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Practical Personal Finance Tips

Posted by admin on December 6, 2007 in Misc.

I wanted to end my week of posting with some nuggets of wisdom some people have given me lately and that I wanted to share with you. Thanks to those who provided this to me. I’ll be tied up on Friday so have a great weekend.

1. When buying a house in a desirable neighborhood most real estate agents will recommend that you bring a home inspector since, in a multiple bid situation, some potential purchasers will not even ask for a home inspection as a condition of sale and have that done when they are looking at their house in order to make their offer look better. However, I heard one better- bring a contractor as well; the home inspector will tell you what is wrong but the contractor will tell you how much it is to fix it. The leaky pipes that the home inspector find could cost you $100 or $1,000- but you won’t know until the contractor tells us (the only issue being, find a contractor in a hot housing market…).
2. If you don’t mind buying floor models, ask for the manager of the store and ask them when they clear out their floor models. I am told most chains have some type of regular schedule on when floor models are put out to pasture. Then either butter the manager up to save one for you or make sure you are there the day the floor models hit the clearance bins. A colleague claims he has basically purchased a whole line of Apple products doing this.
3. Year end is traditionally the best time to get deals from financial institutions- bankers need to boast sales for year-end. Now may be a good time to apply for a line of credit or ask a bank to pay the penalty on your existing mortgage company in order to switch to a lower rate mortgage.

Feel free to add other practical tips you may have heard recently. Thanks.