What the heck is SingleGuyMoney talking about? I'm talking about an Emergency Fund, Rainy Day Account, Deferred Spending Account....no matter what you call it, if you have expenses, you need some kind of savings for a rainy day. Why do I bring this up? I had to use mine today for an unexpected expense.

My good friend had a crazy morning today. At some point, she realized that she had lost her keys. When she went out to the parking lot to see if she had left her keys in her car, she realized that her car had been stolen. Apparently, she dropped her keys next to her car. She was upset not only about her car but also because she had mail in the car with her address. She immediately notified the police to look out for the car. I took her home and we both quickly realized that the thief had been to her home!!!!! Luckily, nothing was taken probably because she has a large dog but the fact still remains that someone had been there. The doors had been left wide open for an unknown period of time. My friend lives alone so she was really scared to be home alone. She is safely spending a couple of nights with another friend until everything cools down.

How does my emergency fund relate to this story? She needed money to change the locks to her home but she did not have the extra money to do so. Usually, I do not loan money to friends but I felt in this situation, it was well warranted. The safety of my friend is much more important than money. I loaned her about $500 to get the locks changed to her home and get a very inexpensive rental vehicle for a couple of days. The rental coverage on her auto policy does not kick in until after 48 hours have passed.

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As you guys know, I have been searching for an investment property to purchase and hold onto for rental income. In order to get an idea of the property value, I use a couple of the online home valuation services. On the current property I am considering, here are values from four of the online vendors. Note: I know these values are not set in stone but they do give me a ballpark figure.

• Housefront - Value Range: $87,000-$97,000 with an est value of $92k. I like that Housefront gives a letter grade "Confidence Level" for the given value. This valuation was given a grade of "B". I like that Housefront also lists the prior sales history.
• Eppraisal - Value Range: $78,653-$106,413 with an est value of $92,533. Eppraisal also gives not only the prior sale price but also the county, city and subdivision. One thing that I don't like is that the value ranges are so wide.
• Zillow - I don't like using Zillow as they do not have alot of values for my area. They only offer the county assessed value of $76,600.
• Cyberhomes - Value Range: $124,205-$158,707. I do not use this site but just threw it in just to get the values. I think the values are wayyy too high and do not represent the true value.

For my primary home, I feel the value is about $195,000. Here is what Housefront and Eppraisal list. I also included the county tax assessors value as of my last county tax appraisal.

• Eppraisal - Value Range: $189,000 - $209,000 with a est value of $199,000
• Housefront - Value Range: $168,674 - $228,206 with an est value of $198,440
• The county assessed value is $190,490.

My two favorite sites are http://www.housefront.com and http://www.eppraisal.com

Do you use the online valuation services to get an idea of your home value? What website do you use? How accurate are the values for your home?

It's finally Friday and I made it through another week. My stress level has been extremely high this week due to a few things going on at my job. For some reason, my workload has been alot higher than a few of my coworkers lately. I think alot of it is because I do not "moan and groan" like some of my other coworkers when my workload increases. I just come in early or stay late but I do what I have to do to get it done. I guess the old saying is true "The squeeky wheel gets the grease". I am trying to stay calm and be the "model" employee but this crap is getting old. Anyone else have this situation? How did you deal with it?

A couple of my friends and I have planned a trip to Harrah's Cherokee casino in North Carolina this weekend so that should definitely help me relax. I am pulling $300 from my Freedom Account to pay for the trip expenses. All the credit cards are staying home! I'll let you know if I won enough money to quit my job or if I will need to keep working.

I am still waiting to hear back regarding my investment property offer. I talked with my realtor yesterday and he advised the seller has accepted the offer but we are still waiting on the bank asset manager to approve the offer. I would really like to hear something today and not worry about this over the weekend.

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In the words of Tom Petty, "The Waiting is the Hardest Part". I put in an offer on an investment property on Monday. My realtor called me and advised that the offer has been forwarded to the bank's asset manager for final approval. There are no other offers on the table and I made a full price offer so it looks like I should get the property. I am excited and nervous all at the same time. One of my dreams is to be able to build a portfolio of real estate and this purchase will help me get closer to fulfilling that dream.

