Still asking, “What is a reverse mortgage?” Well, so was I… I’ve seen the commercials, and while Tom Selleck’s mustache is ‘on point’, does he actually have any clue what he’s talking about?     It always gets me seeing these wealthy actors trying to relate to “the common American” as they discuss the financial decisions “all of us have to make”… I mean, c’mon, Tom – we all know you’ve been on either Magnum PI or Blue Bloods for the past 45-ish years. Don’t come at me trying to make us think you’ve actually considered a reverse mortgage, let alone actually know what one is and how it works.   But that mustache… Any man with that capability surely has at least some of his ducks in a row.   So while I honestly had no clue what a reverse mortgage is, I had to enlist some guest posting help. Melissa […]

  I was an early adopter (in my peer group) of Dave Ramsey and his snowball method some 10 years ago. My wife and I were just two kids – young and in love – and like most young couples in 2008, we had what we thought was a ton of debt… Little did we know the actual mountain of debt that would await us just a few short years later (but that’s not completely relevant here) ;).   So when I rented the Total Money Makeover and took it with us on a vacation to Mexico (are you seeing the irony here???), Dave’s book changed our lives for the better when, financially speaking, we were at a major fork in the road.   Until now, I never really sat down to analyze why the Total Money Makeover worked for us, I just knew that it did (and for many […]

  Baby I’m a rebel… Soul Rebel.     What I mean to say is that I don’t mind bucking a few trends or commonly held beliefs from time to time. One of those bucked trends was us buying our home while already under a mountain of student loan debt.   We had our reasons and we wouldn’t change that decision if we had the opportunity to, but many others would strongly advise against such a choice. For example, trying to decide between paying off the mortgage early or investing – I can see both sides.   Same goes for buying a new car vs. leasing… I hear both arguments. Although late car payments are becoming a frightening trend these days.   In any case, there’s an argument to be made. And today’s battle is no different. My friend, the Debt Free Dr. is here to give us all the […]

  When we set out to buy our home, we knew we needed homeowners insurance (because our lender told us so). But we had no idea what level of coverage we needed or what coverage was vital and what we could do without. I could navigate the hurdles of changing interest rates when we refinanced our mortgage, but when it came to coverage, I was lost. So today I’m stoked to share this post – homeowners insurance coverage explained.   With the ease of a sharp knife cutting through warm butter, I’ve made financial mistakes surrounding our mortgage… Like paying the mortgage twice in December (by accident) and waking up to a “Bank Overdraft” alert after paying our mortgage (among other things).   And because I’m still learning in the homeowners insurance department, I’ve enlisted the help of some of my friends at Consumers Advocate to help us all better […]

File this under the “full disclosure” section of MikedUp Blog… Last week I wrote all about the awesome financial benefits we’d have by removing collision auto insurance from our decade-old vehicles.   “It’ll be great,” I said. “We’ll save hundreds… or thousands if we can stay in these cars for a few more years.” And in my defense, I wasn’t wrong on that point. But there’s that word: ‘if’   Well, it just so happens that one of our vehicles was in a collision… Precisely 3 weeks after I wrote the initial post and subsequently stopped the collision insurance. And as it turns out, there aren’t a ton of savings via lower premiums in 3 weeks. So the benefits of removing collision insurance on that car were about, roughly, close-to… $0.   And zero cents.     Ok, now that those numbers are out of the way – here’s the […]