Times are tough out there and a lot of Americans are getting caught in the squeeze. As real estate investors we feel this in a number of ways: bargain foreclosures to buy (good!), a glut of rental properties depressing rental rates (bad!), fewer competing bids for quality properties (good!), longer waits to sell properties (bad!)...and the list goes on.

One thing I’m noticing is the challenge to get quality tenants. I have some properties that rent like hotcakes w/ zero vacancy time. But others, for some reason, have been more challenging. Like most property owners, I have a number of rules-of-thumb that I follow when it comes to screening tenants. But rules of thumb aren’t written in stone; they’re just guidelines. Every now and then I come across an applicant who I think will make a great tenant, but there is something or other that makes me second guess myself.

The fact of the matter is that good people get caught in bad situations sometimes, and a quality applicant can sometimes appear brandishing a blemished credit report. Don’t get me wrong – my mantra #1 is that renting to a bad tenant is twice as expensive as sitting on a vacancy for an extra month – but what is a landlord to do when her gut tells her that she should take a chance on an applicant? Well here are three steps I sometime take::

• Ask for first and last months' rent upfront, plus one month’s deposit. This does three things for you. First, the applicant will have to cough up three months’ rent upfront before he moves in. If the applicant can do this it is an indicator that he’s not living paycheck to paycheck, a good sign that he will be responsible. Secondly, it mitigates your risk by ensuring the final month is paid. Lastly, that final month’s rent sits in your bank account collecting interest (or, better, is out in the market working for you) for the entire time the tenant resides in the property. I write the lease to state that the last month’s rent paid upfront will be credited to the final month that the tenant resides in the property.  PROs:  will scare off bad/risky applicants.  CONs:  may eliminate some good applicants as well. 
• Shorten the term. Write a lease with a short term; four months or six months. Agree to renew if the tenant pays each month on time; you can put this in writing in the contract if you wish. If there is a problem you’re still going to suffer, but you wont’ have a deadbeat sitting in your property with a contractual right to stick around for an entire year.  PROs:  limits the period you're at risk.  CONs: no financial benefit to the landlord, who is still stuck with evicting the tenant if he doesn't work out. 
• Charge a higher rent. This doesn’t do much for you in the risk mitigation category, but if you’ve trust yourself as a judge of character and you’re willing to rent to an applicant that other landlords have turned away, you should get compensated for the extra risk you’re assuming.  PROs:  higher return on the property, a good thing.  CONs: doesn't lower your risk.

Smart landlords use these strategies in combination. Increase the rent and offer a shorter term. Offer a shorter term w/ first and last month paid upfront (great risk mitigation).

With a divorce rate of around 50% and many people not marrying until they are in their thirties, it is surprising to find that there are still many women who aren't financially educated. Most of this can be traced back to two factors: upbringing at home and society. In both cases, boys have often been given much more training and many more resources than girls have and the effects are damaging women financially today as they face a world in which they have to take care of monetary issues on their own but have never developed the skills to do so.

The Safe, Secure 1950's

In the 1950's most women quickly married and settled down to raise families. Very few of them worked outside the home, and finances were handled by the men. It was a financially prosperous time and women were expected to focus on the home and child-rearing. This focus on home-making was passed on to daughters while sons were groomed to the "breadwinners" of the family.

The obvious separation between girls and boys activities also managed to keep girls "sheltered" from financial concerns. They weren't expected to pay for anything on a date and parents didn't often expect them to hold down jobs. Boys, on the other hand, were expected to get a job at a young age, even if it was merely a paper route. The expectation was that a young man needed to "take on some responsibility" and "contribute."

As the generation raised in the 1950's grew up and raised families of their own, they passed on the financial biases that had been instilled in them to their own children. Many of today's parents have made the same mistakes their own mothers and fathers did, ignoring the obvious need for women to understand and learn to handle their own finances in favor of hoping that their daughters wouldn't have to face the harsh financial facts of life.

The belief that men would take care of women's financial needs was so ingrained that many of the "big picture" financial lessons were overlooked. Women tended to learn how to shop for bargains at the grocery store, stretch the budget at the holidays and that was about it. More complex lessons such as long-term investments, retirement planning and stock portfolio development were not a part of the picture.

