Although the parts are no doubt edited down so that only the most unbelievable bits are aired, here’s a funny clip from Jaywalking on money matters from the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

First, suppose we have the data below, which shows two managers, their employees, and the number and amount of sales each employee made in 2008 and 2009:

Let’s pretend we want to find out how many sales each manager, Bob and Bill, had in 2009. How would we do this using a pivot table?

Step 1: Highlight the data you’re interested in analyzing. Again, different people have different ways of building pivot tables, but this just happens to be the one I use most often:

Step 2: In Excel 2007, go to the “Insert” tab (circled in red below), and click on the “PivotTable” icon. (In Excel 2003, go to the menu item “Data” and select “PivotTable and PivotChart Report”. Click on “Next”, and then “Finish”)

Once you click on the icon, a pop-up window will appear:

which prompts you to fill in blanks on where the data is that you want to analyze and a few other things. Since we already highlighted the data in Step 1, the range of the data has already been pre-populated for us. Just hit the “OK” button and the pop-up window will go away and you’ll see the following appear in your worksheet (click image to enlarge):

You’ll notice there are several areas with labels on them, like “Drop Row Fields Here” and “Drop Column Fields Here”. I think this is probably the most confusing part of building a pivot table. Chances are, you will most often use the Row and Data Fields areas, so let’s focus on these first.

Step 3: Build your pivot table by clicking and dragging items. We’re interested in looking at the data by manager, so the first thing we want to do is click on “Manager” in the field list menu (click image to enlarge):

and then drag the entire word into the “Drop Row Fields Here” Section.

Once you drop “Manager” into the “Drop Row Fields Here” area (circled in red above), you’ll see the data appear, with “Bill” and “Bob” since these are the only two “Managers” we have in our data. In Excel 2007, you can also drag the word into the “Row Labels” area within the pop-up window but I’m ignoring the additional features of 2007 for now.

Next, we wanted to look at the total # of sales by Manager, so we repeat the same thing we did above by clicking on the “# of sales” item in the list and dragging it, this time, to the “Drop Data Items Here” section (click image to enlarge):

Again, once “# of sales” is dropped into the data items area, the numbers immediately appear, summing the “# of sales” together by manager.

One final step. Remember that our data was for 2008 and 2009, so the # of sales by manager that we see is the total for both years. Suppose we just wanted to see the # of sales for this year. We could do this by clicking on “year” in the field list and dragging “year” to the “Drop Page Fields Here” area (click image to enlarge):

Again, as soon as you drop “year”, you’ll see a drop-down menu appear that defaults to “all” (click image to enlarge):

Click on the drop-down menu and you can select “2009″ from the list instead (click image to enlarge):

As soon as you choose “2009″, the figures change to show “# of sales by manager in 2009″ for a total of 54 sales instead of 87 :

I’ll write more tutorials on how to work with pivot tables, but this is just a way to get you started. Feel free to leave comments with questions about pivot tables and I’d be happy to try to cater future tutorials toward answering the most popular ones. Hope this has been helpful!

Don’t worry — I don’t think this will have one iota of impact on the content of this blog, be it on value investing, personal finance, or Excel tutorials. The role I’ll be taking will still require analytical skills, and I wouldn’t have taken it if I didn’t think I’d learn from it.

Guess that means I should to edit my “About” page too :)

I work with a lot of people who are in their first corporate job after college, and I’ve been there myself as well. The most common expectation I’ve heard from them is that someone will manage their career for them, and they look to their manager and leaders in their group to do so.

While it’s true that truly great managers will look out for opportunities for you and push roadblocks away to give recognition to employees who deserve them, the sad truth is that in most corporations, there are usually very few leaders of this sort, and the corporate system makes it extremely difficult for exceptions to be made.

So, how do you go about managing your career?

Step I: Explore

The best thing you can do when you are in an entry-level role is to determine what areas you are interested in and widen your experience by trying different companies, groups, and departments. In other words, actively manage your career rather than expect management to look out for your best interests. Actually, this is also good advice for mid-career professionals, although as you get more experienced in your career, you’ll often find that it’s harder to make switches between departments and roles without eyebrows being raised. (Not that this should ever stop you from doing what you think is best for yourself!)

