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Dec. 31st, 2008 08:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vicarzNo! Woke up sore and with a fever. It's a not-all-bad time to be sick really, but it's never fun. For someone who eats and lives so healthy, I seem to get sick a lot.
I have some big-people adulty things to figure out. I sold the old place, and now I have the money wired in my account. It feels like a lot, but of course it represents over ten years of labor and investment. I'm just not sure what to do with it.
I can refi my current place as my mortgage has interest of 6.125 and I see rates bopping as low as 5% no points on occasion. Problem is if I refi I'm supposed to live there for at least 12 mos. Also, that's not an offensively large interest rate to begin with. With my job in Beltsville and no nibbles at my resume - should I consider moving into the city proper or revisit living in MD? I love my place, and Arlington, so I'm not eager to venture out of the area except that I'm going to MD so much. The interest % on this young 30 year fixed is so large that it's a wonderful tax write-off. If I move out, the interest rate is a 1-for-1 write off against rental income.
If I buy a new place it's not clear how much I should put into it. I don't want to be living paycheck to paycheck again, ever. So I could scope out a new place, buy it at super low interest rates and prices, and move in around Feb 2009 give or take (renting out my current apt, which I will have been in for 2 years as of 2/09).
I've pretty much solidified my decision not to get a new car. Sure the new civics are sexy and the EX comes with a subwoofer (of course it's stock at over double the cost of an installed name unit) but my current 2000 civic EX is paid for, still gets avg 36mpg, and only has 72,650 miles. She's good to me and shows no signs of ever changing. I kid you not - fixing the rattle in the door made me love this car all over again. I've also moved away from buying a new LCD 40-46" tv 1080p. I'm perfectly happy with what I have - though if they dip to around $600 I might go for it later. I use getting my old stuff to new people as an excuse to buy things - but still, 20k for a car and 1k for a tv is hardly important compared to housing and stocks.
On the other hand, I could also sit on the money and hide it in cds, which is a waste if I barely keep up with inflation. The big option is to venture back into the stock market which treated me so well before. Is this a great buying opportunity, or will the next 6 mos to a year be? Has the economy sunk so the next 10 years will suck? Can I make money or am I so market ignorant that I should just thank my stars I didn't already lose a fortune and not play around with this volatile period of the market? GOOG is at an all-time low, but...good god I don't even really understand what they do - but I do understand massive cash and NO DEBT. CAT I always like - sold them for 80 or 100 or so a while ago, now they're around half that (but their debt is insane). I made a mint off of GT, literally tripling that investment for significant money (bought at around 10, sold around 30). Their cash/debt isn't horrible, but now they're around $5. I got so crazy lucky that I did all that selling right before the market blew up. Sure my retirement funds are thrashed, but they have time to recover and at least my play money wasn't hurt.
One lock - I can fully fund my Roth IRA this year without question. I should cut that check today. I'm also paying off my 2nd mortgage in full ASAP (they require a cert check, grr).
So housing and stocks are great buying opportunities if you know what to do. I don't know what to do, and I haven't really thought about it or researched much as of yet. I guess I can take advantage of the silly offers out there for cds since money market funds are all bailing and the banks are doing what they can to suck up funds from scared holders. I did already take advantage of one that gave a .5% bonus if I keep some funds there from 1/1 to 2/28, plus a decent interest rate of 3.06%.
I remind myself how much when I turn away from the priority of safety how disturbing it is. I think for the rest of my life I want my first half of every month to pay all my necessary expenses, and the next be for everything else. Living beneath my means - I'm used to it. I want to stay used to it.
I think I'm leaning towards either doing nothing or doing a refinance because it locks me in to staying where I am. If I'm happy here, why change anything? Then the question is how to invest.
I have some big-people adulty things to figure out. I sold the old place, and now I have the money wired in my account. It feels like a lot, but of course it represents over ten years of labor and investment. I'm just not sure what to do with it.
I can refi my current place as my mortgage has interest of 6.125 and I see rates bopping as low as 5% no points on occasion. Problem is if I refi I'm supposed to live there for at least 12 mos. Also, that's not an offensively large interest rate to begin with. With my job in Beltsville and no nibbles at my resume - should I consider moving into the city proper or revisit living in MD? I love my place, and Arlington, so I'm not eager to venture out of the area except that I'm going to MD so much. The interest % on this young 30 year fixed is so large that it's a wonderful tax write-off. If I move out, the interest rate is a 1-for-1 write off against rental income.
If I buy a new place it's not clear how much I should put into it. I don't want to be living paycheck to paycheck again, ever. So I could scope out a new place, buy it at super low interest rates and prices, and move in around Feb 2009 give or take (renting out my current apt, which I will have been in for 2 years as of 2/09).
I've pretty much solidified my decision not to get a new car. Sure the new civics are sexy and the EX comes with a subwoofer (of course it's stock at over double the cost of an installed name unit) but my current 2000 civic EX is paid for, still gets avg 36mpg, and only has 72,650 miles. She's good to me and shows no signs of ever changing. I kid you not - fixing the rattle in the door made me love this car all over again. I've also moved away from buying a new LCD 40-46" tv 1080p. I'm perfectly happy with what I have - though if they dip to around $600 I might go for it later. I use getting my old stuff to new people as an excuse to buy things - but still, 20k for a car and 1k for a tv is hardly important compared to housing and stocks.
On the other hand, I could also sit on the money and hide it in cds, which is a waste if I barely keep up with inflation. The big option is to venture back into the stock market which treated me so well before. Is this a great buying opportunity, or will the next 6 mos to a year be? Has the economy sunk so the next 10 years will suck? Can I make money or am I so market ignorant that I should just thank my stars I didn't already lose a fortune and not play around with this volatile period of the market? GOOG is at an all-time low, but...good god I don't even really understand what they do - but I do understand massive cash and NO DEBT. CAT I always like - sold them for 80 or 100 or so a while ago, now they're around half that (but their debt is insane). I made a mint off of GT, literally tripling that investment for significant money (bought at around 10, sold around 30). Their cash/debt isn't horrible, but now they're around $5. I got so crazy lucky that I did all that selling right before the market blew up. Sure my retirement funds are thrashed, but they have time to recover and at least my play money wasn't hurt.
One lock - I can fully fund my Roth IRA this year without question. I should cut that check today. I'm also paying off my 2nd mortgage in full ASAP (they require a cert check, grr).
So housing and stocks are great buying opportunities if you know what to do. I don't know what to do, and I haven't really thought about it or researched much as of yet. I guess I can take advantage of the silly offers out there for cds since money market funds are all bailing and the banks are doing what they can to suck up funds from scared holders. I did already take advantage of one that gave a .5% bonus if I keep some funds there from 1/1 to 2/28, plus a decent interest rate of 3.06%.
I remind myself how much when I turn away from the priority of safety how disturbing it is. I think for the rest of my life I want my first half of every month to pay all my necessary expenses, and the next be for everything else. Living beneath my means - I'm used to it. I want to stay used to it.
I think I'm leaning towards either doing nothing or doing a refinance because it locks me in to staying where I am. If I'm happy here, why change anything? Then the question is how to invest.
