No BS Finance

We bought our house at about the top of the housing market. Since I was being transferred from work, I didn’t have a whole lot of choice in the timing. We’ve been wondering how much our house is really worth today, since it is the main asset we have to our names.

I finally got around to checking out Zillow’s estimate, and I’m not a happy camper. Their estimate is a full 10% less than what we paid for it. The good news is a probably have another 2-3 years before I transfer for work again and our relocation program includes reimbursement for loss on sale, but still…

I also checked out Trulia to compare our house against those on the market in the area. The only recently sold comps are 5 months old, but are for 10% <em>higher</em> than we paid for our house. But, the houses on the market today that are reasonable comps are even a hair worse than Zillow estimates.

I’m still going to stubborn and not change the home’s value in Quicken, but unless we stay here through a good reboundit doesn’t look good that we’ll get back out of it what we put in.

The latest Money makeover shows a couple of easy fixes:

• Don’t over-withhold on your taxes - yes, a refund is certainly psychologically better than paying in on April 15th, but it’s just an interest-free loan to the government. I like to target a refund of a couple hundred dollars, solely for the intangibles.
•  Know the rules for your state’s 529 plan - many allow breaks on your state taxes

Now, Nakia Haskins also does a lot of things right, such as putting 15% of her salary into retirement savings, has an emergency fund started, and has a 529 for her son.

I consider myself tech-friendly and -knowledgeable. However, I can’t picture being comfortable with putting my finances online for tracking.

There are three major online applications doing this (Quicken Online, Mint, and Wesabe) . Mint promises “bank-level data security”, which doesn’t comfort me much as I was affected by this Wells Fargo data breach. Granted, it wasn’t a system hack, but it still puts a chill on. Wesabe promises security as good or better than your bank. Quicken Online likens themselves to Fort Knox.

Security aside, what is the main need being solved? Is there really a market for having access to all your information from anywhere at any time? I already have access to my bank account and credit cards for truly up-to-date information if I need to know ASAP. Obviously a single website to visit is a convenience, but not a convincing one for me.

I guess I’m just not in the target market segment for these products.

Tonight I started towards achieving goal #1 for 2008 - rebuilding our emergency fund to where it needs to be.This won’t get us all the way there, but starting with my next paycheck, $50 is automatically going into our ING high-yield savings account.

We’ll have extra money most months to add to that, but doing some automatically really does make it seem painless.

Ben Stein:

The whole reason you get paid so much more to be in the stock market than in cash is that it fluctuates so much. You get paid to be scared. But do follow the good advice of my pal Ray Lucia, and keep plenty of cash on hand so you won’t have to sell your stock (or at least not much of your stock) at a low price. Cash on the order of a year’s living expenses is a sensible idea. It makes a lovely cushion.

Spot on.