One of my character flaws is that I am very impatient. This is also one of the reasons I got in debt. I did not have the patience to wait and save up for a purchase.

Hopefully, I will hear something tomorrow so I will know if I am adding another property to my portfolio of if I need to continue shopping.

My fellow M-Network member, The Dough Roller, hosted this weeks 123rd Carnival of Personal Finance (The Boo! Edition). Be sure to head on over and check out all the great articles. My top 5 favorites are:

• Beyond the Emergency Savings Fund from One Day at a Time.
• Live on Less Income - Give Yourself a Voluntary Paycut from Cash Money Life.
• Home Equity Line of Credit at your Disposal from Queercents.
• How to Live without Using Credit Cards from No Credit Needed
• Cash Burns a Hole in My Pocket from Plonkee Money (M-Network member)

Be sure to visit the M-Network for a number of great articles daily. If you like SingleGuyMoney, be sure to subscribe to my feeds.

As I've posted before, I have been searching for a cheap investment property. There are numerous properties available due to the large number of foreclosures in the Atlanta area. I put in an offer last week on a nice bank owned single family home but was I was outbid by another buyer.

I had a few backup properties and saw those yesterday with my agent. After looking at 3 properties, I decided to put in an offer on this one.

This property is a 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath fee-simple townhouse built in 1990. The property was originally listed for $61,600 but was reduced to $31,600 on 8/4/07. The last sale price was $80,000 on March 3, 2005. The county tax assessor has the value of the property at $76,600. The value range on Eppraisal is $78,563 - $106,413. The value range on Housefront is $87,000 - $97,000. There are about 5 properties for sale in the community with asking prices from $48,000 - $89,000. Rental rates in the area range from $650 for a 2bedroom and $850 for a 4 bedroom.

The property appears to be structurally sound and only needs cosmetic repairs. A condition of my offer is that the property inspection is satisfactory. The previous owners were apparently upset that they were losing their home and caused a little damage to the property. They smeared the walls with a unknown substance, broke all the light fixtures and caused minor damage to a few of the walls. The front and rear doors and the carpet will need to be replaced. There are also a couple of broken windows. I estimate I will need to put about $10,000 in the property to make it livable.

The offer was faxed over yesterday afternoon so I should hopefully hear something on Monday.

I received an email today from Ebates.com for the double bonus special they are running right now. By signing up, you get a $10 bonus instead of the regular $5. I will also get $10 bucks for referring you. Please click here to sign up. I have been with Ebates.com for a few months now and I have earned a nice bonus. Click here to read the post on my experience with Ebates. You must make at least one purchase for the $10 to be credited to your account. Using Ebates.com is simple an easy. Just follow these steps:

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Hello Everyone.
I apologize for the lack of posting this week but I've had a really busy week at work. I've also been searching for an additional investment property since I was outbid on the last property.
I'm actually getting ready to go look at 2 more properties today. One is a short sale and the other is a foreclosure.

It is almost Friday and SingleGuyMoney is very happy about that. This has been one of my busiest weeks this year with work and trying to find an investment property. Unfortunately, I was outbid on the cute little bungalow. My last offer was $31k but I guess someone else wanted it a little more than I did and bid higher. I am not upset about losing the property as there are plenty more to choose from. I just sent my realtor 3 more properties to review. I'll post more about those properties later if they turn out to be possibilities.

Just a quick update to let you know what is going on here at SingleGuyMoney.

• Still waiting on a response from the bank that owns the property I am interested in purchasing for an investment. I put in an offer of $28k and $1500 closing costs. My realtor called me yesterday and advised he received a response from the bank. They have multiple offers submitted and wanted to know if I wanted to increase my offer. I increased the offer to $32k plus $1500 closing costs. I will not offer higher than $34k because there are alot more properties out there for less than $30k.
• Applied for the Amex Gold card this morning. They have a promotion now where they are offering $250 or 25,000 rewards points. The card does have an annual fee so I will cancel in a few months. The offer ends today so if you want to apply, be sure to do so today.
• My fellow M-Network member, DebtFree Revolution, hosted the 109th Edition of the Carnival of Debt Reduction. Be sure to check it out here.
• Metro Atlanta is facing a major drought. Anyone want to loan us some water?

