Follow Your Passions

I’ve had a few great inspirations for topics this week, but today, I’m in more of a mood to just share how the house hunting is progressing, and a few other personal notes.

We’ve met with our mortgage guys, our financial advisor, and our realtor now, discussing strategies with each one (we still need to meet with the accountant to chat about tax implications). The question has shifted from where we want to own a house – we have our area pretty well decided on, and there are ample houses in our price range on the market there. Now the decision to make is whether it is wise or even doable to keep the condo as an investment, renting it out to someone attending the nearby colleges and university. All signs so far point to yes, though it is a less conservative move than we’d usually make since you have to rely somewhat on having a renter in the unit for most of the time. Exciting times are afoot!

I spoke previously about my current neighborhood, and made somewhat sarcastic remarks about how you can occasionally see a star or two in the sky through the light pollution. But stars in the night sky is something I grew up with, and now I am moving to a place where I can see them again and still be ten or fifteen minutes to work most mornings.

A few other loose notes: I think it is amazing and wonderful that we are almost at the target for the month of raising $100 for Maggie’s Place, and the month isn’t even halfway over. Way to raise the bar, people. My wife pointed out to me recently that it makes sense to have my efforts tied into Maggie’s Place too, since it is a place where women are trying to pick their lives up and I am in a position to arrange for some good financial education and guidance to help them on their way. So I am likely to look into making something like that happen, and I’ll let you know how that progresses.

This week is going to be full, as I try to get a few things finished and off my plate. I’ll try to minimize the impact that has on my posting frequency. Oh, and one last thing, the charities for the next two months have been identified to raise money for via the ChipIn widget, and a few other cool opportunities have come to my attention that I will bring to yours as soon as I have more info myself.

Have a great week!