Boys learned how to manage their money, save for a rainy day, and make smart investments and a host of other financial strategies.

Play and School Contribute to Gender Gap

Interestingly, boys more than girls tend to develop habits that are more geared toward understanding numbers and how they relate to finances from a very young age. While girls tend to be "collectors," says Joline Godfrey, founder of Independent Means, "boys develop informal economies based on relative value from the age of six on while trading cards and other items. By the time boys start trading stocks and bonds, it's just another form of the game." Independent Means is a company which promotes economic independence and growth for girls and women aged 14 to 24.

Even in school settings, boys are rewarded more consistently for being risk-takers, and investing is often perceived as a risky venture. Girls aren't encouraged to take risks and aren't rewarded for these types of behaviors and instead are likely to be cautioned to be careful. When faced with the prospect of learning about investing in the stock market or learning about retirement options, these same girls - now women - are more fearful of making decisions and less sure of themselves in making choices for themselves.

Statistics Show Gender Bias

A recent survey showed some startling discrepancies even today between teenage boys and girls and how much education they have received in the very basics of finance. Some of the findings include:

* Many more teenage boys than girls report understanding of how to write a check and how a credit card works, including accrued interest. * Teenage girls are much more likely to be in debt than boys, with almost 50% reporting credit card debt as opposed to less than a quarter of teen boys having any debt. * Girls are more likely to report that learning about investing is boring, while boys report a real interest in learning about it. When asked to elaborate, girls often pointed out that this wasn't something they would be doing in the future, while boys indicated that it was important to learn so that they could be successful.

The perception that girls shouldn't have to worry about their financial future in the long term (based upon the faulty premise that a man will take care of her or that she can hire a financial consultant to handle all of the boring stuff) is still present in many homes. Fortunately, the balance is beginning to shift as more parents realize that women who are successful in their careers must also be able to guide their own financial futures, not rely on others to do it for them.

Programs Aim at Closing the Gap

Today's girls are more likely to learn how to handle money at a young age. Cautionary tales in the news and on talk shows about women left destitute and the fear that social security can no longer support an individual in their golden years has, perhaps, contributed to this. After all, with most women outliving their spouses and more than half of women divorced, it's likely that today's girls will be supporting themselves in their retirement years - understanding Roth IRAs suddenly becomes very important.

Companies and organizations are also stepping to the forefront with programs designed to educate teens in general and girls in particular. Boys and Girls Clubs of America, in collaboration with Charles Schwab, offer Money Matters: Make It Count programs in cities across the country.

Visa works with Girl Scouts of the USA to provide two resources, the Cashin' In workbook and the Makin' Cents web game, to teach girls aged 13-17 financial responsibility. The web game specifically challenges players to find real-world solutions for characters' financial challenges.

With such programs increasingly popular and the need for women to understand finances now a hot topic, it's to be hoped that this generation of fathers will teach their daughters as much about finance as they teach their sons.

Carrie Carter: Author of: Think Your Way to Riches Kids' Style

For more information or to arrange an interview with Carrie Carter at 810.252.2281 e-mail: carrie114cr@aol.com or visit: www.ThinkYourWayToRichesKidsStyle.com

Carrie's passion is to help people on their inner journey to discover their personal road map for abundance, peace, and happiness. Her main passion is to give children worldwide the "Tools" which are lacking in the normal educational system and understanding to create the abundant lifestyle they are all worthy of. Experience Carrie's educational seminars, workshops, and private life coaching.

About the Author

Carrie's passion is to help people on their inner journey to discover their personal road map for abundance, peace, and happiness. Her main passion is to give children worldwide the "Tools" which are lacking in the normal educational system and understanding to create the abundant lifestyle they are all worthy of. Experience Carrie's educational seminars, workshops, and private life coaching.

Today the Senate passed a $300 billion housing rescue bill aimed at turning around the flagging housing market, helping homeowners avoid foreclosure, and propping up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The fact that Senators came in on a Saturday to vote on the bill is an indicator of the importance that Capitol Hill places on the issue.

It remains to be seen who will benefit from this legislation, but one group of folks that surely are breathing a sigh of relief are the shareholders of Fannie and Freddie. It’s unlikely that these two publically traded stocks will return to their previous levels anytime soon, but this intervention at least makes it more unlikely that they’ll go belly-up.

