Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

3 Ways Young Homeowners Can Save $3745 (at least) Each Year

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If you recently bought your first home let me congratulate you. This is possibly the very best time to buy real estate that you’ll ever see in your lifetime. You made a smart move. And because you are a smart real estate investor, I know you’ll be interested in taking advantage of the following 3 ways young homeowners can save even more “moolah”.

1. Home Warranty

I owned a home warranty program for years and it was a waste of money. Of course it felt great not to have to worry about running into major unexpected expenses, but the cost just didn’t justify it. First of all, you are stuck with any repair person the home protection company sends out. Next, the deductible you have to pay is often pretty close to the amount you’d have to pay to a contractor of your own choosing. Last, when you do have a major repair, you are stuck (again) with whoever the company sends out unless you are willing to go through a great deal of red tape.

You’re always responsible for upgrades, code changes and any problems associated with misuse or poor maintenance. I cancelled my home protection plan several years ago and it turned out to be a fantastic decision. If you follow my lead on this, you’ll save at least $600 a year.

2. Life Insurance

If you are a young homeowner you might have a young family or plan on having one. As a result, you definitely need life insurance. But when it comes to term life vs. whole life – play it smart. Term life is your best friend. It’s cheap and it does the job. It’s true that at some point (20 or 30 years down the road) your term insurance will expire. But by that time, you may not need life insurance anyway. Term life is so much cheaper than whole life that you can take that savings and invest it. This way probably you’ll have much more than the whole life promises.

One of the biggest problems with whole life (and I feel it’s criminal) is that agents sell you the whole life you can afford because it pays them a whole lot more commission. (Maybe that’s why they call it “whole” life.) And because it buys a great deal less insurance than term, people end up dangerously under-insured. You could save several thousands of dollars each year and have better coverage just by having term instead of whole life insurance. Look into this ASAP.

3. Good Credit Score

Because you are a young homeowner, you’ll be using your credit for a very long time. And you might have to lean on that plastic a lot right now to pay for all that new furniture and appliances. If you able to get even a slightly better credit score, you might end up savings a bundle every month. That’s because a higher credit score will help you get lower interest rates on credit cards and mortgages.

Find out what your score is and make sure there are no errors. If there are mistakes, fix them. You can easily do most of this without paying a cent. You can even get your credit score for free and sign up for services that provide updates whenever there is a change to your rating. This has helped me a great deal.

As a young homeowner you might be facing some pretty hefty expenses and that can be daunting. Take these 3 steps. Dump the home protection plan. Get rid of your whole life insurance and buy term instead. Finally make sure your credit score is as high as possible.

Will you save $3745? I don’t know. You could save a lot more. You’ll never know until you start taking action.

What are the biggest expenses you face as a young homeowner? What have you done to reduce those costs?

This was a guest post written by Neal Frankle. He is a Certified Financial Planner ® and owns Wealth Pilgrim – a great personal finance blog. He writes extensively about ways to help people make smart financial decisions. One of his most in-depth posts was his review of CIT Bank.

The Life Insurance Movement

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Much like the Roth IRA movement that I participated in a while back, Jeff from Good Financial Cents is spearheading a Life Insurance movement today.  The movement is designed to help educate people on the different types of life insurance, the ways to go about getting life insurance, and on how life insurance works, in general.

I’m sure we’ll see lots and lots of excellent articles to help educate the community.  If you want to check them out, Jeff has compiled a list of all the participants and posted them on the Life Insurance Movement homepage.

Where do I stand on life insurance?

I used to be on the fence.  On the one hand, there is a very strong argument for it.  On the other hand, it can be pretty draining on your finances, for something you don’t use (hopefully).

For a young person, struggling with debt and bills, that extra $50-$60 a month to cover my wife and I is a not insignificant chunk of money.  Neither of us is very old, and our probability of dying is pretty small.  So, why spend that money on something that we have no plan on using when it could just as easily go towards paying off some bill?  Maybe when we’re older, we thought, we’ll get ourselves some life insurance.  You know, when we can “afford” it.  I know there are quite a few of you out there who agree with that statement.