How do you go about figuring what roles might be a good fit? Ask yourself the following questions:

What do you think you want to do? In my experience, it’s a myth that most people know what they want to do in life, even if they’re in their 50s. Although there are exceptions, most people chase after what everyone else thinks is important and think they know what they want but don’t, so don’t worry if you don’t know what it is you want. Instead, just try narrowing down your interests a bit at a time. Start by listing out the things you’ve done in your life — be they jobs, volunteer roles, hobbies — and what you particularly liked and didn’t like about them. Are there patterns? For example, do you really enjoy interacting with people or prefer working alone? How about figuring out puzzles? A regular schedule and structure, or the opposite? Going to different places? As simplistic as this sounds, taking the time to be introspective and figuring out what you like (and don’t like) is a good investment and one that will help you find a role that’s satisfying rather than one you go with just because it’s what everyone else advises or values.

What areas do I find interesting? Once you know the kinds of work you might enjoy doing, start listing out groups, roles or departments that might coincide with those interests. Don’t be afraid to reach out to someone who works in one of those groups to have lunch or coffee to have a casual conversation, and don’t target the highest manager you can find. Instead, look for people who are doing the actual day-to-day work in a group and, if possible, who are willing to speak openly about what they do. Keep it casual, be honest about wanting to explore other functional areas and tell them you just want to learn about what it is that their group does. Everyone has been there and most are willing to share their own experiences. Most importantly, ask them questions. How do they describe their job? What does their typical day looks like, who do they work with, and what do they like the most and the least about their role? Are there other people they would recommend you talk to? People love talking about themselves, and if you come across as a genuinely interested party, it’s amazing what you can learn. If they ask what you’re interested in, you’ve already got some idea based on knowing the characteristics of the role you’re looking for and why you think their group might be a good match.

A final word for those starting out in their career: consider working or going abroad. I’m not the first person who will tell you that it’s easier to move overseas when you’re younger, and I won’t be the last. But having international experience is valuable both professionally and personally, especially as jobs becomes more and more globally focused.

I’ll write more about next steps to actively managing your career upcoming posts. In the meantime, feel free to share any suggestions or comments below.

Then we happened across a house in a neighborhood we hadn’t been considering. It was as close to what we were ideally looking for as we had seen, and it didn’t need any obvious changes or upgrades. Believe it or not, that’s rare on the Peninsula. For readers who are unfamiliar with Bay Area housing, you just have to trust me on this one. It’s been a shock to understand just what sort of housing inventory and pricing there is around here, even in a “down economy”.

The trouble was, a house like this one naturally attracted several interested parties. We toured on a Thursday, over a week before the first scheduled open house tour, and by Saturday, the seller’s agent had already contacted our agent to say that she had people interested in putting in a bid. As complete newbies to buying a house, let alone in the Bay Area, and let alone under sudden pressure, we suddenly found ourselves seeing the house that day a second time and being advised by our agent to bid the asking price for the house at $899K if we truly wanted it and wanted to avoid having them hold an open house (where it would surely attract even more interest and potential bidders).

Again, for non-Bay Area readers, yes, you read that price correctly, for a 3 bed, 2 bath house of ~1600 sq. ft., built in the 30s, and with a lot size of about 6K sq. ft.

While it wasn’t the perfect house — it was in a neighborhood that lots of people liked but a city we hadn’t even been considering and in a not-so-great school district — we decided to go ahead and bid on it at asking.

Then seller’s agent called and said she was leaving town for the long weekend and wouldn’t be back to help her client with offers until Monday night. Believe it or not, just that act changed the course of everything.

Those extra few days gave us time to reconsider the house and whether bidding $899K for it was something we were comfortable with. We also had time to read all the disclosures on the house (nothing set of big alarm bells in our heads, but still, when you’re a first-time home buyer and read about cracks in the foundation, you get a little concerned). By the time our agent came with all the paperwork on Monday to make the official bid, we had gotten cold feet. Luckily, he’s the husband of a former coworker, and he didn’t take our hesitation badly at all. After a lot of discussion, we decided to bid $875K instead and even at that point, we weren’t completely sure about whether it was the choice. Like I said, cold feet.

That night, I found myself swinging the complete opposite direction, convinced that the house was the right one and hoping that our bid wasn’t too low and a counter offer would be made so we’d get a second chance at it. I spent most of the next morning distracted and anxious. By noon though, however, we learned that the seller had accepted another bid for what we guess was around $890K. Ugh.

In retrospect, had the seller’s agent not left town, who knows? Maybe we would have been the high bidder and the seller would have gotten more money for it as well. Funny how some little thing like that can change the outcome of future events.

