When it comes down to it, homeowners looking to sell only want two things: to sell them home quickly and for a lot of money.
There are tons of tricks to helping sell your home quickly, and for a high value. Today’s seller’s market helps, with rising home prices and a huge demand for homes.
Other tricks help as well, like repainting your house or making small renovations.
But what if you’ve already made all the fixes? What else can you do to increase the value of your home?
The answer could be making your home ‘smart.’ Smart homes are starting to become more viable as technology advances and more devices start to connect. While some tech may seem like a gimmick or a fad, other improvements could end up being the final selling point on your home, helping you close the deal.
Here are some of the top tech improvements you can make for your home, as well as tips when looking at making your home smart:
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Front door
There’s plenty of evidence to support that painting your front door a bright color helps sell your home. That’s because your front door is one of the first things prospective home buyers will see. Why not impress them with some tech?
Smart doorbells add security to your home. These doorbells have built in cameras, and when someone rings your doorbell, you’ll be able to see who is outside your door. Many of these connect with your phone, too, so you can get a notification when someone’s at the door even if you aren’t nearby.
Another front door feature to look into is a smart lock. These locks can be unlocked remotely by phones, and multiple phones can be connected to the lock. For houses with kids, this can be safer than giving everyone a key. Combined with the smart doorbell, you can find out who is at your door and unlock the door from them from the other side of your house.
These upgrades aren’t just convenient, but they help keep homes safe, too. Safety is a top priority for most home buyers, so this will impress them.
Security system
Most homes already have a security system, but many of them could use an upgrade.
Because homeowners want a safe house, a smart security system is a good selling point. These systems vary in range and cost, but most give you access to professional monitoring and remote control.
You can also choose to combine your security system with outdoor cameras and motion sensors for extra defense. Smart alarm systems will also let you turn the system on and off whenever you want.
Around the house
Some smart tech increases the value of your home while saving you and the future homeowner money.
Light dimmers aren’t new, but they are huge money savers for electricity. Also, dimmable lights are convenient for entertainment and comfort purposes. Smart light dimmers can be controlled from your phone or tablet.
Smart thermostats can be an even bigger money save. These keep track of when you are and aren’t home, making sure to heat and cool the house at the right times. This saves you money without you even noticing a difference in temperature.
The comfort and cost effectiveness of these products are easy sells, especially for any potential home buyers who are already used to these amenities.
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When in doubt, keep it simple
Tech is fun and cool, and it can make your home easier to sell at a higher price. But just like everything else, tech can be too much of a good thing.
Small changes like smart doorbells or smart thermostats can cost around $200, making them a cost-effective addition. Upgrading your entire home to a smart home can cost much more, though, sometimes well above $10,000. This is going to be much harder to recoup.
It’s also worth keeping some parts of your home tech-free. Not everybody is in love with including tech in every aspect of life, so some home buyers could be turned off because you made too many upgrades.
What to do after you move
Once you’ve sold your home, you need to be sure to reset every device in the home. Not only are you a potential risk to the new homeowner’s security, but leftover data could be getting stored on the devices.
To keep yourself safe, factory reset every device in the home as you move out.
Now in its third year, company initiative provides $100K, mentorship and resources to support qualifying high-potential Black entrepreneurs MILWAUKEE, May 4, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Northwestern Mutual, in partnership with gener8tor, today announced the addition of five promising tech startups to its innovative Black Founder Accelerator program. An extension of the company’s Sustained Action for Racial … [Read more…]
“You don’t have to be world-class great to make a great living doing what you love,” Jonathan Fields writes in Career Renegade, “if you are willing to step outside the box, approach your passion differently, find innovative ways to mine that passion for money, and work like crazy to make it happen.”
In Career Renegade, Fields draws upon his own experience, as well as that of others, to provide a blueprint for those willing to take that entrepreneurial leap of faith.
Career Renegade is an odd book. Its title and marketing might lead you to believe it’s about careers. As I write this, it’s the number one book in Amazon’s “job hunting” category, which is baffling. Career Renegade isn’t about job hunting or changing careers. It’s about taking your passion and turning it into a business. It’s about entrepreneurship. As long as you expect this going in, it’s a great book.
Profiting from your passion Career Renegade starts by exploring the relationship between what we do and what we love. Fields encourages readers to examine their own lives to discover what it is they’re passionate about. His message is that although it might seem impossible, although it might take some hard work, you can turn your dreams into a career.
“The paths to transforming a moneyless passion into a lucrative future are limited only by your own creativity,” Fields writes. Career Renegade suggests seven possible paths for turning passion into profit:
Redeploying your passion in a hungrier market. Do what you love in an area where there’s high demand.
Refocusing and mining the most lucrative micro-markets. Sometimes the solution is to narrow your market, to focus on doing something valuable for a select group of people.
Exploiting gaps in the information needed to excel at an activity. Fields argues that one way to succeed at doing what you love is to provide information that nobody else offers, or to offer it in a way that others don’t. Get Rich Slowly is an example of following this path.
Exploiting gaps in education. Beyond just providing information, some people can profit by directly teaching others.
Exploiting gaps in gear or merchandise. Using this path, you turn your passion into a product. You “build a better mousetrap”, so to speak.
