocks have always performed going forward from these valuation levels? I don’t see it. It seems to me that that is just the honest and accurate and proper thing to do. Shouldn’t we want to know the realities?

I have come to believe that stock investing is a highly emotional endeavor. We don’t like to acknowledge this because it scares us to death. We all have lots of money riding on our ability to understand how investing works and, if we are as emotional about this subject as I strongly believe we are, we are incapable of thinking straight about it. Yowsa!

I’m a reporter. I report things. That’s how I’ve made my living for a long time. Never have I seen such an emotional reaction to anything I have reported as I have seen after reporting what the historical data says about how stocks are likely to perform over the next 10 years.

I’m not a bear. I’m a reporter. It’s not that I am pessimistic. It’s that so many people have put so many unrealistic ideas into our heads that we have come to believe that anyone who reports straight the realities of stock investing is a bear. That’s my sincere take.

I love stocks. But I don’t believe that we should always have most of our money in stocks. I believe that we should buy stocks in the same way we buy everything else we buy, with a consciousness of the importance of the price we are paying. Stocks are priced awfully high today. Caution is in order.

That’s not a bear talking. That’s a guy who likes to obtain good value propositions for his money whether he is buying stocks or anything else.

At the time this post gets published I should be something like 10,000 km over Kazakhstan or so. I am going on two weeks work related journey to India. I will be online often, but I have decided to let few guest posts in for some of the time. So, hang around – you can expect a couple of fellows with their views about money and finance.

When I am back, I’ll share with you how people in India manage their finances. Trust me, there is what to learn from them (I’ve been there before).

This time I got a true celebrity at my desk (No, it’s not Paris, I would prefer her elsewhere). But Jim, the bargain hunter from Blueprint for financial prosperity, has already been featured several times on NY Times and now is a guest in my modest blog.

His blog is full of fun and useful advice while the main site offers hot deals and free stuff every day.

Before giving the word to Jim, I’d like to remind you I’ve had other great guests before, so make sure to check them too.

SI: What’s your view on getting rich quick – can you play the Devil’s Advocate here? Would you bet all you have on a promising deal or you’d rather prefer slow and steady growth?

Jim: I think getting rich quick and gambling are two different things and nothing has anything to do with speed. Getting rich quick is just an idea that hucksters put into people’s minds, if you do this and this and this, you can get rich really really quickly so let’s get to it! Unfortunately, this means that there is no guaranteed get rich slow either. You could try slow and steady growth and then BAM!, because you were so slow, whatever you were doing becomes obsolete. If a deal seems promising and you’ve done your due diligence, and it still proves to be promising, invest what you can afford to lose. As for gambling, I certainly enjoy it in moderation, it’s a safe way to find excitement if you can control it.

SI Note: Hmm, so you mean I should not buy that cool e-book “Make Millions In 5 Minutes With No Effort At All!” that is offered for only $197 $97?

SI: You just left the corporate world few months ago. How does it feel like? If you are offered a 50% more money than you make now, are you getting back to a real job?

Jim: I enjoy the freedom of doing what I want and don’t feel burdened by the need to figure out what it is I should be doing. It’s a lot different when you’re running the show, you no longer have the benefit of relying on others making decisions and taking the responsibility for poor decisions. On the flip side, every dollar earned is your own and every minute you spend is on a project that benefits you both financially and from a personal satisfaction/achievement perspective.

It’s become less about the money and more about learning more and challenging myself to succeed. There’s only so much you can do with money and at 50% more, I’d have to be generating that level of income for my employer and so perhaps my hours would be longer in a traditional business. To be honest, unless the offer were put in front of me with a job descriptions, I can’t say. If it were an 40 hour week job and a 30 year contract, maybe, but probably not.

SI Note: Besides that there is always a chance that you’ll reach much higher income on your own in some future moment. With the job, you know, you can grow only so much. The possibility to fail/be fired is almost equal in both cases.

SI: I have a great investment plan (You’ll thank me for sharing it!). I’m going to sell a house, get the money and invest them in the best performing mutual funds. Then an year later I’ll sell the funds, buy my house back and go to Bahamas with the profits! What’s your take… is there something wrong with the plan?

Jim: That sounds like a fantastic idea, let me know how it goes.

Just playing, I’ll answer seriously. There are numerous flaws that will likely tank your plans to go to the Bahamas. First, your plan is a year long and depends on volatile investments (stock market) that may spike or tank (experts say this is more likely) in the next year, so don’t invest in the stock market for short term. Second, depending on how much equity you have, it probably represents a significant amount of your assets. Your house is a relatively safe asset in part, even if all goes poorly, you can live in it. Third, you’ll have to live somewhere so you’ll need to pay rent, if that’s less than your mortgage then your real savings is only that difference and the equity you extract.

Keep blogging and stay in your house.

SI Note: oh, well, bye bye Bahamas! Wait, I just got a better idea, I’ll sell the house and trade forex with the money. Then take the profits and go to Vegas…

We were a bit funny this time but I am sure you can distinguish the jokes and won’t sell your house. If you want some more fun and wisdom from Jim, make sure to subscribe to his feed now.