One Caveman’s Financial Journey

For a short week, a lot of great things have really happened to me in little time! First, our net worth shot through the roof when we got back our home appraisal. Then, we convinced our credit union to release our tax and insurance escrow so we could manage it ourselves. That [...]

One of the major keys to a good personal financial plan is commitment. If you aren’t committed and dedicated to achieving your goal, you will likely fail.
But sometimes it’s hard to stay committed. A frugal lifestyle is difficult to maintain, especially if you are new to it. You know what you need to do [...]

Yesterday, I mentioned that we hired an appraiser to come and give us a full appraisal of our house for property tax purposes. When the appraisal came in much higher than expected - $15,000 over our purchase price 2 years ago - I wondered if we could benefit from this dramatic change.
I remembered reading [...]

Way back in January, I wrote that I was challenging our very unfair property tax assessment. Finally, last month, we received the review board’s reassessment. They dropped the assessor’s valuation of our property by $25,000, but it was still $29,000 more than our purchase price from just 2 years ago. My wife [...]