Nationwide, foreclosure rates continue to skyrocket. RealtyTrac yesterday reported that foreclosure activity was up a whopping 14 percent in the second quarter, a rise of 121 percent over the second quarter of 2007.

It is hoped that the passage of this regulation will soothe Wall Street’s frazzled nerves. Oil prices (too high) and housing prices (falling too fast) are surely the two most troubling elements in our fragile economic situation. Both are complex and have deep reaching tentacles. The reassuring thing about the housing picture is that, unlike oil, it is an American market – therefore Congress may have some success in turning the ship. Washington hasn’t produced any legislation on energy– neither to curb speculation nor to increase offshore drilling. Lawmakers take some lumps from the public for their inaction, but it’s probably just as well since neither approach has the potential to improve the situation. The US controls a tiny percentage of global reserves, and traders move a small percentage of barrels traded, which leads us to a troubling conclusion: the U.S. economy is just one piece in the global puzzle, and things that happen outside of our borders are going to hit us in the pocketbook here at home.

But even if we’re struggling with our oil addiction, it’s hopeful that this piece of legislation might help the housing market. Much of the impact may be psychological, however. Democrats estimate that around 400,000 households might benefit from the bill, but last quarter alone saw almost twice that number of foureclosures – around 740,000 according to RealtyTrac. But we can hope that this bill shows that Congress is willing to act if necessary, and that might be enough to get banks lending again. And that might lead to fewer foreclosures, more buyers buying, more sellers selling, a shrinking housing inventory, and eventually a recovery in prices.

Since a little more than seven months ago, I made some adjustments to the path in which my career was taking me and took up a job instead of pursuing PhD. One of the main reasons for going that route was that I was so narrowly focused for so long that I forgot why I was doing PhD in the first place (of course, there is more to that story that just that, but I won’t go into that with this post).

Anyways, our household income increased by about four times after I took up the job. Initially, things were taking a deflating turn for the first couple of months - I guess this was in part because I was a relatively “newly employed” and was undergoing training without any major responsibilities (plus,  I apparently hadn’t discovered new ways of spending the increased income). However, our spending took a turn for the worse right after I published this post in early February.

Additionally, I have now started paying a lot less attention to our financial details (”details” is the key word here). There are only two fundamental concepts that I have been keeping in front of me: 1. to not spend more than what we earn (look at #7 in the linked post), and 2. to not time the market. Everything else is just falling in its place automatically.

The rest of our life is now governed primarily by convenience. Here are just a few changes in our spending habits and financial attitudes that occurred over the last few months.

1. Paradigm shift in the way I manage credit cards: I no longer have the time or the patience to follow those balance transfer offers and research/keep track of how our income would be increased by juggling such offers. I don’t care about optimizing the rewards anymore, and just use credit cards for the simple reason that I get an itemized list of where we spend our money at the end of the month.

As such, I am not using all my credit cards anymore. The fact that I have so many of them seems a bit ridiculous to me at present (this is an interesting development). Plus, I have discovered other practical problems in having too many credit cards (more on this later), so I am down to using just two credit cards at present.

2. Preferences for schedules rather than prices. We have flown thrice since February and every time, we went for flights that were more “convenient” instead of flights that were cheaper. On one of those three occasions, we had the option to drive (which would have been a whole lot cheaper), but again, the time spent in driving didn’t seem worth money saved. Interestingly, in the past, we have driven to that very location twice and at that time, the money saved seemed a lot more worth than amount the time spent in driving.

3. Buying what we “like” rather than buying what is “cheap”. Affordability is still in our minds but we don’t kill ourselves trying to save a few cents (or even a few dollars at times). For example, earlier, for cereals, it was usually “Great Value” from Walmart - now, it’s Kellogg’s or whatever brand that seems better - from a store that is closest to home.

4. Outsourcing clothes for ironing. Ironing is one activity I hate - it may be because I never ironed my clothes (over several years) when I was a student. It either took 10 minutes of my time every morning, or about an hour every weekend. Now that’s replaced by 5 minutes of detour every other week and $25.