Exploiting gaps in community. People value networks, and if you’re the first or best to create one devoted to your subject, you can become the leader in the field. Fields mentions Ladies Who Launch as an example of taking a passion for community-building and it into a career.
Exploiting gaps in the way a pursuit is provided. The final path is to make it easier for people to do what you love (and what they love).
Fields writes that it’s possible to “turn your passion loose in unexpected places”. He cites the example of Liv Hansen, a young woman just out of school who couldn’t find a job in the art world. She went to work at her mother’s bakery, and began to create fanciful designs on the wedding cakes and cupcakes. Though this may not have been how she had planned to use her art degree, it turned out to be profitable and fulfilling work.
While the first half of Career Renegade is devoted to helping you find your passion, the second half is all about developing an entrepreneurial mindset and marketing your idea.
What if you’re not an entrepreneur? Many of my friends love their jobs and have no desire to become self-employed. They use hustle, passion, and patience to make the most of working for somebody else. It’s very possible to make a great living doing what you love without striking out on your own.
My wife, for example, just isn’t an entrepreneur. Kris loves her job as much as I love mine. She enjoys her co-workers and the workplace culture. She has no desire to work for herself. What does Career Renegade have to offer folks who don’t want to become entrepreneurs? I asked the author to comment on this. Jonathan Fields responded:
I lean strongly toward taking more control and being an entrepreneur. And, most of the people in my book seem to be wired that way, too. But that’s not necessarily true.
There will still be some people that just want to keep working for someone else. The cool thing is, you can tap many of the market research strategies that I lay out in the early part of the book to not only test your idea, but identify other people and companies to connect with. They’ll reveal companies who are doing something similar, then you can:
approach them for a job, or
build your personal brand online to showcase your abilities in the area of your passion, then tap social media to find key influencers and hiring managers and make them aware of your showcase
That whole process is largely what the second half of the book is about.
All the same, I’d hesitate to recommend Career Renegade to somebody simply hunting for a new job. I don’t think it’s appropriate.
Career Renegade also suffers from one of the same flaws as The Power of Less [my review]: it’s tech-centric. Its examples and suggestions are based on the assumption that you can leverage the web and social media to make your business succeed. This isn’t always true. My father’s passion was to start a small manufacturer of custom boxes. There is nothing that Twitter could offer my family’s box factory. Podcasts and blogs won’t help either. It’s not that sort of business.
The bottom line Career Renegade is not a bad book — not at all! It is, however, a book aimed a narrow target audience, one much narrower than the cover and title might lead you to believe. Entrepreneurs are a subset of the general population. This book is written for a subset of entrepreneurs.
There’s a lot of fine information here for those interested in launching a business in which the internet will play a key role. I love the case histories that Fields uses to flesh out his topics. I never tire of reading how other people have managed to turn their passion into a business. I can learn a lot, for example, from reading how Anita Campbell moved from lawyer to blogger at Small Business Trends.
Career Renegade is a great book — for a certain type of person.If you believe you might enjoy working for yourself — even if you don’t know what it is you’d do — this book is worth reading. If you are looking to start your own business and if that business requires a strong online presence, this book is a tremendous resource. But it’s not the next What Color is Your Parachute?
Interior design goes beyond simply accessorizing a house with decorations. Anyone can decorate a home or property, but learning how to design an interior properly is a different skill set altogether.
Interior design enhances the beauty, functionality, and style of a property with the intent of making it instantly more appealing to guests and visitors.
For a real estate investor, interior design functions as a hook; a well-designed property entices visitors and makes it easier to picture themselves living in the property. It pulls potential buyers in, and makes them go, “Aha! I could live here!”
In this short article, we’ll look at four uses of interior design for the real estate investor. These are all ideas that you’ll be able to apply to your own investments. We’ll conclude with a short list of practical tips and tricks.
Add value
A simple real estate rule applies across the board: a well-designed interior adds value to your property.
Some of this may come in the form of actual furnishings with a tangible value that has been added to the residence; it may also come in an intangible form — your ability to sell the property for more because of the well-designed interior.
Apply beauty strategically
A beautiful interior can increase your home’s value, but it has to be a well-applied beauty. Interior design isn’t a matter of filling your property with all the pretty things you can find.
Apply the beauty strategically to gain the most benefit and have the most significant impact on potential buyers.
Think strategically. One interior designer recommends always repainting the front door of the property. A fresh, clean-looking door makes a great statement even before your clients have entered.
That is the key to understanding interior design; be selective in the beautiful elements you incorporate to receive the maximum benefit.
Enhance appeal
If you’ve added value by incorporating strategically beautiful elements into your home, you’ll succeed in increasing the immediate appeal of the property to any potential buyers.
From the pictures in advertisements to their first impressions on entering the property, potential clients will see a beautiful and well-thought-out interior.
Good design speaks not only to a well-kept property but to the quality of presentation that your clients will appreciate as well.
The above ideas are general, big-picture concepts to keep in mind with your interior design. Below are several specific tips and tricks that will help with interior designing.
Interior design tips and tricks
Balance “splurges” and “saves”
A “splurge” is a big-budget item such as a designer table in the dining room or a statement chandelier in the main hall. A well-chosen splurge draws the eye and ties the room together, serving as a natural focal point.
