What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to five word summaries. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Planning for future relocation
2. Growing a blog
3. First time homebuyer advice
4. How to grill foiled potatoes
5. Refinancing a vehicle
6. Predicting Social Security’s future
7. Teaching the value of money
8. HELOC or not?
9. Just starting out with credit
10. Pre-tax or after-tax 401(k)?
As many of you know, I’m a voracious reader who typically reads three books or so a week. Every once in a while, though, I’ll start a book and it’ll just turn into a painful slog. I’m stubborn, so I’ll keep trying to read it, but it’ll just completely turn me off so that I actually avoid reading for a couple of weeks.
Eventually, I just give up on the book, close the cover, and put it in the “never again” pile. I’m currently just about there with the book I’m currently reading, The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt. So much potential in the characters and setting. So many, many, many pages of virtually nothing happening.
Knowing that we plan to relocate — to the burbs — in the next 3 years, mostly for better public schools, how would you go about planning to do it? Would you make the move sooner or later? Would you sell now, pay off debt and rent a place, or, buy something lower priced right away? And, given our debt load, what makes the most sense to tackle first?
- Karin
The first thing I would do is take a look at my credit report, which you can get from the federal government for free at AnnualCreditReport.com. Do you have any negative entries on your report? One or two is okay, a lot is problematic.
If your bad entries are small in number, I would shop around for a mortgage right now because of the ludicrously low interest rates. The traditional advice is to wait until you have a full down payment, but if you do wait that long, there’s a very good chance that interest rates will have risen enough to take away any advantage they might offer. Since I’m unsure where exactly you live, I’m going to guess that you don’t live in one of the overpriced metro areas and that you can find something relatively cost-effective in the suburbs. I usually tell people to not get a mortgage more than double their family’s combined annual income, because anything more than that puts their household income in the hurt locker.
If you have some credit irregularities, spend some time getting your own financial house in order. Make your payments on time for at least a year – preferably two or three. Focus on paying down your debts, starting with the highest interest one.
I read on Monday’s q & a section that you have 700,000 visitors a month. I know your blog is just a few years old, so I was wondering if you could share with your newer readers what you did to grow your blog (besides writing good posts frequently). How did people find your blog? I would love to know more.
- Melissa
The number one most important thing a new blog can do is write a lot of good content. If you can’t consistently turn out worthwhile articles that people actually want to read, then nothing else is really going to matter.
The next step is to make sure there are a lot of links out there to your site. One way to do that, especially at first, is to participate in blog carnivals. Start searching for them at BlogCarnival.com and also use Google to seek them out, because many ongoing carnivals do not participate on BlogCarnival. These are easy ways to get links back to your site and to your articles, and also to get your articles read by bloggers who share a common interest and focus with you.
You should also target blogs that are somewhat more popular than your own by either writing guest posts there (if they accept them) or by writing posts that directly match the topic of that site (which would encourage them to link to you). When you do write such an article – and make sure it’s a good one – contact that site owner. This may or may not get you a link depending on a number of factors (how busy the site operator is, for one), but if nothing else, you’ve written a good article.
Really, in the end, good content and lots of links are the key to people finding you. To get people to stay and recommend you, you have to consistently write good stuff and make it easy for them to stay in touch by making your site available by RSS feed and by email. If you want lots of readers, you have to make it as easy as you can for them to keep reading.
I’m a 23 year old guy finishing up my Master’s degree in engineering. I already have a job lined up in the Washington, DC area, and it’s a government job, so my job security is great, and I’ll be making decent money. I’m still considering condos or townhouses, but I really want to buy a house. My financial situation is fairly secure; I’ll be making around 60K a year with my Master’s degree, I have about 10K in savings, and between my parent’s and grandparent’s investments for me, I have around another 40K-50K for the downpayment. Do you have any tips for a first-time homebuyer, like questions I should ask, additional costs I should factor in, or any other general tips?
- Andy
Well, you’re going to be buying in the D.C. area, which is notoriously expensive. I usually don’t recommend that anyone get a mortgage for more than two times their annual income because of the crunch that a higher mortgage can put on their monthly cash flow.
My recommendation would be to sit tight and let your career develop a bit before buying. Work hard and seek to move up in the pay scale and your GS level. Keep saving your money. Keep thinking about what you actually want.
Eventually, your life will settle and it’ll become clear to you what the best long term choice is – and you’ll be in the right financial position to make it happen. Good luck.
I read your menu and am interested in how long and at what temperature you cooked the potatoes on the grill wrapped …