5. Eating out more. This is again a product of optimizing convenience rather than costs. If we are too tired or not in a mood to cook, we just eat out without worrying too much about it. And, when we eat out, the choice of restaurant is usually dictated by time (and sometimes by what we feel like eating) rather than by how cheap or expensive it is.

6. Using toll roads instead of regular roads. I tried using regular roads (read as traffic-light-infested-roads) for the first couple of months. However, as the stress at work started growing, I started using toll roads more frequently. The toll costs me a lot more than I would like, but using toll roads has reduced a lot of stress in my life. I am now happy when I reach my workplace in the morning, and I am happy when I reach home in the evening, and I don’t have to bitch about how horrible my luck is to catch all the red lights on the way.

Also, the drive that used to take me 30 minutes via regular road now takes about 10 minutes via toll road. That much time saved everyday is just priceless.

7. If the market bothers me, I just don’t look at it. Out of sight, out of mind is what probably works with me in this case. I have some set investing goals this year (in terms of how much I should invest and where) and I just stick with that without really worrying too much about what the market is doing at any given time.

Come to think of it, the increased income is working towards making our lives a bit easier. Call it lifestyle inflation or improvement in the quality of life, or call it just sheer laziness (I am sure there will be different perspectives), or whatever. All we care about is that there is a lot less stress in our lives by spending a little more  money.

As long as we avoid these problems with lifestyle inflation, I think we are okay.

The gaffe of the week goes to John McCain, when in an interview with Politico.com he was unable to remember how many houses he has.

Folks of all political stripes who read this blog will probably be willing to give Senator McCain a little slack on this one. We’re real estate investors and we buy and sell properties. We might not have married a $100 million heiress like Senator McCain (or made $4 million off a lucrative book deal like Senator Obama, for that matter) but we can understand how LLC’s and partnership purchases might turn a seemingly simple question into one that can be a little more tricky.

So my concern is not that Senator McCain was unable to rattle off the right answer. My concern was his startled, confused reaction. His rambling, mumbling response: "I think -- I'll have my staff get to you -- um -- its condominiums where -- I'll have them get to you.” In today’s complex world the ability to think on your feet and stay on message is an important prerequisite to being the President of the United States of America. The fact that Senator McCain was so visibly unhinged by this question will worry some voters.

I don’t’ think that the average American begrudges Senator McCain family their $100 million fortune; Americans don’t resent wealth – we aspire to it. But folks who are struggling to make ends meet want to feel that the President understands their challenges, and those who have invested in the ownership society want a leader who will get the economy back on the rails. When Senator McCain facetiously quipped last week that $5 million per year is the cutoff for being wealthy, a lot of folks felt left out of the joke.

I feel that we facing an immediate future of complex economic challenges – one in which prudent real estate investors will be comparatively well positioned. But in the end the returns that we realize will be linked closely to the fortunes of our fragile economy, which in turn will be heavily impacted by gas prices and – ultimately - oil.

Oil is an international fungible commodity, and therefore oil prices – the single more important driver in our economy – will be largely outside of our control. The biggest factor in what will happen with oil prices lies in direction of international stability, or lack thereof. Neither party talks much about this particular elephant in the room – the reason being that both parties realize, rightly, that there isn’t much that we can do about it. Our recent adventure to send our Armed Forces to the Middle East to spread freedom and democracy isn’t entirely to blame, but it has been an exacerbating factor that has undoubtably made things worse and weakened our influence, both politically and militarily.

In the future there will be a link between what we do overseas and our economic fate here at home – and it’s a new relationship that will be strikingly different from what we’ve seen in the past. As retired Army Colonel and Niebuhr scholar Andrew Bacevich writes in his excellent book The Limits of Power, our economy can no longer be sustained by expansion abroad enforced by our military. As a former military officer myself this is a new way of thinking. I now tend to put less of a premium on “experience” as traditionally defined; I want a leader who can see the new patterns as the world continuously rewrites the rules.

So while I can forgive Senator McCain the fact that he doesn’t know how many houses he has, I am more concerned about the prospect that having spent decades as a fabulously wealthy United States Senator has dulled his ability to identify the shifting currents of the new world economy.

