I was watching House Hunters yesterday and it featured a couple that was looking to buy in the greater Seattle area. The couple had recently moved from Texas and their goals was to buy a house within 45 days of arriving. I like House Hunters, but I hated that couple.

Multiple times during the episode the couple would make a comment like “Well in Texas the layouts aren’t like this.” or “In Texas, this house would cost half the price and be twice the size.” Guess freakin’ what Todo. YOU’RE NOT IN TEXAS ANYMORE.

I get that house prices in Texas are insanely cheap compared to the West Coast. I also get that New York prices are unbelievably high compared to Seattle. People, what are the three rules of real estate? Location, location, location. Regardless of what you might want to believe, WHERE you buy a house DRASTICALLY affects the value of said house. Your house in Texas costs $200,000 because fewer people live in Houston (per square mile) than Seattle. And fewer people (per square mile) live in Seattle, than San Francisco. Increased Demand = Increased Price.

Not too long ago, I blogged about our recent experience visiting some Seattle Open Houses. The three houses we viewed we’re all price around $400,000, incredibly small (like 2bd/1bth 1,300 sqft), and built over 60 years ago. Needless to say, $400,000 in Seattle buys you a very mediocre house that will likely need some major updating.

While many left constructive criticism or helpful hints, some readers provided worthless comments like “In Arizona houses are like $240,000. If I were you, I’d be looking for something more in that price range.”, “Wow, $400,000 for that? Can’t you get something nicer?” And….

Look at what you can get in your price range in XYZ, TX (where I live).

http://www.redfin.com/somerandomhouse

I think you need to see what you can get in other locations before you decide to spend that much money there.

Would you tell someone wanting to live in New York to consider moving to South Dakota just because house prices are cheaper? Would you tell someone looking for beach front property in San Diego to cap out at $500,000? No. That would be dumb. Just like it would be dumb to suggest I move to a city (or community) where I DON’T want to live, just so my house can be nicer/cheaper.

I get it if you just can’t relate, I really do. I get that if $400,000 in Texas buys you a McMansion, you might be shocked that it buys you a shack in San Francisco. Shocked is fine, but simply saying “find something cheaper” is useless. Cheaper real estate will always exist, but we looked at houses in Seattle because we wanted to LIVE in Seattle. Funny how that works, huh?

It’s Friday mother lovers, and you better be prepared to love your mothers well this weekend since it’s all about them. Love ya mom Since you all have likely checked out mentally in anticipation of the upcoming weekend, I figured it’s a good time to engage the PDITF audience and promote some community interaction. I pose a simple question:

If you could be selfish with $5,000 what would you do? 

See what I did there? I said you had to be selfish with it. So  don’t think you’re getting off easy, taking the moral high ground, pretending you are going to donate this hypothetical $5k to charity, use it to pay off debt, contribute to retirement, or some other noble/responsible purpose.

No! Today you must be greedy. You have to use that $5,000 on something that only (or PRIMARILY) benefits you. It’s okay to be hypothetically selfish, so don’t feel bad.

If I had $5 g’s to selfishly blow, no questions asked, I would, WITHOUT A DOUBT, go buy myself a motorcycle. I sold my street bike over two years ago now (exchanged it for that tiny little diamond that sits in Girl Ninja’s ring) and would love to get another. Nothing beats the feeling of wind rushing across your face as you ride down the street.

It would be totally selfish of me to buy a motorcycle, not necessarily because of the money spent, but because Girl Ninja DOES NOT want me to have one. Although she herself admits she understands why I enjoy riding a motorcycle so much, to her it just isn’t worth the inherit risks and exponentially increased danger factor. Probably doesn’t help that my dad was in a motorcycle accident a few years back that resulted in the near amputation of his leg. Instead he got off “light” with a muscle transplant, multiple skin grafts, a permanent limp, and one gnarly looking battle wound. Yup, doesn’t look like I’ll ever get the blessing to own a motorcycle again, thanks a lot dad

So reader, I’d buy a bike with my $5,000. What would you do? And what keeps you from doing it?

So last night after youth group, Girl Ninja took a bunch of her high school girls Flocking. What’s flocking you ask? Well, let me tell you. We  take about 25 of those stupid Flamingo Yard Ornaments (the ones that old people tend to have in front of their mobile homes) and put them in an unsuspecting victim’s front yard. We leave a sign saying “You’ve been flocked by Young Life. For $25 we will remove the Flamingos from your yard or for $50 you can tell us who to flock next.”  It’s a clever and fun way to raise financial support for our kids to go to camp this summer, not to mention the victims seem to really enjoy being able to “flock” their friends.

This summer, Girl Ninja and I will be responsible for taking 25 freshmen to summer camp so they can have the best week of their lives. It’s going to be epic. Unfortunately, an epic week isn’t cheap. Many of our Young Life kids come from families that can pay the full camp fee, but some don’t. Girl Ninja and I have taken it upon ourselves to help these kids fundraise, flocking being one example.