Today, October 15th is Blog Action Day and I am delighted to be one of the hundreds of thousands of bloggers posting about the environment. I must admit, I am not as environmentally conscious as I should be but I am making changes.

Here are some of the things I am doing to help the environment:

• Reducing the amount of paper I am using. I use old envelopes as notepads and reuse paper whenever I can.
• I use a washcloth instead of paper towels when possible.
• I am requesting online statements when for my various financial accounts and credit cards. Not only is this good for the environment, it is also good for my financial security as I do not risk someone stealing my credit card bill from the mailbox.
• Limiting my water use. I no longer wash my car every week. I am taking shorter showers especially since my area is in a severe drought. The lake that we get our water from is down 13 feet below full. As a result, the county water authority has issued a total outdoor water ban.
• I run the dishwasher only when it is completely full. For the smaller loads, I will handwash them. This too is a money saver as you save electricity, gas and water use.

Here is a great website listing 100 ways to save the environment. You can visit the "Sustainable Environment for Quality of Life" here. Are you doing what you can to help the environment??

Posts from my fellow M-Network Members:

Blog Action Day - Being Frugal and the Environment from Being Frugal

10 Mutual Funds for a Greener Future from Gather Little by Little

10 Ways to Reduce your Carbon Footprint (9 will save you money) from Paid Twice

Little things you can do to save money and our planet from Moolanomy

Blog Action Day - One Day To Discuss the Environment from MyTwoDollars

save money, save your health. save the planet. walk. from Plonkee Money

After my "And the Winner is..." post yesterday, I got alot of questions asking why those properties were so cheap. I apologize for not addressing this in my earlier posts. The median home price in Atlanta is $197,000 so why are these properties so cheap???

• They are not in the best neighborhood. Alot of people, given the choice, would not live in the area. Due to the proximity to downtown Atlanta, I feel the neighborhoods will be revitalized within a few years.
• There was alot of mortgage fraud in this area. Atlanta was one of the top areas in the nation for mortgage fraud. Investors would inflate values of properties and get cash out and not pay the mortgage resulting in a foreclosure.
• These areas were hit hard by foreclosures. Alot of the homeowners took on exotic mortgages that they could not afford once the rates reset.
• The properties need work. As noted in the prior post, there were a couple of properties that needed ALOT of work before they could be habitable. A couple of them needed more work than I was willing to take on so I removed them from the list.

Based on the county tax records, here is the prior sales history.

• $ 17,000 on June 29, 1999
• $ 48,745 on July 14, 2003
• $130,000 on June 7, 2004 (I'm thinking this was when the property was renovated)
• $ 72,822 on March 1, 2005 (Wells Fargo Bank - assume this was a foreclosure)
• $ 54,000 on October 21, 2005 (assume this is the sale of the foreclosure)
• $134,950 on March 29, 2006
• $ 52,194 on June 5, 2007 (HSBC Mortgage Services - assume this is another foreclosure)

The asking price was reduced from $54,900 to $44,900 on 8/30/2007 and from $44,900 to $33,900 on 9/26/2007.

I'm back from looking at investment properties and I decided to put in an offer on one of them.

Here are the possibilities:

This one was listed for $26,600 and has a new roof. The inside was terrible and needed alot of work. This one was removed from the list of possibilities.

This one is listed for $20,897. After calling the listing agent, we found out that the property went under contract last night. I decided not to look at this one.

This one looked pretty good and only needed cosmetic repairs. The electrical and plumbing has all been redone. It is listed for $29,900. Sadly, it was also put under contract prior to our viewing. I am keeping my eye on this one just in case the other deal falls through.