On Thursday I’ll be interviewing personal finance columnist Scott Burns. Burns may be best-known for his “Couch Potato” investment portfolio. He’s also the brains behind Asset Builder and the co-author of the new book Spend ‘Til the End, which explores the notion of “consumption smoothing”, or how to maintain a stable standard of living throughout your life. If you have you have personal finance questions you’d like for me to ask Burns, please let me know.

Meanwhile, here are a few recent personal finance articles from around the web.

First, Flexo at Consumerism Commentary believes that the idea of getting rich slowly may be a fallacy. Or does he? In “7 Ways to Lose Your Money”, he takes issue with a recent MSN article that promises seven ways to get rich a little more quickly. The problem? Flexo points out that these methods can also lead to financial ruin.

Meanwhile, Five Cent Nickel notes that cheap is not necessarily frugal. Quality may cost more initially, but in the long term, it usually pays for itself. (But don’t confuse quality with “name-brand” — they’re not necessarily the same.)

Jim at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity recently had his home’s roof replaced, and in the process learned some lessons about finding contractors. One of his tips? It’s not all about price. Kris and I have learned this lesson, too, over fifteen years of homeownership. For us, it’s more important to find quality workers than cheap workers. It’s a balance.

Finally, Love Food Hate Waste recently shared 5 sure-fire ways to save money on your food bill. The average household with children in the U.K. throws away £610 in food every year. This article offers tips for buying and storing food sensibly.

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Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• Daily Links: PearBudget Edition
• Daily Links: E-Book Edition
• Money Hacks Now at Get Rich Slowly
• links for 2006-09-12
• Daily Roundup: Bringing Home the Bacon Edition

The “Big Three” automakers Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler, and the United Auto Workers union, traveled to Washington today to ask for a bailout.  They asked collectively for $34 billion, but some estimates suggest that they would actually need almost four times that.  Let’s just say that the banking committee wasn’t whipping out its checkbook.

Whether they actually get the bailout or not doesn’t change the fact that they shouldn’t be getting it in the first place.  Bailouts help the few at the expense of everyone else, and encourage the recipients of the bailouts to come back for more.

A bailout of the auto industry will save a few jobs for a little while.  OK, it will save a lot of jobs for a little while.  But in the long run, a bailout reduces everyone’s standard of living.  It’s interference in the free market, and causes a misallocation of resources.  It’s a misallocation because the market has already given the company the thumbs-down, in that the company has not been able to deliver a product profitably at a price that the market is willing to pay.  A bailout says to the market: “You’re wrong.  This company deserves to stay in business.”

In the absence of a bailout, here’s what would happen to a failing business under free market competition:

1. The common stock investors (if any) lose their investment.  Investors higher up the food chain get only part of their investment back.
2. The assets are sold at fire sale prices, usually to a stronger competitor seeking to increase its market share.  The bidding is competitive.
3. Some, or many, of the workers may not have jobs after the company is acquired.  The ones that do continue to do what they do, perhaps more cheaply.  Others don’t, but they can now enter another field and be productive.
4. The inefficient, inferior company goes away, and the efficient, superior company gets stronger.
5. We all win because the resources have been re-allocated efficiently, as a result of what we, the customers, have already said we want:  less of the failing business’s products, and more of the succeeding business’s products.

When the failing business appeals to the powers that be for a bailout, and it is granted, here’s what happens instead:

1. The failing business stays in business, despite the fact that it doesn’t deliver its product as efficiently as its competitors.
2. The workers keep their jobs, perhaps at above-market wages, despite the fact that this situation is not sustainable by the free market.
3. The people footing the bill (us, mainly) don’t have that money available to us to purchase the products we want.
4. We all lose because the resources have been re-allocated inefficiently by force, against what we, the customers, have already said we want.  We instead get more of the failing business’s products and less of the succeeding business’s products, and have to pay for this situation to boot.

Society functions most efficiently when its members are free to enjoy the fruits of their labor as they please.  From all I can see, society enjoys Toyotas and Hondas more than it enjoys GMs and Fords.  Why should we forced to pay for products we don’t enjoy?

The same is true of things like subsidies, unions, tariffs, import quotas, regulation, price control, and antitrust actions.  All of these things ultimately reduce our standard of living because they interfere with people choosing how to enjoy the fruits of their labors.  John Pugsley’s book The Alpha Strategy explains why these all hurt our standard or living in an exceptionally clear way.  It was written at the end of the Carter administration but the explanation of these phenomena still holds.

