I was having an interesting conversation today about the notion of a person buying a house that you would need to get a mortgage on like most people. However, in this scenario paying off the mortgage would heavily rely on not so much your regular job but the income you would earn by renting a portion of it out like the basement.

Example, let’s say your mortgage payment was $3000/month. Basically, you were heavily relying on the fact that you would rent the basement for about $900/month and to another two people who you know well to live in the spare upstairs rooms for about say $600/month each. So in total, you would have to pay about $900/month. Sounds all good, but then what if say one of your tenant leaves which makes you stuck for at least a months worth of pay for the mortgage? Of course, in this situation let’s assume that you have nowhere near the $3000/month after other expenses and so you are heavily dependent on the rental income.

So in that scenario, would you think it is a better option to go with this route or say play it safer in life and just say rent a place for $900/month? To me honestly, the risk in many ways is almost the same I think personally. Cause even with say renting a place that is within your means who’s to say that something won’t happen to say your job or business?

It seems like it is more about having a lot more responsibility with the house option as you need to keep track of so many things. In general, I think owning is a lot better in the long run.

I was hearing a story today about a person that needed some consultation about a legal issue and the unfortunate thing was that he couldn’t exactly afford to pay someone like $200/hr to get advice. The option was brought up though that there are usually a lot of law students that are usually willing to do it on a volunteer basis.

The first reaction from him was that there was no way he was going to get advice from a student since they are technically still learning and may give bad advice. Now this was the interesting I thought. Instead, since he can’t afford the cost he mentioned that the only way to do it was to research about the law himself.

To me, it seems like the option to get some free aid from a student seems like a step above from doing everything on his own. Even though they be a rookie and not technically a professional yet, I think at times like this it comes to a balancing act.

Basically, of course the attractiveness is the cost. At the same time, you know that what they tell you may be inaccurate. So like in this case, if I was using the service of a rookie I would say the trade off in saving a lot of money is that you still need to do a lot of your own research and due diligence. Granted you still need to do that with a professional, but in this case it is more.

In this case too, another way to think about it is do you think the person knows more than you about the topic? If so, at minimum it should help you faster in your research I’d say.

My brother was telling me today that he was thinking of moving to Ottawa as a result of a job opening that is more related to what he would like to do career wise. As well, he would get paid more compared to what he is doing. Guess the only real drawback is that his family life has been kind of set here and so that would mean a big change.

A lot have people have told me that an income at around $70,000 to $100,000 a year would warrant a relocation to start a life elsewhere if one already has a family life. I would tend to say if you are relocating just for money then that figure sounds about right if you are working at a traditional job type of lifestyle.

Although, in the end I’m sure it comes down to opportunity and lifestyle for virtually everyone. Of course, that figure is just based on general averages of the cost of living for most city type of areas for everyday people.

This must be a cable TV month here or something as another large company has recently launching an aggressive campaign to acquire digital TV customers from the current market leader. What was interesting about this company is that many people have mentioned that door to door salesmen have been going to their homes and saying how they can sign up and get a full year’s worth of service for free as a way for them to launch the service and acquire customers.

Of course, as expected these guys get paid a percentage of what they sell and so it shouldn’t be any surprise if they leave out details in hopes that you simply sign up for the service. The catch with this was that the free one year offer required you to sign a 3 year contract term with the provider. Basically, you would be stuck with the service if you disliked it even after the year.

This resulted in many people complaining to the company about misleading them even if it is technically just the salesmen that said it. While in many ways I guess you would have to take responsibility for not reading everything, usually in these situations the company would honor the offer or give you some kind of generous credit if the sales person admits to giving out the wrong information.

Usually though, only something in writing can help you there. However, that should be a reminder though that whenever you are given an offer always make sure you get it on paper somehow such as a company brochure or even a website printing of the offer (Assuming it exists). That way, even if it is an error you usually don’t have to try too hard to get them to honor it if you signed up under those pretenses. And if the salesman can’t provide you with that or is willing to write down the offer, then that should tell you a lot. Got to always watch your money from these types of free offers.

Today I spent about 8 hours fixing a computer that a family member seemed to have given up on to the point that they were thinking of just buying a new one. It was only for really basic tasks like browsing the web and sure enough it would cost about $400+ to do so.

I guess the thing that kind of made me want to help them to fix it too is that I personally think it is a waste to just throw an item like this away when you don’t know exactly what is wrong with it. Cause you never know, it could be something really simply. If I knew for certain that a particular part was broken which could mean having to spend so much money jut to replace it, then of course those are the types of situations where simply buying a new one can make more sense.

After spending a few hours on it and doing various troubleshooting processes to narrow down the issue, funny enough all it came down to was that the power supply seemed to be faulty as it has run its age. Therefore, simply swapping that fixed everything. I just happened to have a spare one, but what this made me think of is how they were able to save hundreds of dollars from buying a new system with a little persistence.

Even for items that I am personally not too knowledgeable in I always try to find out specifically what is wrong with a product before contemplating about throwing out a lot of money to replace it with a new one. Makes sense too as it helps you to make a better decision and maybe it will even give you the knowledge on how you can potentially avoid having to encounter the situation in the future.