On the other hand, “saves” are the little design elements used to flesh out a room, from throw pillows to wall hangings, they can go a long way in interior decorating. You can go cheap on the saves and set aside more money for the splurges to maximize the “wow” factor without breaking your design budget.
Minimize clutter
Don’t decorate like someone who hoards everything. Often, more is not better when it comes to interior design, particularly for display properties; keep things simple and steer clear of countless small items which will just confuse the overall look of the room.
Feature upgrades
Two points here: first, when redesigning an old home, be sure to upgrade key fixtures and rooms, particularly the kitchen and bathroom. And second, capitalize on those upgrades by featuring those rooms more prominently. In the case of the kitchen especially, it may even be possible to draw attention to that room from other locations in the property, doubling-down on the benefits of your upgrades.
Avoid fads
Don’t decorate only according to the latest style; if you do, your interior design will soon look outdated. Go for time-tested, classic looks and design elements from mid-century modern influences, classic rustic farmhouse style, etc.
While not an exhaustive list, hopefully you find that the tips and principles listed above will help you increase the price and beauty of your property.
Keep reading
How to Successfully Integrate Smart Home Tech into a Home How to Properly Furnish a Small Bedroom to Fit a Large Bed How to Use Video Walls to Make Your Home More Entertainment-Friendly
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Is Facebook the IPO of a generation? The much-anticipated initial public offering of the world’s most popular social networking site, Facebook, took place this morning on the NASDAQ. With it, the dreams and technologies of the millenial generation have taken root as a core part not only of American society – but of its formal economy.
Already, Facebook bears the distinction of having the largest market valuation of any US company at IPO at $104.1 Bn. That’s no small feat for a company that didn’t even exist eight years ago. The offering, which was originally priced at $38 per share, has “popped” to over $42/share as of the time of writing, creating over $16 Bn in value for the company. That could grow to $18.4 Bn, making it also the largest initial share offering in US history.
But all these big numbers aside, the Facebook IPO is also the hallmark of the new economy. Facebook doesn’t make anything, and its users aren’t even buying any products or servics (with the exception of some gaming functions), but most people still believe it has great value. The power of connectedness – and the technologies that enable us to share and display information across our network – has now taken root.
That, some analysts say, explains in part the $1 Bn Facebook paid for photo-sharing startup, Instagram last month: Sure, Facebook could’ve created a competitor, but Instagram was already growing to be hugely popular – and it’s a bit harder to convince an existing social network to migrate. It also helps explain the company’s big gains in advertising revenue (and its price to earnings value). It’s the network itself, that has value. Advertisers can use it to pinpoint people based on preferences in a more targeted fashion. It’s also a place where people are more tuned in; people care more about their friends’ lives than tv, and the power of social networking holds values for individuals and companies, alike. Ever heard of the term “going viral”?
In the end, we’re all part of social networks, whether we use applications like Facebook, or not. But it took a Harvard student in his dorm room to harness that power for the market.
What’s your take? Is Facebook the IPO of a generation? Will you “like” the social network by investing in its stock?
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Pretty much since I learned to walk, I have had an unusual disdain for waste. I noted the inefficient route of the school bus and wondered why it couldn’t just pick us up at a few centralized locations. Tracked my allowance with multi-year forecasts and kept the dollar bills organized in a photo album. Always cast a fiery eye towards a fridge or a front door left open, a car left idling, or a credit card bill left unpaid.
This odd condition has proved to be profitable over the years, as I have naturally sought out ways to use less energy and waste less money, with very positive side effects like getting to spend more time outside and retiring from work relatively early.
This is the reason the concepts of money and energy efficiency mingle so freely on this supposedly-financial blog: you can look at your energy consumption as a very close measure of the wastefulness of your life. The ideal life, even a very modern one, will require you to spend very little of your earnings buying energy. This is a contrarian opinion for me to hold in this world of Peak Oil and energy shocks, but check out the evidence:
Transportation: The Mustache family uses less than 3 gallons of gasoline per month for most of the year. This changes for special occasions like family roadtrips, but by following the basic principles of avoiding commuting and car clown local driving, and using the bikes for errands like groceries, driving is cut by almost 90%. Savings: about $10,000 per year compared to an average family.
Electricity: Although our current 2600 square foot house is oversized for three people, we manage to run it these days on 243 kWh per month, which costs about $25.00 even when offsetting 100% of the use with more expensive wind energy from the local utility. This is done by being reasonable with the air conditioning, letting our bodies toughen a bit as the seasons change, line-drying the clothes, and using CFL and LED light bulbs*. Savings: About $1000 per year
Heating: I have upgraded some of the insulation in this house, added some South-facing windows and plenty of thermal mass, and seal the curtains and shutters up tightly on winter nights while the programmable thermostat keeps the house at 62F during the nights, 67 during the day. The water heater is in an insulation blanket and we use a low-flow showerhead. Because of this our spending on natural gas averages out to $25 per month ($300 per year), which includes all heating, hot water for showers and dishwashing, and cooking. In contrast, the average US house spends $400 on water heating and another $960 on heat, meaning we enjoy Savings of $1060 per year.