I expect we’ll get more of the same, but it will cost us all.  Who’s next in line for a bailout?

My wife has wanted to move into town for quite some time so that she can be a little closer to friends and to our other activities.  I’ve been reluctant to move for a few reasons.  First, I think if we bought now, it would be like trying to catch a falling knife.  Second, it would be a longer drive to work for me.  Third, I don’t like change.  (None of these are her fault. )

And just as much as I feel pressured when my wife tells me about a good house that’s come up for sale, she probably feels frustrated by my reluctance to take any serious action on it because “this is just the beginning of the downturn” and “there will be more, and better, deals later.”

Actually, regardless of how far I feel the housing market is going to go down, I don’t really know.  I can get warm fuzzies that it’s getting to be more of a buyer’s market, but I won’t really know until I start tracking home prices.  Tracking prices is pretty straightforward, and has some advantages:

• It’s easier to recognize a deal when it comes along.  There is a huge amount of information literally a mouse click away, and tracking the price of desirable houses over time shows clearly what these houses were being offered at.  Rather than sensing that a house is a good deal, I can see that it is.
• It’s active.  It’s searching with a purpose.  It’s still basically window shopping, but I know which stores I’m going to. 
• It’s focused.  We’re looking for a house to move into.  This narrows our search and makes it more time-effective.

Here’s how we’re going about it now:

1. I signed up for an account at Realtor.com.  This allows me to save searches — and have daily or weekly e-mails sent to me — filtered by ZIP code, price, number of bedrooms, etc.
2. Since my wife is pickier (!) she chose the acceptable candidates among the few dozen houses that met the search criteria that Realtor.com allowed.  We could have fewer results to go through if we filtered by square footage, but not all of the listings include a square footage.  So, we pile through some more listings but turn up a few more candidates.  We eliminate most split foyers since she really doesn’t like those.
3. We build up a spreadsheet with the following columns:  ZIP Code, Address (to identify the house), Subdivision, Bedrooms, Bathrooms, Square Footage, Basement (no, yes, or split level), Garage (no, one-car, or two-car), and Asking Price.  We make one row per house, and add columns at the end to track the asking price over time.  We also list the houses that meet the search criteria but don’t meet our criteria so that we don’t have to re-visit those listings each week.  The columns are the criteria that are important to us; if you do this, you may have other columns you want to consider.
4. Houses keep getting prices added as long as they’re listed.  If they’re taken off, then we keep them to see if they come back on again.
5. Later we may add houses listed for auction or on other services, since some sellers are going the route of national real estate listing without the commissions.

Here are some of the measurements that can be done from these numbers:

• Number of listings.  The number of listings can fluctuate with the seasons (winter is slower).  If prices are going down for similar properties, or if the prices for properties we’re following are going down, then an increase in the number of listings could be good, as it means people are coming to their senses and trying to sell for what they can get.
• Time on the market.  We’ve gotten a few new listings, so we can see how long they stay on the market.  Knowing this would help us should we want to make an offer.  If the house has been on for a good long time, we can offer more aggressively (lower).
• Price per square foot.  This is a rough measure but a useful one.  If we really can buy more house for our money, we should see a reduction in the price per square foot.

The nice thing about this method is that it’s free.  Once we get the hang of this and get closer to making a decision we may sign up for www.RealtyTrac.com to get a handle on foreclosed and bank-owned properties.  We’ll probably pull the trigger on this when we are in a better position to make offers.

Tracking prices takes a little time but I’m sure this will help us to make a wise decision when we decide to look in earnest.

She’ll want that stimulus check now! Is it possible to win a million dollars and still file for bankruptcy in 2 months? Apparently so!

How to become a millionaire? Well winning a game show is one way to do it. But then again, here’s this story of such a “millionaire”, which I can only describe as a tale of riches to rags, or maybe of rags to riches to rags.

There’s this woman — no other than a State School Superintendent — who won a million dollars on the game show “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader”? She won the grand prize and pledged to donate it to various schools. But since her win 2 months ago, her husband’s home building company has failed, forcing her family to file for bankruptcy.

