Finance

By Nate Matherson, Co-founder of personal finance site LendEDU, and a recent college graduate from the University of Delaware’s Class of 2016. As a student debtor himself, Nate is an expert in all things related to paying for college and student loan debt. Paying for college has become unaffordable for most families, so borrowing has become a necessity. And, it’s not just students taking out loans either – many parents [...]

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. We may receive compensation if you click one of those links and purchase a product. May 1 was decision day for college enrollment (or deposit day, if you’re like me and all about money). As I mentioned in a previous post, our youngest was considering two public colleges and two private colleges. The extra expense of private college (~$25,000 per [...]

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. We may receive compensation if you click one of those links and purchase a product. This reader is shopping for a Costa Rica vacation rental that yields a 10% return on investment: Hi, I wonder if you were able to get the 10% net that you were looking for. My husband and I are interested in investing in a rental [...]

Living in New York City, the financial capital of the world, talk of the markets can easily occur multiple times a day even for the average bystander. I also happen to be a personal finance junkie, used to work in finance and still have friends in the field, so recession watch is at the top of my mind. The recent inversion of the yield curve, where the yield on the [...]

As we've been writing about on here since the beginning of this website, our youngest daughter goes off to college later this year, and that will be the moment we officially become empty-nesters and can employ our FIRE escape plan. She is now receiving her college decisions, and scholarship / financial aid offers, and so her college price tag is become more clear by the day. Private college costs $300,000 [...]

We just completed a bathroom renovation for our primary residence in New York City. Updating our 5x8 bathroom set us back almost $15,000! We replaced everything, so labor is the bulk of the cost. Our fixtures and finishes are pretty standard, and this kept the total budget down – yes, $15,000 is still a standard bathroom renovation for NYC. You can find a handy remodel calculator on HomeAdvisor. Did we [...]

When we bought our first international rental property (Condo Boom in Tamarindo, Costa Rica), we decided to do a cash-out refi of another investment property to buy it all cash. Damn Millennial asked us a question on Twitter that we also asked ourselves: Out of curiosity why did you choose the cash out refi over the Heloc? The way I understand it the cash out is more expensive isn't it? [...]

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. We may receive compensation if you click one of those links and purchase a product. We purchased our second investment in Costa Rica, Casa Salita, using our retirement money. Up until a few years ago when I seriously started researching real estate investing, I only thought of paper assets like stocks and mutual funds when considering where to invest my [...]

There is a long-running debate about whether to buy real estate to receive cash flow or to profit from price appreciation, with passionate supporters on both sides. When we started our real estate investment journey in 2005, I was firmly on Team Cash Flow. When you buy for cash flow, you start collecting money immediately. With appreciation, you only benefit when you sell or otherwise pull out the equity (e.g., a cash-out refinance);