When your bills are this low, it becomes a bit difficult to save money on energy by buying high-tech upgrades. I could get a Nissan Leaf electric car, but it would sit unused in the driveway just as much as the Scion xA currently does. Could replace my 80% efficiency furnace with a 95% efficient one for $4000, but the payback period would be decades. Better to just add $100 more insulation or get a nice pair of slippers to drop the existing furnace use even more. We spend about $5 per year on electricity running the air conditioner – I’d sooner remove it altogether than upgrade it. I can’t even upgrade my city bicycle, which cost $300 brand-new in 2008 and has over 4000 miles of errands on it, because it still works perfectly and gets me around very quickly. This whole picture is an example of a Non-Emergency Energy Situation. Spending is minimal and further optimization is difficult, so energy use fades into the background where it should be.
So when does energy use become an emergency? There is no single fixed rule, but the following are some warning signals:
When energy is unusually expensive: While living in Hawaii last winter, I noticed that their electricity is generated by burning tankerloads of imported oil, which is reflected in the 30 cent/kWh price (300% of what I pay here). And all the water is electrically heated – furiously expensive. To compensate, we took many of our showers just by jumping into the turquoise-blue ocean and outfitted the Vacation Suite project with GU10 LED bulbs in its track lighting system, which use 85% less power than halogens. People who live in the Northeastern US who rely on heating oil are in a similar situation for heat.
When more than 5% of your income is on spent on energy and gasoline: Bumping up your savings rate by 5%, for example from 10% to 15% of income will slice 8 years off of your working career. Is worth working 8 more years just to stand at the gas pump?
When you have a rattly almond-colored fridge with fake woodgrain handles: Last year I ran some tests on an old fridge that a friend still had in operation. It was burning 110 kWh per month, or $135 of electricity every year. For $300 he replaced it with a nearly-new fridge from Craigslist and I measured it again. This one used 62% less energy, saving him $83 per year, which is a spectacular 28% annual return on investment! When you do the math, many of the lower-cost energy upgrades described in this article will return even more than the stock market over time.
When you find yourself driving around regularly in a car that gets worse than 35MPG: Imagine that your only vehicle was an 84-foot double-trailer Walmart semi, stuck in first gear with no muffler and a bed of nails for the driver’s seat. Would you take it down to the drive-through? Probably not. This is how ANY sub-35MPG vehicle should feel in your mind to drive regularly. It’s an emergency! Sell it! Replace it with a reasonable car!
My own Plan for Energy Efficiency
The latest sketchup model is fully detailed, and structural engineering is almost done too.(Thanks Mike B and Chris G!)
Because energy consumption is one of the biggest issues affecting humanity these days, I’ve decided to go just slightly overboard when renovating the new house. It presents an ideal blank slate for this experiment because in its current condition, it is an energy emergency. It came with almost completely uninsulated walls and ceilings, and a drafty crawlspace that lets winter air blow directly in from the outside. I found it both ridiculous and amazing that the house has existed in this condition, wasting energy for almost 60 years.
But through this blog, I had the good fortune of hearing from a reader/energy expert named Roch Naleway who manages a department of GP Conservation products. Born in Germany and having lived in the Netherlands and now Portland, Oregon, you can imagine the strict views this man has on energy efficiency. And he has been lecturing me to take my own own game to the next level on this project.
Insulation: The new insulation will be a combination of sprayed-on foam insulation, rigid foamboard with foil backing, and standard batts. The roof, all-important in a wide flat house like this one, will be insulated to R-50.
Free Solar Heat: The amount of South-facing glass in the house should provide more than enough to heat the entire structure for most of the cool season, since my region gets over 300 sunny days per year.
Supplemental Heat: The house currently has an old gas furnace with creaky mouse-filled ducts. This will be replaced with a 95%-efficiency gas boiler and radiant under-floor heat installed between the ducts from the crawlspace side. Although it will hopefully not be used much, it will be a luxurious and efficient way to warm the house, and an excuse for me to learn how to install a multi-zone boiler heat system. Also nicely compatible with roof-mounted solar water heating panels in the future.
Electricity: I will be installing a very fancy clothesline overlooking the park, and no air conditioning system at all. With LED lighting throughout, our bills should be even lower than they are today. With usage this low and a local utility that discourages grid-tied solar installations, solar panels are not practical at this time, but I will probably do some off-the grid experiments in the future – stay tuned.
Water Heating: Either a tankless natural gas heater or an electric heat pump water heater will get the job done here. I will supplement it in the summer with a Hawaiian-style outdoor shower that gets its heat entirely from a simple coil of black irrigation pipe mounted on the roof.
As the final bit of this energy efficiency experiment, I just ordered a fine new tool which should come in handy for both the blogging and construction “businesses” : an 8-foot-long bike trailer from Bikes at work that can carry huge items up to 300 pounds. With my new house only 1.7 miles from the Home Depot, I plan to use this to haul most of the construction materials, eliminating countless trips in the van and giving me some serious leg training in the process.
Energy Efficiency Shopping: If you find this field as interesting as I do, I recommend browsing around GP Conservation’s site. If you have questions about the field, ask them in the comments and I’ll try to get Roch to spend an entire workday answering them for us.