Click this link or the image to see this CNN video.

Goes to show you just how tenuous our financial situation can be at any point in time. For many people, it only takes a layoff, one bad business cycle, one bad trade in the stock market or one major illness to wipe out the family’s fortunes. I covered a lot of this when I wrote about the only 3 reasons why people go bankrupt.

The game show winner is still honoring her promise to gift her winnings to schools, with the funds sheltered in a “gift foundation” that is supposed to be protected from her creditors. Hopefully, her donation stays intact and untouched throughout bankruptcy proceedings.

Now what else caught my eye this week? Some more reads from the financial web:

• The Sun’s Financial Diary: FDIC Problem Bank List Now Includes 171 Banks
• Money Smart Life: Black Friday Deals or Cyber Monday Savings?
• My Dollar Plan: An Administrative Error Could Cost You Your Retirement
• Bible Money Matters: Christmas Is For Debt?
• The Wallet: What’s Your Black Friday Strategy?
• Personal Finance Analyst: Online Consumer Education and Rip Off Report
• Happy Rock: The “Paying Cash” Experience - 2 Months Later

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Last year while big lenders like Countrywide collapsed and Wall Street took a beating on mortgage-backed securities, smaller banks weathered the storm pretty well. These guys seemed pretty stodgy while the market was racing along, home values were zooming, and investors were chomping at the bit to jump into the latest negative-amortization mortgage structure. But slow and steady wins the race, as it turns out. Smaller banks wouldn't touch this stuff with a ten foot pole. They looked like luddites a couple of years ago, but they're looking pretty smart right now.

When I started this website I funded it with the backing of Partners Bank of Texas, a small Houston based private bank with assets of less than $200 million. Last year Partners was acquired by Texas based Sterling Bank. Sterling is somewhat larger than Partners - with assets of around $4 billion - but they're very small when compared to, say, Wells Fargo, which has assets of around $600 billion.

In the past I've relied on companies like USAA ($68 billion in assets) and Wells Fargo, but Sterling is my go-to bank now. USAA is the financial institution dedicated to serving current and former members of the military community, and I've been a member for over twenty years, starting when I was a cadet at the United States Military Academy. I still appreciate their great customer service (although some of their lending practices have annoyed me). But even though I have a military connection with USAA, at the end of the day I'm just a number. No one knows me there. They put my data into a computer and it spits out an answer.

But when I talk to Sterling, I'm sitting across the table from the guy who is gonna make the decision. And I like that. When I trying to get this website funded I spent almost a year jumping through hoops for the guys over at Bank of America ($1.7 trillion in assets) and the venture capitalists wanted me to sign away my first born. But at Partners (now Sterling) I got to sit across from someone and pitch my idea; and the woman who I talked to was the same person empowered to make the decision.

I'll still shop the big boys for the plain vanilla deals I'm considering. But when I'm looking at some more challenging opportunities in this crazy market - raw land and multi-family - my first stop is Sterling. Real estate investing is all about relationships, and smart investors know that their reputation can be one of their most valuable assets.

From My Friend Shirei

Begin Here

This is the easy way and the fastest way to :
1. Make your Authority Technoraty explode.
2. Increase your Google Page Rank.
3. Get more traffic to your blog.
4. Makes more new friends.

Rules :
1. Start copy from ?Begin Copy? until ?End Copy? to your blog.
2. Put your own blog name and link.
3. Tag your friends as much as you can..

Picturing of Life, La Place de Cherie, Chez Francine, Le bric à brac de Cherie, Sorounded by Everything, Moments, Cosplay Photo Blog, A lot to Offer, Blogweblink, Best Video Blog, Blogcheers, Bloggerminded, Blogofminegal, Like A Dream Come True, Simply Amazing, Amazing Life, Vivek, Novee, DJ Jojo, Eagle, Penyu, Easy Step to Earn Money, MakeMoney ADD YOURSELF HERE!!!

I would like to share Both of That Domino Tag to : Dasir, BaliDreamhome, Ayodaftar, Sani, and Arhee.

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There’s so much to be thankful for, amidst the challenges we’ve faced this year. We’re counting our blessings!

Pilgrim doggies from Lulu.com

This is a post from The Digerati Life.

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