But, here’s the thing.  I buy car insurance to help pay for damages to my car should I get in an accident.  I’ve used that car insurance.  My wife and I are good drivers, and neither of us has been in an accident that has been directly our fault.  The few accidents we have been in have always been someone else’s fault.  We had very little control over whether we got into that accident or not.

Life insurance isn’t all that much unlike car insurance.  If car insurance only paid out if you were at fault in the accident, I’d never buy it.  After all, I have never been in an accident that was my fault.  Likewise, if life insurance only paid out if you died of natural causes, it wouldn’t make much sense, statistically, to purchase any before you were at least 45 years old.  But, we all know that people don’t just die of natural causes.  They die in all manner of accidents too.  And those accidents don’t just happen to people of a certain age.  So, it’s really the accidental, not-your-fault sort of death that you are insuring against.  And you have no control over that.  And, should you die as a result of one of those accidents, will your spouse and family be able to pay the bills?  Or, will they be forced to sell the house to pay for the funeral?  Do you really want them to have to make that decision if you die?

What kind of Life Insurance should I get?

There are basically two kinds of life insurance.  Term life, and whole life.  The difference is in how long the term of the insurance is, and how much the premiums are for the coverage level.  A whole life insurance policy is good for your whole life.  Because it’s good for your whole life, the premiums are usually higher for the coverages.  A term life insurance policy is only good for a set term.  It might be a 10-year term life policy, and be valid for 10 years from the purchase date.  At the end of the 10 years, you have to purchase a new plan.  When you are young, the term life policies have much cheaper premiums because, statistically, you aren’t very likely to die young, and so, the chances of having to pay out on the plan is pretty small.  When you renew after the 10 years, the new plan would be based on your age at the time, and would be slightly more expensive because of a higher probability of death.

I can’t really tell you which is the best for you, though.  It’s something that you, and maybe a good financial planner, should look very hard at.  You need to educate yourself on the different types too!  Really do your research, and don’t be misled by Colonial Penn’s “affordable” insurance, for example, look for a reputable life insurance company, that offers everything you and your family might need. I encourage you to click that link above, take a look at all the articles that are part of the life insurance movement, and find out as much as you can about life insurance.  Being educated on the subject will make it easier for you to spot bad policies, and find one that will fit your financial needs.

How much life insurance do I need?

Clearly, we’d all like to have a life insurance policy of several million dollars.  Some amount that would set our family up to never have to worry about money again should we die.  In reality, that just isn’t usually possible.  As the amount of the policy goes up, so do the premiums you pay to keep the policy.  What you really want is a policy that will pay out enough to make the transition from a two person led household, to a one person led household.

  • If you’re single, a policy that would pay off your debt, and pay for the funeral is likely enough.
  • If you’re married, with no children, a policy that can pay off the debt, the funeral, and replace your salary for a couple of years is a good policy.
  • If you’re married, with children, a policy that can pay off the debt, the funeral, and replace 5-10 years of your salary with some left over is an excellent idea.

Obviously, all of that is partially determined by what size policy you can afford.  By “afford”, I don’t mean afford in the way you likely do.  I don’t mean, after you’ve eaten out several times in the month, how much money is left over to buy life insurance.  I mean, it should be included in your budget, just like car insurance, your mortgage, and your utility bills.  When all of that, plus your life insurance premium is paid, you still need to be able to keep your bills current, and buy food to stock the refrigerator.  That kind of “afford”.

In the end, when you go and read all the other articles that are part of the life insurance movement, you’ll likely find several viewpoints that clash with mine.  You’ll find people who think that whole life insurance is better than term life insurance.  You’ll even find people who don’t think you need life insurance at all.  I think the important part is that you think about life insurance, learn about life insurance, and then make the decision yourself (preferably with help) on whether you want life insurance, what kind of life insurance you want, and how much you want the policy to be.

Tip: Check with your employer.  Some companies are offering life insurance to their employees.

For me, I think that life insurance of some sort should be mandatory, just like car insurance.  There should be state required minimums that you have to carry.  Far too many people are leaving behind families without any sort of coverage at all.  Even if it’s a small policy that can cover funeral expenses, that’s better than nothing at all, and you can increase it later too!