While car washes are fun and all, let’s get real, they aren’t huge money makers. On a good day we could maybe make $500 at a car wash. Divide that up over the 15 or so kids working it, and suddenly each kid is only walking away with $33 towards their camp fee. Minimal return on investment, and a crappy hourly wage if each kid is there for about 5 hours.

That said, I am a big believer in making these kids work hard to raise money, not just going door to door asking for a handout. That’s why Girl Ninja and I have reached out to our parents and some other close friends, asking them if they would like to “Hire a few high school kids for a day.”

Girl Ninja’s parents put in an order for about four guys to come help build a fence they’ve been meaning to put in. My parents are hiring a group of boys/girls to refinish their basement (rip out the carpet and paint all of the walls). Another local community member has a slew of yard work he doesn’t want to do, and is pumped to hire six or so kids for a days work of manual labor. These type of projects pay handsomely and will go a long way in helping the kids in need to pay their way to camp.

But now I need your help (no I’m not asking you to give me money). Aside from flocking and service projects, we really are scratching our heads on ways to help these kids make more money. We will go the car wash route and selling crappy candy bars if need be, but I’d like to be much more creative and think outside the box.

Help a Ninja out! What other ways can we raise funds for these kids without just being like “Yo, can we have some money?” Have you seen any cool fundraising tactics? If you got flocked would you be pissed?

p.s. in case you are wondering, the bottom of the note indicates a flocking victim can simply give us a call and we will remove them for free if they don’t feel like participating. We typically only flock people we know or are already active in supporting Young Life. Not like we just pick random people who might shoot us in the face for stepping foot on their property. 

 p.p.s. here is a picture of me being blobbed at young life camp when I was in high school. 

So I was in San Diego this weekend for Girl Ninja’s little sister’s college graduation ceremony. Yesterday, on our flight back to Seattle, the Alaska Airlines representative mentioned during check-in they oversold our flight by one seat. I LOVE OVERSOLD FLIGHTS! Without hesitation, I asked if I could be put on the “bump” list in case everyone checks in and they need someone to give up their seat.

Sure enough, everyone that bought a ticket showed up and I got the bump I so desperately wanted. I gave up my seat in exchange for a $300 voucher and was rebooked on the next flight out (which was two hours later). It’s too bad they didn’t have two bumps available otherwise Girl Ninja would have given up her seat too. And before you think I just put her on a plane to fend for herself, she was on the same flight as her parents so she just went home with them.

So I got home two hours later than originally planned, but came out $300 ahead. Not a bad deal for a relatively minor inconvenience. Being bumped is seriously one of my favorite things about traveling and I volunteer myself to do it every time they ask. In fact, one Christmas, I bumped myself three times in a row (they kept rebooking me on to oversold flights) and walked away with around $1,200 in airfare for a twelve-hour total delay.

I’m always surprised that more people aren’t willing to give up their seat in exchange for some free tickets. Unless someone is dying, being born, or getting married, you better believe I will be racing to the counter to give my seat up first.

You ever been bumped? 

You all know I was $28,000 in student loan debt when I graduated. I consolidated my loans with Sallie Mae so I could pay them back over the next twenty years. My monthly minimum obligation was $200. After about three payments, I got sick of making them. I was annoyed by the fact that I owed someone money and had to give them a portion of my hard earned income.

As much as I didn’t like the idea of payments, the thing that really drove me to punch Sallie Mae in the face was the interest rate on my loans. Had I graduated just a few years earlier, the interest on these federal loans would have been about 2%. Unfortunately, I graduated college at the worst  possible time, right when the economy was peaking, meaning the epic crash took place just a few months later. Instead of being able to consolidate my loans at 2% like my sister had, Sallie Mae offered me a whopping 7% interest rate. SEVEN FREAKIN PERCENT!!!!!!

So when my minimum payment was $200 a month, $163 of that was going to interest and only $37/month to lowering the balance. How dumb is that?! Had my interest rate been 2%, $46 would have gone to interest and the rest to lowering my balance. Seven percent interest was absolutely unacceptable to me (and it should be for you as well).

Heck, even when we bought our car last week I entertained the idea of financing part of the cost. I figured with a good credit score I’d be able to get a used car loan around 3% and keep a decent chunk of liquidity on hand. But then I thought, why the heck would I pay any interest when I don’t have to? It’s not like I was planning on investing that money in the stock market and earning greater than 3%. It’s not like it would have depleted my emergency fund and left me cash poor. I just couldn’t bring myself to take on a loan. It would have been stupid.

So we hear people say all the time “you shouldn’t cary high interest debt.” Well friends, today I pose the question, What does high interest mean to you? For me it definitely meant 7% on my student loans, and even 3% on a car loan. I guess the only interest I don’t consider high is a REASONABLE mortgage on a 15 or 30 year loan. Hows about you?