Nevertheless, the whole experience was a really uncomfortable one for me. I’m not the type of person who does impulse purchases, I don’t buy expensive things or items at full price, and I’m not into brands. Actually, I have a tendency to suffer from analysis paralysis.

The concept of having to put emotion into a purchase this large (i.e. find a house that you love, which means you have to go through a house a few times and picture yourself and your family actually living in it) and plunking down something north of $850K to realistically get what you want is unchartered territory for me. How do you manage to picture yourself living in a place without getting emotionally attached to it and then distance yourself enough to put an objective dollar range on it, and then be comfortable with the possibility of losing it anyway?

Heh. I’m not convinced I’ll be much more prepared if the same situation comes up again in the future. Meanwhile, the housing market seems to be picking up, just to add to the pressure and confusion. A lot of houses that have been on the market for months are suddenly starting to have open houses again, and I see many more listings at $800-900K going into “pending sale” state within a couple of weeks’ time.

The funny thing is, it seems that everyone who’s bought a house in the Bay Area has a similar story of getting emotionally vested in a house only to lose a bid to someone else. Apparently it’s just a normal and very common part of the buying process here.

Now that a week has passed, I’ve finally come to grips with losing that house and having to move on and even the idea that there might actually be another house more suitable for us still out there somewhere. Wish us luck in finding it.

Although sudden and unexpected job changes reinforce the need, no matter your work situation keeping tabs on opportunities and actively managing your career these days is essential and wise practice.

After all, what you really want are a few options when your hand is forced. Even if you don’t lose your job, being able to have a choice in your next move is freedom worth striving for.

This week, I realized that many of my teammates are younger than me, have less experience, and could use some guidance on career management, so I’ve set up some one-on-one meetings with them. Over the next few weeks, I’ll post steps and tips I’ve learned along the way on this site as well.

‘Til then, though, enjoy the long Labor Day weekend, an apropos way to kick off a series on this topic!

I found a couple of interesting articles, one an analysis at Old School Value on Warren Buffett’s Stock picks (Berkshire recently released its Q2 holdings) that will take me some time to go through, and another on leveraged ETFs, an interesting area I didn’t know much about (though truthfully, I would probably shy away from investing in these given my style).

The latter article is a bit annoying in that it requires you to register for free before you can read the entire post, but if you’ve been looking into investing in leveraged ETFs, it’s probably worth a read first. There are also some other articles highlighting specific stocks, the Indian market, and other areas related to stocks and investing should these fit your interests.

At the risk of jinxing myself, QLTI closed today at $4.01, or 88% higher than my purchase price, excluding transactions costs. Truth be told, I had largely ignored it until this week when I noticed its performance.

At $2.13, QLTI was trading at 53% of its net current asset value (NCAV) (based on financials released in July 2009), which is defined as current assets less total liabilities.

Under typical market conditions, you almost never find stocks trading at a discount to NCAV, and Graham recommended buying a diversified portfolio of stocks trading at 67% of NCAV as one of the best strategies to achieve superior returns. At $4.01, QLTI is almost at 100% of its NCAV.

I also found a post at The Graham Investor referring to a strategy for selling. The method is attributed to a person named Van Tharp, who wrote a book called Safe Strategies for Financial Freedom. Tharp recommends the following after buying stocks at 2/3 of NCAV (quoted from The Graham Investor):

Sell a third of your holding when a 50% profit is achieved. If the price continues upwards to 100% profit, you sell a number of shares to make up half your original holding.

You now have your original investment back and have a holding of “free” shares. This strategy can be performed in an IRA using a large portfolio of perhaps 30 similarly undervalued stocks. If the market has been declining for several months, there will be several such stocks to choose from. In an up trending market, however, it will be much harder to find good value candidates but diligent investors who do their homework will more often than not be well rewarded for their efforts.

I’m inclined to try his method even though I missed the first step of selling after a 50% run-up given that I’ve never really figured out a good strategy to determine when to sell a stock. Of course, his method also assumes that your investment will reach a 50% or even 100% return at some point, and there’s certainly no guarantee that investments will work out that well, even if you can find a sufficient number of stocks trading at a sufficient discount to their NCAV.

More updates on this investment as they happen.

Note: As mentioned in my first post, if you choose to purchase QLTI and are a US shareholder, you should consider investing in a tax-advantaged account since QLTI is considered a Passive Foreign Investment Company (PFIC) and can bring significant and complex tax consequences if purchased in a regular investment account.

FD: I own shares of QLTI at the time of writing of this post.