This one looked deceiving in the pictures. It is listed for $24,900. It is the only 3 bedroom, 2 bath property that I looked at. This one also needed alot of work and had a weird layout. This one is also off the list.

And the winner is:

It is listed at $33,900. I am planning to offer $25k. My agent will be faxing the offer over tomorrow. I plan to have a thorough inspection to make sure there are no major problems.

I'm headed out with my realtor to go look at a few investment properties today. I now have about 5 that I am considering ranging in price from $20,897 to $33,900. I created a spreadsheet to evaluate the deals and 4 out of the 5 seem to be really good deals. Once I walk through them and determine how much work the properties will need, I can make the final decision. The maximum amount I am willing to spend including repairs is about $40,000.

Once I get back, I'll post pictures, prices and which properties I am seriously considering.

Coming on October 15th, bloggers around the world will be posting on the environment as it relates to your blog topic. Myself and the rest of the M-Network will be participating and I encourage you to sign up as well by going here.

Please note that the address for SingleGuyMoney has changed.

The new address is: www.singleguymoney.com Please update your bookmarks.

My 16 year old cousin from the " I wanna be rich like you post" turned 17 yesterday and to celebrate, we had small family gathering for dinner at the restaurant where he works. It was a very nice dinner and I got to see some family I had not seen in awhile.

I got him a birthday card with a $25 gift certificate. He also got me a card. At the end of the dinner, he presented me with the card. Inside was a "Thank You" card and a copy of his savings account statement. He has managed to save up a total of $1000!!! I was so impressed! He does not like it when I give him a regular hug and prefers a man hug (you know, the handshake and a pat on the back) but I could not help it and gave him a regular hug anyway. He said that thanks to me, he is starting to save more and more money. He no longer thinks that he needs to "wear" his wealth.

I told him that I was VERY proud of him and asked if he was going to continue to save. He said his next goal is to save $2000.

I asked his mom later if she told him to do it and she said no. He asked her to make a copy of his bank statement and when she asked him why he said he wanted to give me a copy to show me how well he has done with saving his money.

I am so proud of this kid. I guess we have a special connection as I used to babysit him when he was little. I always joke with him that I had to change his diapers and now he is taller than I am.

As adults, we all have to make financial decisions. Some of them are good and help to advance your financial position. Some of them are bad and put you financially further behind. Sometimes, they are so bad, you need to file bankruptcy and start over with a clean slate. I am thankful that my situation did not go to those extremes and that I have become more financially responsible.

Here are the best decisions I have made:

• Realizing there is a problem. As long as I had money in the bank, I did not have financial problems. As long as I could make the minimum payment, everything was ok. I realized it is important that start to decrease the balances to zero. No matter how much money I had in the bank, paying interest was causing me to lose money.
• Stop charging things I could not pay for in full for the following month. I refinanced all my high interest credit card debt down to two cards. One has a balance of about $7500 and is at 2.99% for life. The other has a balance of $3300 and is at 0% until Jan 2008. I plan to pay both of these off by January 2008.
• Contributing to my 401k. When I first started my job, I wasn't really to excited about having anymore deductions out of my paycheck. Taxes were unavoidable but I could cut out the 401k. I quickly realized this was a bad decision and I started to contribute 5% to my 401k. I chose 5% because I was able to get the full 3% company match.
• Starting a blog. This blog is certainly helping me in my quest to reduce debt. I feel if I "fall off the wagon" so to speak, I know my readers will call me out on it. I also thank my readers for the comments and inspiration.

Now for the bad. I have made so many bad decisions that I could write a book. I will try to stick to the major ones.

