"...The hardest part is choosing the right color. I can picture in my head what I want, but I'll be darned if I can translate that image into reality..." Oh my goodness! Picking the color was practically impossible! I brought home some big squares the paint store loaned me (much better than those little chips). I ended up painting four big patches of different paint, all in the same color range, painted on each wall. I had to paint each color on each wall because each wall looked completely different. It is a basement, but has some small windows and the light changes constantly. I finally painted the whole basement and then decided I didn't like the color, so repainted it entirely. My husband kept saying he couldn't even tell the difference between all the different shades, lol. I think I spent more money on paint than all the carpentry, electrical, etc. combined, lol! I'm cursed with being a pack rat. I have such a hard time throwing things away. I think it's the historian/genealogist in me. I need to hold on to everything because it's part of my history. Like I really need the sales receipt from my 1990 Honda to remember I had one, lol??? Any attempt at cleaning becomes a walk down memory lane! I am getting better - mostly with other family member's stuff, lol - but I have given quite a bit of stuff away on freecycle in the last year. I'm getting so sick of my house being a mess that I do find myself getting a bit more ruthless. I finally shredded my checking account statements from 1982.... :) (Jeez, I had them longer than I've had my husband!) Yes, Tiff, the days are getting longer! I check the sunrise/sunset times in the paper every day. Funny how good that one extra minute makes me feel, lol! :) Dee P.S. Cyn, thanks - the knitting is so-so, but coming along!

Hi hoboken-seeking-a-house, You know the real estate market far better than I , but it seems to me that in very many areas of the U.S., this sub-prime mortgage debacle won't sort itself out for a long time. In the meantime, if house prices fall for a time, I'd not want to be owning one. What I'd suggest is buying some stocks, mostly with cash from the house that had sold. The price will go down some, quite likely, but you won't have lenders chasing you, and should one of you get laid off, as happened to another person posting on this forum (who'd bought larger than they could afford, expecting continued increases), you won't be sweating blood, trying to get all the bills paid and the mortgage - or lose the house! Down the road a while, when things get sorted out, and you've had a better chance to become familiar with the housing market where you now live, I think you'll be in a better position to buy. Plus, you'll have some equities that may well have fared better than a house might have. You'd have a choice, whether to liquidate them and put cash down on another home, or let them run, taking a larger mortgage but using the stocks as additional collateral, quite likely to increase in value, over a period. I prefer to have at least a five-year time horizon when buying stocks ... ten year is better. One proviso is that when you have $10,000. worth of reasonable quality stocks, usually the bank doesn't want to lend you more than $5,000. around here. As I think that you may well have somewhere in the neighbourhood of $100,000. on hand, I think that if I were you I'd be inclined to buy stocks directly, paying commission in and out, but no annual fee, where mutual funds usually charge a purchase or sale fee (that dies if you took the sale end and hold them for half a dozen years or so) - but they usually want about 1/5 of your average growth over the years as management fee. About 85% of them, despite their claims of such marvellous money management skills, don't manage to outperform the market as a whole. Even with an asset much smaller than that, I'd be inclined to buy stocks directly. Make it your business to not only learn about housing ... but money management in general, as well, over the next while. Do you figure that Exxon-Mobil's about to die over the short term? Or JNJ? Or a couple of dozen others. Plus, in the light of the U.S. Dollar's value having slipped substantially lately, and likely to continue to do so, how about buying some stock in well-chosen foreign assets? If you'd bought Canadian Dollars about 5 years ago, you could have got one for about 65 - 69 cents ... now it's costing you US$1.00. Had you bought $6,500. worth of Canadian stocks then, given no growth (or allowance for dividends), you could now cash them for $10,000. Careful, though - a few years ago most people felt that Eastman-Kodak was a money machine! Sometimes technological advances can leave one sitting out in left field, in the rain ... when the ball game is over! If you put your money into a bank or a bond, first off, there's no long-term possibility for your principal to grow. Two rats eat that kind of cheese - the IRS want to talk to you each year about the income produced ... and, as you know, they want part of it! If the only money that your principal will ever produce relative to this year is produced now, the second rat goes to work. The first one dealt with your current income. This second one nibbles off a corner of each dollar in guaranteed asset, annually. If you'd put $10,000. into the bank 20 years ago, it would have bought a decent car - my Dad bought a rather fancy Ford new in 1947 for $1,600. If the bank had paid you the agreed rent on your money in the interim, and you went in to collect your money now, what would you get? Exactly $10,000. - that won't buy anything like a decent car, now. So, each year, you must feed the income tax folks, and the rat that eats at your asset ... and you get what's left. Which in recent years, was not much (if anything). And, know what? The rats eat first! They always have. Just some thoughts that you may want to consider. By the way - if you carry any credit card balances over from month to month - pay 'em off! Regular cards charge 15 - 18% usually, and store-issued cards (wait for it) 25 - 28% annual rate, most of the time. Not my idea of a good time! Make money work for you, not against you! ole joyful