This means I need to try to grow the money in the account as much as possible while limiting any downside. Enter special situations investing, which turns out to be a great way to invest smaller amounts of money with pretty big returns. Of course, no investment is risk-free, but I’m hoping that by choosing workouts wisely, I’ll be able to get a better return on the account than if I bought a few odd-lot shares of an ETF or mutual fund.

For my first investment, I purchased 900 shares of En Pointe Technologies (whose ticker symbol was ENPT until it went private on Monday). Fat Pitch Financials’ Contributor’s Corner had it listed for some time as having entered into a merger agreement with the CEO to be bought out and taken private at $2.50/share, so when the stock dropped to $2.03 back in April, I decided the time was right.

As an aside, I have to say that for whatever reason, the fact that I was investing my son’s money somehow made the whole transaction more nervewracking even though I’ve made larger purchases of various investments in my own accounts. I guess it’s good and perhaps even normal to feel this way, but it wasn’t something I expected.

Even though ENPT had filed papers entering into a definitive agreement, the deal was far from guaranteed. The termination date (the date by which the agreement to merge could be terminated by either party) moved from July 31 to August 14, and various additional filings and amendments were submitted between the time I purchased the stock in mid-April and the announcement (yesterday) that the deal had been closed and that all shareholders would receive $2.50 for each share of stock they own.

Including the $8.95 fee I had to pay for purchasing the shares and basing the end date as of Monday, my return was 22.6%. In comparison, the S&P 500 went up about 20.5% during the same period, so I’m glad I still beat the index, even though the market has been going straight up since April. (I’ll recalculate the second figure once I receive the cash for my shares in my account. Update: received the cash in my account this morning, 8/12!) Additionally, I’ll start hunting for new workouts or special situations to invest in, and hopefully I’ll have found another good investment by the time I receive the cash in my account.

Are you one of those people who’s ever pined for a scientific calculator you had in the past? I’m dating myself (among other things) here, but I attended high school before the epoch of graphing TI calculators but after slide rules (thankfully)!

Somewhere between AP calculus, college, and many moves between states after graduation, I lost my much loved Casio and couldn’t for the life of me remember the model. At the time, it was amazing (to me at least) for its ability to be programmable, iterate and solve equations, deal with radians…you get the idea.

Enter MyCalcDB, which appears to be an exhaustive database of calculators of all kinds last updated on July 17th of this year. After narrowing down the dates and manufacturer to Casio, I found my calculator within minutes. It even shows thumbnails of each calculator where available.

So, for the tiny portion of readers who are as nerdy as I am and long for things like out-of-date scientific calculators, I thought I’d share this resource :)

Here’s how you get to the template in Excel 2007 (which according to my recent poll is the version most readers use, if only by a hair).

In Excel 2007, go to the “menu” button (the goofy-looking windows symbol in a circle) in the upper left-hand corner. Click on “New”. This will bring up the following window:

Click on “Installed templates”, which will bring up seven built-in templates for you to choose from. Double-click on “Loan Amortization”.

This will create a blank template for you to fill out, like so (click image below to enlarge):

You can fill in data in the orange boxes, and Excel will automatically calculate monthly payments, remaining amount on the principal, remaining balance, and interest paid to date, along with several other fields in the columns below. If you choose to make extra payments, the template automatically takes those into consideration as well. In the upper right-hand area is a summary of the loan scenario, including monthly payment amount and total interest to be paid.

Here’s an example of what all of this looks like for a hypothetical loan (click image below to enlarge):

In Excel 2003, you can get to the same template through the following steps. Go to “File” >> “New” >> “New Workbook” >> “On my computer…” >> “Templates” >> “Spreadsheet Solutions” >> “Loan Amortization”.

This template has helped me create a simple model to play around with figures to get a total picture of fund outlays, tax savings, and different mortgage scenarios in our nascent house-hunting process.

More pertinent posts will be forthcoming, but I happened across this recently at work and found parts of it somewhat comforting, so I thought I’d share, in case anyone else has recently experienced loss. Titled “How to Deal with Change”, it’s from wikiHow.

Being prepared for change involves flexibility, strength of self-purpose and belief in one’s own worth.