Further Reading: Wired Magazine comments on how we’ll all be using almost entirely clean energy by 2050 – I sure hope so.
* I recently upgraded the last frontier – the kitchen – with higher-end LEDs from GE. These were the first LED bulbs I found with a sufficently good “color rendering index” to make the food look tasty, and thus they finally allowed me to remove the power-hungry halogens.
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Over the past five months, I’ve had the unexpected pleasure of traveling the country with Mint to talk in 11 different cities about money in celebration of the book my company recently released, The Financial Diet. My partner Lauren and I, along with our spouses or other members of the TFD team, joined Mint up and down both coasts and in the middle of the country to speak honestly with our audience about what money means to them, and the unique challenges that their city brings, financially. (Oh, and we also drank awesome wine and had tons of great finger food — but that joy was somehow secondary to the genuine love we felt being with the community we have grown over the past few years.)
And talking about money, for us, isn’t just a hashtag, or a way to promote our book. It is the very reason we have done what we do these past few years, the thing that motivates us when we get up each day for work. Because if I hadn’t been lightly pushed by my exasperated then-boyfriend to download Mint four years ago, and forced myself into a conversation about my finances that has grown past anything I could have ever conceived, I would still almost certainly be in a position where money alternately terrified and bored me. I was terrible with money because I refused to talk or even think about it, and everything from ruining my credit score to going into credit card debt felt completely irreversible because of that fundamental fear. But I know now that in talking about money, in confronting it head-on and making it a value-neutral, ongoing conversation in your life, you can overcome any obstacle or fix any mistake, financially. Life is long, and today is always the best day to get started living it well.
It was interesting, though, seeing that even amongst the groups of women who came to our events, who came from incredibly diverse backgrounds and approached their individual finances in entirely different ways, that there were themes which kept reappearing over and over. Yes, there were unique challenges to each city (Austin is growing much too quickly for its residents to keep up, Atlanta is in desperate need of improved public transportation), but there were also common threads that we heard almost without exception at each stop. Here, the four things we heard most frequently while talking about money on the road.
“My partner and I don’t agree about how to deal with money. How do we overcome that?”
One of the biggest recurring themes at our tour events was the idea that couples fundamentally disagreed on how to handle, or even talk about, money. And that’s not surprising — everyone comes to a relationship with money baggage, whether it comes from being raised with a lot of it, very little of it, or something in-between. Some people were raised to avoid the topic entirely, others were taught to micromanage every detail. And as our money and relationships expert Olivia Mellan explains in our book, the most common dynamic in relationships is a spender who is married to a saver, in whatever form they may take. One person simply plays closer and more conservatively with money than the other, and from that fundamental disagreement can stem near-endless problems.
But two fundamental components of any healthy, long-term relationship from a financial view are 1) speaking openly and frequently about money, so that secrets cannot accrue or small cracks cannot expand, and 2) having a separate, independent bank account for each member of the couple which is totally their own. Even if it’s just a very small amount, a tiny discretionary fund, it is so important for each person to feel empowered and fulfilled by what they want to spend (or save) on without having to ask the other person for permission.
In your “fun fund,” you might want to devote half to saving for a girl’s trip and half to spending on skincare products. Or you might want to use it to take yourself to movies and dinner sometimes, or just save for something big you can’t even imagine yet. But having money that is entirely individual provides a release valve for all of the other compromises that will be made on the money you share.
Two people never have to fully agree on money, but they do have to learn to live with one another’s money baggage and differing approaches. Having the topic be an open, value-neutral one, and having that separate money for individual spending, allow that to happen.
“What do you do when you earn much more than your friends, or much less?”
One story I found myself telling over and over on the tour was the experience I had through high school and college, when I was a decidedly middle-class person in an undeniably rich-kid town. I socialized with many, many people whose parents earned (literally) ten times what mine did, and whose lives and access looked wildly different as a result. And aside from profoundly skewing my idea of what “normal” was — I didn’t know then that it wasn’t normal to have many friends who went to a $30,000-per-year high school — it also led me to spend money I didn’t have in an effort to keep up appearances.
I went into credit card debt, tanked my credit score, and drained eight years’ worth of summer job savings all in the span of about a year, wasting that money on a lifestyle that never belonged to me. And from that experience, I learned that the most important thing anyone can do for their mental health when it comes to the finances of your social life is to make sure that you have at least some friends who are close to your level, financially, because being the only one on one side or another of the spectrum will only lead to a distortion of perspective and deep self-consciousness.
Beyond that, it is up to the person who is more comfortable financially to lead the conversation, offer options, be candid with costs, and not expect the other person to follow suit. Having more money in a friendship is a great place of privilege, and one that requires both sensitivity and understanding that the conversation might not come easily to the person with less. But above all, no matter how much you earn, the phrase “it’s not in my budget” needs to be in everyone’s vocabulary. There is nothing chic about going into credit card debt to pay for someone else’s idea of a social life.
“Do I really have to have a retirement account?”
At the risk of sounding like your parents, yes. Absolutely yes.
