Should You Rent Out Your Home Instead of Selling It?

With the current housing slump, should you slash the price of your house to sell, or should you rent it until prices come back?

Unfortunately, many people have chosen to rent out (rather than sell) their homes. This has created a renter's market - which means that, if prices take time to come back, you might lose money anyway.

You might not be able to charge enough rent to completely cover your monthly expenses, and you may have to consider renters with damaged credit. You will lose a few month's rent per year to tenant turnover. You will have to hire a handyman and deal with repairs.

Finally, your home owner's insurance might go up and you will have to spend at least 1% of the selling price to fix up the house for sale after renting it out.

For these reasons, some real estate experts advise you to "take your lumps", slash your asking price, and sell.

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Apple Passes Microsoft As #1 Tech Company

I have owned Apple stock since 2006, and I have a Macbook and Apple TV. I would never consider buying another Windows machine.

Apple's products are great examples of elegant simplicity and minimalism.

That is why I really enjoyed hearing this news.

From the New York Times: Wall Street has called the end of an era and the beginning of the next one: The most important technology product no longer sits on your desk but rather fits in your hand. As of Wednesday, Wall Street valued Apple at $222.12 billion and Microsoft at $219.18 billion. The only American company valued higher is Exxon Mobil, with a market capitalization of $278.64 billion.

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National ID Cards for Illegal Immigration?

Some in Congress are advocating a national id card - justifying it by saying its necessary to combat illegal immigration.

There is a simple, minimal, and elegant alternative to national ID cards.

This uses the simplicity pattern of "rewarding correct behavior rather than creating bureaucracy to catch and punish".

In other words, instead of creating a national id card to catch illegals, reward the first illegal from each company who turns himself in:

1. Require all employers to post a notice in English and Spanish where workers can see it saying that the first illegal employee to turn in his/her employer gets a green card.

2. Any employers caught employing illegal aliens will get fined a % of quarterly revenue. This will automatically scale the fine to mean something for companies like Walmart.

3. If, as I suspect, it is found that employers really need the labor, then create a guest worker program that does not lead to citizenship. Have a certain size pool of worker passes, hand them out on a first come/first serve basis at the border (as long as they pass a finger print check for a criminal background). If they leave the country to visit home, they have 30 days to reclaim their guest worker pass, or else it goes back into the pool.

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Another Basketball Player Mismanages His Money

A few days ago, I wrote about how, according to an article I read, former NBA players Kenny Anderson and Derrick Coleman went bankrupt - despite each of them earning over $60 million from their careers.

Today, I read that current Knicks player Eddy Curry may be heading in the same direction.

According to this Yahoo Sports article, Curry made a little over $10 million this year, and over $57 million so far in his career.

Yet, the article says that he defaulted on an $850,000 loan, and has been ordered to pay back $1.2 million to Allstar Capital, Inc. (they may take his Rolls Royce and Land Rovers).

The article references court documents which show that Curry's outgoing payments include:

• $30,000 a month for "household expenses."

• $17,000 a month to various relatives including his parents, sister and father-in-law.

• More than $1,000 a month for cable and satellite television.

• $207,000 a month in garnished wages that haven't been elaborated upon, but adds up to almost $2.5 million that Eddy Curry never sees over the course of a year.

• $350,000 to NBA player Juwan Howard.

It seems that pro-athletes have the same issues as lottery winners - they come from lower or middle income backgrounds, don't possess financial knowledge, and are suddenly handed large sums of money.

Perhaps they need to follow these 6 steps for lottery winners (and others who receive windfalls).

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Haunting Images of the BP Oil Spill

These photographs give a hint of the magnitude of this disaster.

So what is the solution?

I value simplicity and minimalism in government, but that is different than being a strict libertarian.

Mainstream democrats and republicans (i.e. today's congress) will hold hearings and purpose new legislation. The problem is it probably won't simplify the existing law by weeding out the ineffective rules.

We already have multiple government agencies involved in offshore drilling (EPA, U.S. Minerals Management Service, and the Department of the Interior) - yet we still had this disaster. They probably have too many laws - most of them covering trivial issues.

If you have complex laws and bureaucracy, it is too easy to "miss the forest from the trees" (enforcing nitpicky stuff but missing bigger issues.) There also might be loopholes inserted by lobbyists.

The libertarian view, of course, would be that BP should never be overseen in the first place. They are taking a publicity hit for this disaster, and it should be left to the markets to punish them.

But there is a third way - the simple, elegant way. We should go for quality over quantity:

1. Eliminate loopholes and trivial rules. Enforce a few, basic practices to prevent a repeat of this disaster.

2. Let oil companies be aware that future incidents will result in massive fines. By "massive", I mean a percentage of quarterly revenue - so if a company the size of BP is found to have cut corners, they will pay billions of dollars.

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Warren Buffett's Secret Millionaire's Club

Warren Buffett has created a new online cartoon show to teach children about economics, saving, and investing. It's called "The Secret Millionaire's Club", and is about a group of kids who find and sell sports memorabilia worth millions to save their community center. An animated Buffett then helps the kids invest the money they have left over after saving the center.

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Real Estate Agent Sells House - and Herself!

A 42 year old divorced real estate agent in Palm Beach, Florida - named Deven Traboscia - is offering both her house - and a chance to marry her.

This is probably the ultimate in stunts for a desperate real estate market...

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