1. Be prepared. Life is full of unexpected surprises; don’t let this be a lesson you refuse to learn. Death, loss and strange situations will be a part of your life, no matter how much you may try to cocoon yourself with reasoning, savings and assets. The major key to coping with change is to accept the reality of change and its inevitability.
2. Realize there’s only one thing you can control – yourself. Once you cotton on to the reality that you cannot change others and that the only way they can change you is if you let them, then you suddenly find yourself empowered. Empowerment is a key element of change acceptance and change management. When you feel empowered, you will roll with changes as a whale rolls through the ocean waves, commanding and unbothered by events but conscious of a need to roll with the surrounding effects to lessen their impacts.
3. Take time to recoup. If you are grieving after a death, be it a person or a pet, do not let anyone tell you how long to grieve for. That decision is yours. It does make sense to make a decision in your own mind about what grieving you need to do, as your life cannot meander in sorrow forever. However, it is most clear that those who avoid grieving end up worse off and can experience break-downs and inability to cope at unexpected times. With grief for death, there will always be a piece of your heart missing but if you accept this and you are willing to carry the memories as lively as can be for the rest of your life, this will help you reach some acceptance of what has happened. If it is a job loss or some other personal loss that is not death, you still need mourning time to assuage your sadness and grief over a loss of something that once filled a large part of your life. Perhaps a small ending ceremony of some sort will help to give you a sense of closure and allow you to move forward.
   
4. Be purposeful. Change occurs but you do not need to be buffeted by it. Have a purpose in life, no matter what it be, that serves as your own personal anchor. While it is important to be open to change and to be flexible as to the possibilities that change opens up for you, it is also important to remain true to yourself and the dreams that you hold in life. This self-belief and your dreams are your anchor. Whatever else life throws in your way, these are the barometers by which you can measure your progress in the world and how you are reacting to change. Be prepared to question your methods of getting to where you wish to go but be less prepared to change your destination if it means dismantling the person you are inside.
   
   
   ]]>Sorry for the delay in updating this site. My mother-in-law passed away last week from cancer, and our family is still recovering from the loss. More pertinent posts will be forthcoming, but I happened across this recently at work and found parts of it somewhat comforting, so I thought I’d share, in case anyone else [...]http://www.experiglot.com/2009/07/17/handling-unexpected-change/feed/2http://www.experiglot.com/2009/07/17/handling-unexpected-change/http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/experiglot/~3/uI44VTVQcHY/Business & entrepreneurshipLeslieWed, 24 Jun 2009 21:48:54 PDThttp://www.experiglot.com/?p=1068Like many people, I find it irritating whenever I hear meaningless business phrases used over and over again. You know, things like:
   1. We should leverage the engineering team for this project.
   2. Can we gain any synergies by doing this?
   3. We don’t have the bandwidth on our team to take this on.
   4. Let’s discuss this offline (as in not in the current meeting).

   Meaningless business jargon is so commonplace in daily corporate life that someone created Business Buzzword Bingo a while back — a fun game to play while sitting in meetings.

   I recently heard a new term which a quick internet search reveals isn’t apparently all that new: “bad optics”. I saw this in some meeting notes that were being sent around, and I chuckled at the time, thinking whoever took the notes either misunderstood what was being said (perhaps “OpEx”, often short for “Operating Expenses”, or “Operational Excellence”) or had an overly aggressive spell checker.
   
   But I discovered I was wrong after seeing the phrase pop up more and more at work. A couple of my teammates finally confirmed that saying something “is bad optics” means that something “looks bad to an observer”.

   I have no idea how that came to happen.

   The word “optics” to me — perhaps because I studied physics, but also for most people, I’d still guess — is a branch of physics dealing with light and its interaction with matter. “Bad optics” conjures up the embarrassing problem with the Hubble Space Telescope mirror, or an image that’s out-of-focus, perhaps due to dirt on a lens. It does not mean that something shouldn’t be done in order to prevent a PR gaffe. Besides, what’s wrong with saying something “looks bad” instead of “it’s bad optics”?

   To readers in other countries, I’m curious. Do you experience meaningless business jargon where you work, especially if you work in languages other than English? If so, what are some common phrases you hear?

   
   ]]>Like many people, I find it irritating whenever I hear meaningless business phrases used over and over again. You know, things like: We should leverage the engineering team for this project. Can we gain any synergies by doing this? We don’t have the bandwidth on our team to take this on. Let’s discuss this offline (as in not in [...]http://www.experiglot.com/2009/06/24/mba-by-practice-but-physicist-at-heart/feed/7http://www.experiglot.com/2009/06/24/mba-by-practice-but-physicist-at-heart/http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/experiglot/~3/ro_-wSawTj4/Current eventsInternetLeslieFri, 12 Jun 2009 23:00:44 PDThttp://www.experiglot.com/?p=1054I don’t think this is new, but it’s still worth taking 5 min. to watch and definitely will make you smile :)
   
   
   
   The org behind this is called the Playing for Change Foundation and its goal is to build and connect music/art schools around the world. Pretty inspiring.
   