And although the women at our events were almost universally savvy, motivated women, this question came up again and again. Having a retirement account can feel like that sort of vague, important-in-theory thing you can easily put off, but every day you are not putting that pre-tax money away (and particularly if you are missing out on an employer match) is a day you will be kicking yourself for later.
Although it may not feel that way, we will all want to retire one day, and not having the option to leave our jobs is something that no one should have to face. The younger you start saving, the more time you have to let that money grow and work for you, and although it may not be as immediately-satisfying as spending that money on something you want in the short term, once you start your retirement saving, there is a profound comfort to be found in watching it grow over time and knowing that that money is the nest you are building for yourself, because you care about yourself enough to take care of Future You.
“How do I balance paying off my loans with living life?”
Ultimately, the biggest question that most people face when it comes down to the day-to-day of personal finance is how to live the life you want while doing what is right for you. And for many people, that means balancing their loan payments (which for many people can feel overwhelming) with the other things you’d frankly much rather be doing with your money. But something we have learned over the years at TFD is that, first of all, you probably need much less than you imagine you do to be happy.
When we were first starting the company and could not take a salary for over a year, Lauren and I suddenly saw our household incomes drop by nearly half, and had to severely reduce our lifestyles as a result. And though it was self-imposed in starting a business, it taught us that so much of what we were spending on, so much of what we felt was necessary to our happiness or fulfillment, was really just mindless buying.
Lauren as an example lived at home until she was 25 in order to help pay down her loans, and though she certainly longed to live on her own earlier, she was able to find a readjusted idea of happiness while living with her parents. When I went to community college instead of the four-year schools I dreamed of to save money, I wished I could sign on the dotted line to go to those dream schools, but I learned to be happy in the life I was living.
The greater the gap you can create between “what you could technically afford to spend” and “what you need to spend in order to live well,” the wealthier you will feel, regardless of what you earn. And if repaying loans is part of your day-to-day money life, you must learn to treat that money as never yours in the first place — you can’t count what your life would be like with that loan money and then watch it go out the door, or you will be full of resentment and envy each month.
You have what you have, you owe what you owe, you are who you are.
Now with all that information, take stock of your life. Go through every purchase last month and highlight every one you don’t remember making. Realize how much of your spending is done without even thinking, and how many purchases really don’t bring you much happiness in the long run. And if you can start thinking about your money like that — reduced down to the essence of what matters, and what has real value — suddenly the balancing act won’t seem nearly as hard as you thought.
Want a community with a little of everything—arts, education, adventure, business, family-friendly and more? It may be time to check out Provo and Orem. As the heart and hub of Utah County, these two cities collectively hold plenty of surprises that are certain to delight would-be residents, even the ones who’ve never considered living in “Happy Valley” before.
Adventure
Want rugged mountain terrain and inspiring views? Provo and Orem are surrounded by them. From hiking on Y Mountain to the build-your-own-adventure wonderland that is Mt. Timpanogos, residents don’t look far for outdoor fun.
Bike the entire 16 miles of the Provo River Parkway Trail, a paved pathway running from Utah Lake to Vivian Park in Provo Canyon. Stop at Bridal Veil Falls to dip your toes in the icy cold water, too.
Train for the annual Utah Valley Marathon each June or any of a number of other competitive opportunities. For details on everything running, check in with the experts at Runner’s Corner in Orem.
Nordic and alpine skiing are accessible up Provo Canyon. Just turn left into Sundance Resort and stay for dinner in the Foundry Grill or the Tree Room, or grab a cocktail and live music at the Owl Bar. Rather be in the water? Fly-fishing and tubing are yours in Provo Canyon, just upstream from your next picnic in any of the five Provo Canyon parks. You can also launch your boat in Utah Lake—not a reservoir, it’s a real lake—or watch the Orem Owlz or other sports team at either of the local universities.
Where to live: For recreation just outside your door, look near Heather Lane and 8th North at the mouth of Provo Canyon, or venture further up into Sundance, Springdell or near Vivian Park.
Arts
Museums. Festivals. Concerts. Movies. Just say what you want and Provo and Orem supply the rest. Annual events include January’s Sundance Film Festival, where screenings are held daily at the screening room at Sundance Resort, and summer concerts and plays at the SCERA Center for the Arts.
UVU’s UCCU Event Center brings big-name concerts to the area throughout the year, or celebrate Independence Day (give or take a few days) at Stadium of Fire. Museums include the Museum of Art, B.F. Larsen Gallery, and Life Science Museum on the BYU campus and the Woodbury Art Museum at UVU.
Where to live: Fast-growing-but-quaint Vineyard, Utah, on the western side of Provo and Orem, offers newer homes, access to Utah Lake, and is a short drive from just about everything.
Education
Brigham Young University and Utah Valley University provide students here world-class educational opportunities.
The side benefit? Residents here get access to world-class libraries as well as scholarly events, including literary, philosophic and scientific; community education; and extracurricular activities. Provo’s nightlife–frequently in walking distance to BYU–caters to the college crowd with institutions like Fat Cats for bowling, billiards and arcade games, 7 Peaks Resort, where water fun rules, and Velour Live Music Gallery, an all-ages venue (no smoking or alcohol allowed) that has helped launched the careers of bands including the Neon Trees and the Fictionists.