• Taking out a 125% loan on my home. I did this as a quick get out of debt strategy. I thought I would stay in the home long enough to payoff the extra 25% before it came time to sell. Not only did I not stay in the home, I ran up the balance on my once paid off credit cards again.
• Purchasing a new car every 2 years. My senior year in college, I bought a brand new car. I was so naive, I didn't even haggle on the price! I paid the sticker price and thought I got a great deal because my payments were only $289/month. Well, 2 years later, I had to have another new car so I just rolled in my negative equity and went on my way. My payment then went up to $388/mo. Approx 2 years later, I wanted another new car so I repeated the process again; this time I upped my car payment to $425/mo. I told myself this would be my last new car and I was going to pay this car off and drive it to the wheels fell off. I got bored one day and went to the dealership. 3 hours later, I was driving away with a new car and a $555/mo car payment. This was about a year and a half ago and I am now starting to get the new car itch. I will NOT fall into the 2 yr trap again. I am done. I know that this is killing my financial future. I am making a big dent in my debt and I DO NOT want to see that number increase.
• Failure to research purchases. If I wanted something, I would go out and get it. No research and no plan.
• Taking out extra financial aid in college. I worked 2 jobs in college to help put myself through school. Since my mom had no assets and very low income, I qualified for the maximum amount of loans and grants. I chose to accept alot more money than I needed and would get a huge overpayment check. Some of the money I used for living expenses but most of it I just spent frivolously. I did not think about the amount I would owe and have to repay once I graduated. If I had only taken what I needed for school and a little bit more to live on, I would have only owed about $13,000 when I graduated vs. my grand total of about $28,000. I've since knocked this balance down to about $22,000 but because of the low interest rate, I am focusing more on higher interest debt.

Please be sure to visit the posts from my fellow M-Network members. We don't want you to make the same mistakes that we made.

6 Financial Lessons - Don't Learn The Hard Way - from Gather Little by Little

My Least Bad and Least Good Financial Decisions - from Plonkee Money

My Best and Worst Financial Decisions - from Moolanomy

Best and Worst Financial Decisions: From the Trenches - from I've Paid for this Twice Already

My Best and Worst Financial Decisions: They Might Surprise You - from Being Frugal

My Best and Worst Financial Decisions - from ChristianPF

My Best and Worst Financial Decisions - from The Dough Roller

One good financial decision and a whole lotta bad - from DebtFREE Revolution

It has been a very busy week for me. Work has been crazy and I have been very active in my homeowners association working on some problems in the community. As far as the condo I wanted to purchase, I remembered that my neighbor a couple of houses down is a real estate agent. I went over and gave him the MLS number for the property. He did a little research and spoke with the listing agent. It turns out, there is a big investor that put in an offer for the entire complex. The property is no longer available but he is checking to see what other listings he can find in the same price range. Today, I found another home that may be a good deal. Check out the picture and the details below:

This house is a 2 bedroom, 1 bath bungalow. The house is fully renovated and is listed for $33,900. It has been on the market for 93 days. The originally went on the market for $54,900 and was reduced to $44,900 on 8/30/2007. It was reduced again to $33,900 on 9/26/2007.

Eppraisal lists the value range of $111,238-$150,498 with a middle value of $130,868. Zillow lists a tax assessors value of $69,700 (40% of market value).
Housefront lists a value range of $119,000-$131,000 with a middle value of $125,000

I am emailing this listing to my realtor now and will let you guys know what happens.

I always like to keep an eye out for cheap real estate to see what deals are on the market. While browsing Ziprealty yesterday, I found this property. It is listed for.....you ready....hold on.....$10,900. Nope, that is not a typo and I didn't leave off a zero. It is a bank owned foreclosure. I ran an e-appraisal on it and the values ranged from $108,212-$146,404. I ran it in Zillow and the tax assesors value is $120,100. I am not sure what the deal is with the property history but it seems like a great deal. I would definitely have the property inspected and appraised before closing.

Here's why I want this property:

• I can pay cash for the property.
• 2 bedroom, 1 bath condo
• 2 miles from downtown Atlanta
• Big development plans in the area
• Location, Location, Location

I could choose to rent the property out to bring in some additional income or just sit on it and watch the property values rise. The area around the property is not the safest but the neighborhood is changing fast for the better. I say within 3-5 years, the area will have totally been revitalized.

If you are reading this, I would like to thank you for visiting this blog and taking time to read thru my posts. I'm so glad to have you and having this blog is certainly keeping me focused and headed in the right direction.