   ]]>I don’t think this is new, but it’s still worth taking 5 min. to watch and definitely will make you smile :) The org behind this is called the Playing for Change Foundation and its goal is to build and connect music/art schools around the world. Pretty inspiring.http://www.experiglot.com/2009/06/12/this-will-make-your-day-aka-when-technology-really-is-wonderful/feed/2http://www.experiglot.com/2009/06/12/this-will-make-your-day-aka-when-technology-really-is-wonderful/http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/experiglot/~3/EglQKjTye-Y/HousingLeslieMon, 08 Jun 2009 06:24:31 PDThttp://www.experiglot.com/?p=1004
   

   According to its description, 'needs work...but great value!' in Burlingame, CA, priced at $1.05M

   We’re a few weeks into seriously starting to look at the Bay Area housing market (as in actually going to open houses and going on trips with our real estate agent to get to know neighborhoods).

   Although we’re starting to get a bit more accustomed to prices of houses in the area, I still can’t get my head around the idea that a basic 3bd/2ba house will likely cost nearly $1M. These are houses that would run in the low hundred thousands anywhere else, let alone in Tennessee, where I spent most of my childhood.

   We’re basically looking for a solid house that will retain (or possibly even appreciate) in value over time and that doesn’t involve an unreasonable commute time to my work; nothing fancy, and we don’t even care if it’s new, although not having to cross the Bay every day would be nice.

   Here’s what I’ve been able to pick up so far from our trips:
   

   1. Now that we have a little one, school districts are a factor, but from what I’ve been able to tell, people around here pay either a few $100K extra for a house in a good public school district or the same amount for a private school education in exchange for a lower cost house located in a worse public school district. This trade-off happens in other places in the US too, I suppose, but the amounts involved here are just incredible.
   2. In some areas, one house that’s priced at $600K (a fixer-upper, as in unlivable condition at move-in) could literally be next to others that are north of $2M.
   3. There are these things called “short-sales” that appear to be good deals but whose sales (at least in this area) are seldom completed or completed in any reasonable amount of time. It seems like every time we find a decently priced house on Redfin, it’s listed as a short sale. In short sales, the seller still owns the house, but owes more on the mortgage than he or she can get from selling the property. In many instances, more than one bank holds a mortgage on the house and each one must approve the sale in order for it to go through. Moreover, there are usually multiple bids on the property (including some with all-cash offers). The advice I’ve heard is that should we find a house we like on a short-sale, we ought to make a bid and then continue seeing houses because the likelihood we would get the house is next to nil.
   4. Then there’s the mortgage….the various flavors of mortgage loans are an area we’re still learning about. We’ve been talking to a loan broker and asking all sorts of questions. I never realized how complex mortgages could get (jumbo loans, FHAs, points, you name it).

   Because of where we live (close to Silicon Valley), there are probably more people willing to forego the use of an agent or a loan broker and instead head straight to Redfin. We are content with the agent we have so far, but it’s interesting to see how many different ways there are to go about finding a house to buy.

   Despite the sticker shock, I have to say that it’s been somewhat fun looking around and seeing if we can picture ourselves and our family living in the houses we’ve seen. We’re currently renting a house and have until next March, so at least we aren’t on a tight deadline. Still, I sometimes wonder if we will ever get to the point where we find something we like enough to pull the trigger on signing a HUGE mortgage. Our agent claims that the day we find our house, we’ll know it even before we walk in. I personally find that hard to believe, having never had that feeling about anything I’ve purchased, let alone a house.

   What’s been your experience, and what advice do you have for a first-time home buyer? I’d be interested in hearing people’s advice, whether you’re in the Bay Area or not!

   
   ]]>We’re a few weeks into seriously starting to look at the Bay Area housing market (as in actually going to open houses and going on trips with our real estate agent to get to know neighborhoods). Although we’re starting to get a bit more accustomed to prices of houses in the area, I still can’t [...]http://www.experiglot.com/2009/06/08/still-suffering-from-bay-area-housing-price-sticker-shock/feed/10http://www.experiglot.com/2009/06/08/still-suffering-from-bay-area-housing-price-sticker-shock/