Public primary and secondary schools benefit from their proximity to the two colleges and the diversity of each. Both the Alpine and Provo School Districts serve the area as do a number of specialized charter schools. Parents can expect access to dual-immersion programs, arts education, and unique opportunities for children to experience college-sponsored events and other activities.
Where to live: When close proximity to a university is at the top of your list, look near BYU, where you’ll find plenty of condos, smaller homes, and landscaped luxury for sale. Prefer something older or more eclectic? Downtown Provo is the answer, whether you’re looking for a home that’s fully remodeled or one ready for your creativity and TLC.
Business, retail and shopping
This family-friendly community is business-friendly, too. Provo and Orem have both helped spur the growth of tech industry giants including WordPerfect, Novell, Ancestry.com and Omniture over the years. Healthcare is also booming in the area, but so are small, niche businesses including Altra (running shoes), Amano (chocolate), Xlear, and Blendtec.
All of this means retail is endlessly accessible in Provo and Orem, from the traditional malls that flank the north and south ends of the community (University Mall and Provo Towne Center, respectively), to the boutique offerings at the Shops at Riverwoods. Also check out the dining options at the latter, including sushi at the Happy Sumo, Mexican food at Bajio, European-influenced fresh foods at La Jolla Groves, or a gooey caramel apple from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. Rather eat in? Swing by Harmon’s on 8th North for gourmet goodies and local grocery fare.
Where to live: If shopping is your thing, invest in a condo by the Riverwoods or University Mall, or a home off Palisades Drive. Just west of the Riverwoods, the small community perched above the canyon offers fantastic views of both town and mountains and is within walking distance of both.
Yumville
Hungry? Got a sweet tooth? Dining options in Provo and Orem are far more diverse than most towns their size offer. Just be sure you save room for dessert. If cupcakes are your thing, try the Sweet Tooth Fairy where featured flavors change daily. Birthday celebrations go great with a cake from The Chocolate—pack it up for a picnic at Paul Ream Wilderness Park, or eat pizza at The Brick Oven before you stop for ice cream from the BYU creamery. You may also want to skip dinner entirely and dive right into dessert from Provo Bakery, Rockwell Ice Cream, or opt for gelato at Zaza Melodia by University Mall.
Where to live: In Provo and Orem, whether you’re hoping for a home that smells like delicious baked goods from a nearby restaurant or you want to live somewhere that’s close enough to walk to dining options—and walk off some of the food on the way back home—you’re in good company. Great dining dots the town and public transportation from UTA makes everything accessible. So look anywhere. You’ll find comfortable homes fitting all budgets in neighborhoods bordered by Center Street and University Parkway in Orem. Also check the south end of Provo.
Maybe it’s a hatred of cold weather, a love of chicken and waffles or even the fact that the south is teaming with jobs in both tech and entertainment, but when it comes to the fastest-growing US cities, southern cities are booming. The U.S. Census Bureau recently released its list of The Top 15 Fastest Growing Cities in America, and 10 of those locations found themselves south of the Mason-Dixon line.
According to Amel Toukabri, a demographer in the Census Bureau’s population division, this is part of a growing trend. “Overall, cities in the South continue to grow at a faster rate than any other U.S region. Since the 2010 Census, the population in large southern cities grew by an average of 9.4 percent. In comparison, cities in the West grew 7.3 percent, while cities in the Northeast and Midwest had much lower growth rates at 1.8 percent and 3.0 percent respectively.”
So where are these cities where the population is growing like crazy? Here’s the Census Bureau’s top 15:
The 15 Fastest-Growing Large Cities in America
Rank
City
Metro Area
Percent Increase
2016 Total Population
1
Conroe, TX
Houston, TX
7.8%
82,286
2
Frisco, TX
Dallas-Fort Worth, TX
6.2%
163,656
3
McKinney, TX
Dallas-Fort Worth, TX
5.9%
172,298
4
Greenville, SC
Greenville, SC
5.8%
67,453
5
Georgetown, TX
Austin, TX
5.5%
67,140
6
Bend, OR
Redmond, OR
4.9%
91,122
7
Buckeye, AZ
Phoenix-Scottsdale, AZ
4.8%
64,629
8
Bonita Springs, FL
Fort Myers, FL
4.8%
54,198
9
New Braunfels, TX
San Antonio, TX
4.7%
73,959
10
Murfreesboro, TN
Nashville, TN
4.7%
131,947
11
Lehi, UT
Provo, UT
4.6%
61,130
12
Cedar Park, TX
Austin, TX
4.5%
68,918
13
Meridian, ID
Boise, ID
4.5%
58,627
14
Ankeny, IA
Des Moines, IA
4.5%
58,627
15
Fort Myers, FL
Fort Myers, FL
4.5%
77,146
Calculated between July 1, 2015, and July 1, 2016 (Populations of 50,000 or more in 2015). For methodology, please click here.
Are you currently living in one of America’s fastest-growing cities? Would you move to one of these cities for better apartments or job opportunities? Get discussing below on social!
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Self-driving vehicles are coming much sooner than expected — and the general consensus is that car ownership will bid us farewell. After all, with a dominant ride-sharing model in place, upfront purchase prices and ongoing maintenance costs seem less appealing. On top of that is the surging trend around “access vs. ownership,” where the car-owning value proposition is taking some real hits.