After working for UCSF for 7 years (not all full time and a maternity leave in there), I moved to another state after doing careful calculations about being "vested" in the Univ of CA retirement plan. "Vesting" was based on 5 years of 40 hr/wk work and I worked 36 hr weeks (3 x 12 hr) and took some time off for grad school and a baby. After I left I was told that I was not vested due to inadequate hours; this was apparently due to a clerical error I had suffered for the first few months I worked there, when they erroneously put me down as a "per-diem" (as opposed to "benefitted") employee. In order to prove that that was in error, I had to provide those paystubs including the one with the "correction". I'm so glad that I had obsessively filed those paystubs for direct deposit in chronological order and was able to put my hand on it, copy it and mail it to them. As a result, I will have several hundred dollars each month in retirement that I wouldn't have otherwise. Retirement's a long way away, but not something to be toyed with. Besides, I'm sure my daughter will laugh at the "measly" $18/hr I was being paid at the time as a new nurse. When my father died, I found sheets of yellow legal paper in his files accounting how much money he had found on the street since the 1950's: "1972 79 cents, 1973 $10.41" etc. Although amusing, it wasn't needed, but all his files were exceedingly better maintained than mine. I am nervous about going to "paperless" systems in case I were to be hit by a truck tomorrow. My mother would need an extensive list of passwords and websites to access my retirement plans (to even know about them) and other accounts. My ex is not a reliable source of info, and doesn't have a clue about what accounts I now have (and wouldn't help her if he knew). You're not supposed to write down those passwords after all. My mother has been made the beneficiary of my retirement accounts, because I know she will properly use the money for my daughter. I will change all of that in 10 years or so when DD is old enough.

Hi Jeri, But the truth is, I dont understand most of what all of you talk about. Apologies... on these threads, especially the big-picture macro-economic topics, some of us can spin off into directions that have everything to do with everything, and nothing really to do with the basic concern on-the-street. On a micro-economics basis... the stuff that matters to you while prepearing to buy a home in the here & now... you ought to have low costs of leverage (mortgage) for quite a while... at least if our economic system remains stable (which it actually quite is yet.) To explain the statement you asked about; As soon as the overall markets realize that the US Government has completely supplicated to socialism, that's the end... the gig is up. It may happen now much sooner than you think. Dave would you mind explaining this please??? :-) Realize that up until the last 100-125 years or so the United States had been digging itself up out of what we would now call a "third world economy." The reasons why we've risen to become the global dominating economy were because of a rugged (some would even say "sometimes cruel") individualistic and fiercely independent "bootstrap" economic culture that roughly treated everyone equal (emphasis on "roughly.") The people who populated our country DESIRED this degree of true populism... that every man and woman had equal opportunity and equal risk, and because of this no person would get preferential treatment... neither due to their being a pauper, nor a king. As our hard-scrap industrialism bore fruit, and we began to become self-aware of our economic superiority, we simultaneously (instantaneously) began our descent back into mediocrity... by beginning to design discrimination and collectivism into our economic systems. In short, from generation to generation, we've gradually begun to become more and more economically spoiled and lazy, and the corruption that comes along with it has become more and more deeply rooted into our systems. As individuals (to address you, and your concerns) we can learn to be strong, individualistic, economically mature... and succeed despite the ongoing decay of our economic society around us. Doing so is an emotional challenge however... as it means constantly "swimming against the tides of social popularity." Hope that clarifies. Dave Donhoff Leverage Planner