If you enjoy this blog, can relate to this blog, or just want to follow my debt reduction progress, please don't forget to sign up via email or RSS feed so you will not miss a minute of SingleGuyMoney. Your email address is only used to send you site updates and nothing more.

P.S. If you don't mind, please show the site sponsors some love. They are on the lower right hand side of the page.

A reader recently commented that I mentioned my Rental property but never gave alot of detail about it. I wanted to post a little more information about how I became a landlord.

Did I plan on being a landlord?
Yes. However, my plan was to purchase a few duplexes and have the rent pay the mortgage. The property I am currently renting was not intended to be an investment property. I bought this home when I was 26 and it was my first home. I did not think I could afford a home with the amount of debt I had. I used to go out on the weekends and look at homes all the time and happened to meet a realtor one weekend. He told me to call him the next day and he would discuss the process and see what I could get approved for. I called him up and was surprised to learn that I could afford a home up to $130k. (My credit scores were in the high 600s and I was making about $40k/yr). I was so excited and we planned to look at homes in my price range and preferred area the following weekend. The next weekend, we looked at about 3 homes in a townhome neighborhood about 20 miles NW of downtown Atlanta and about 12 miles from my job. The sellers needed to sell because they were building a new home and did not want to carry 2 mortgages. The home was about 5 yrs old and the asking price was $127k. The home was a 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath with a full, partially finished, basement. The townhouse was on a corner lot with a large yard (especially for a townhome). My agent put in an offer of $122 with the seller paying closing costs. The offer was accepted and I closed about a month and a half later. After living in the home for a year, I realized it was not the home I wanted. Trying to get to work in the morning proved to be a hassle due to tremendous growth in the area and the roads had not expanded enough to keep up with the growth. I also did not like the setup of the home. I decided then that I wanted another home closer to work. I continued to live in the home for about 3 yrs. I then found my current home and it was in a perfect location and exactly what I wanted. The house was new and they were asking a reasonable price. They were also "giving away" $10k in incentives. I could pay all my closing costs, pay my homeowners fees and then have money left over. Due to my poor lack of planning and having a bad habit of making poor financial decisions without thinking it over, I put in a contract on the home and put down $500 earnest money. I was smart enough to put in a contingency that if I did not rent my old house, I could get out of the contract w/o losing my earnest money.

Why did I choose to rent the home instead of selling it?
I took out a 125% mortgage to pay off my debt. I then owed more than the home was worth and could not sell the home without coming to the closing table with a large sum of money.

Am I cash flow positive?
I charge my tenants $1000/mo for rent. My mortgage is $1147.50. This includes an escrow account and $38/mo for my American Home Shield Warranty. I figure with the tax writeoff and the home slowly gaining in value, I am breaking even. Had I kept my original mortgage, the payment would be $903.00/month.

How are my tenants?
My tenants are great. Luckily, I did not get screwed in this deal. The tenant saw my sign I had in the front yard and called me to look at the property. She liked the property at first sight and wanted to rent it the same day. She was really nice and we talked for about 2 hours. I did not run a credit check on her because I wasn't exactly sure how to go about doing it. (I know, I know, I screwed up). I also did not check with her previous landlord. Don't ask me why. I did collect a security deposit and had her sign a lease. She seemed to be very honest and she told me " My credit is not good at all but I always pay my rent". Anyone else probably would have sent her on her way but I decided to give her a chance. My tenants have now been in the property for 16 months and she has never been late or had a check to bounce (knock on wood). She does not call me for any small maintenance issues. She keeps the property clean and I have not had any complaints from my former neighbors.

Do I plan to continue to be a landlord?
I'm not exactly sure. I guess it depends on how long I have these tenants. She has told me she is very happy living there and having me as a landlord. Her youngest son has 2 more years in school and she does not want to move until then. If I can keep her for 2 more years, I will then be in a position to sell the home or refinance to lower the payment.

Sorry this post is so long. If you have any other questions, feel free to email me at wannabefree30@gmail.com