In the future, getting around will be much easier and cheaper, and the hassle of owning a vehicle may quickly outweigh the benefits. What’s more, as driverless taxies become ubiquitous and accrue revenue 24/7, their prices will only drop.
A report published last year by RethinkX, an independent think tank based in San Francisco, estimates fully autonomous vehicles will make up 95 percent of passenger miles in the U.S. within a decade of the anticipated 2020 rollout. The study says that cars will be owned by companies like Lyft and Uber rather than individuals. This firm estimates the windfall of savings to be around $1 trillion for Americans each year. That’s about $5,600 per household, “generating the largest infusion of consumer spending in history.” What’s more, that figure only accounts for improvements in general overhead costs and doesn’t factor productivity increases and reduction losses due to traffic accidents. Talk about a bang for your buck.å
Researchers at consulting firm KPMG similarly predict that by 2030, households will no longer need sedans — only keeping larger vehicle models for road trips — and that fully autonomous vehicles will be used as ride-hailing services from the outset. Anticipating the upended car market, Waymo and General Motors’ already have pilot ride-hailing programs in the works, set to launch in select urban and suburban areas. Likewise, Ford bought out their ridesharing company, Chariot, as part of their self-driving vehicle initiative. Further, public officials in Helsinki are pushing to make car ownership obsolete by 2025.
Don’t believe how big a business this is? Just look at the rift between Google and Uber — and the nose-bleeding $245 million settlement over alleged “trade secrets” in 2016. Autonomous cars are big business…and all the tech firms want in.
But while logically sound, these forecasts focus heavily on the economic disruption caused by full automation, not so much the cultural implications. For instance, few consumer goods have profoundly molded our cultural ethos as much as the automobile, and the majority of Americans are still wary of self-driving cars — not to mention a slew of other important factors.
How Is Safe Safe Enough?
Critical to the success of automation is proving that it’s safe. Although researchers say it’ll reduce auto accidents by a whopping 90 percent, “better than human” might be a weak benchmark when you consider that people have a greater tolerance for deaths caused by humans than robots. For this reason, Mobileye CEO Amnon Shashua proposed a formula to ensure self-driving vehicles are virtually infallible — in effect, laying the groundwork for how policymakers and manufacturers can manage the deployment of wholesale driverless cars without constricting innovation.
The Home Away From Home
Considering many of us like to keep personal belongings in our car, the allure of the private car could hold sway for a lot of people — especially commuters who can get a jump-start on work without having to watch the road. It’s not so implausible that consumers are willing to pay extra for the flexibility of being able to travel when, where and with whom they want — without compromise. An article published by Yale points out that while ride-sharing has soared in popularity, it hasn’t directly dissuaded people from buying cars for this very reason.
The “shared autonomous” firms of the future would do well to ensure that they can “user integrate” consumer preferences whenever they pick up a new rider. Making the autonomous vehicle feel “owned” is a great way to bridge this gap, and it can be as simple as a Bluetooth integration and content sync.
What If You’re Too Far Away?
Waymo and General Motors are set to test their pilot programs in select urban and suburban areas. After all, 81 percent of America’s population lives in areas that are dubbed “urban or suburban.” But what about rural settings, or even remote suburbs? A driverless cab might arrive in just minutes in a densely populated area, but it might not be as readily accessible for those living in areas where houses can be miles apart. The automobile has made it easier for people to live on the outskirts, enabling folks to leave at the drop of a hat. Those living in rural outposts may not be keen on relinquishing that level of control, even when driverless cabs are ubiquitous in cities.
Suburban Sprawl and Environmental Strain
On the other hand, more people might be apt to live in remote locales if a robot can schlep them to work every day. That could mean more emigration to rural areas and thus higher demand for driverless cars. But a policy brief from UC Davis warns that without proper oversite, self-driving technology could increase suburban sprawl, which was already spurred by the invention of the automobile.
This is especially true in places like California, where sprawl is a huge point of contention among developers and public officials. The policy brief reasons that if passengers can work or rest more during their commute, then they’ll likely be willing to travel further. As a result, affordable housing developments will be on the rise. That’s a win for housing, but a loss for a decreased eco-footprint.
Drivers Licenses on the Decline
In fairness, there’s another cultural phenomenon that ought to be called out: Since 1983, fewer and fewer people have been getting their drivers licenses. To understand why this is happening, the Transportation Research Institute at the University of Michigan conducted a survey of 618 respondents, ages 18 to 39. They found the three main reasons people forewent getting their driver’s licenses were busy schedules, the cost of owning and maintaining a car, and the ability to get rides easily from others.
Looking to the Future
It’s important to note that predictions, however researched, shouldn’t be confused with conclusions. The one thing we can say for sure, however, is that the culture of tomorrow’s automobile won’t be a carbon copy of what it is today.
Haden Kirkpatrick is the head of marketing strategy and innovation at Esurance, where he is responsible for all initiatives related to product and service innovation. Haden is an innovator writes about how smart technology—from IoT to machine learning to self-driving cars — will impact the insurance industry. To view Esurance’s car insurance options, click here.
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