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Real Estate Update

 It has been a while since I talked about my experience in real estate and with the craziness of covid, it seemed like a decent time to talk about this. I have spent some time thinking about this given that I live in a high cost of living part of the United States. What this means in short is that it generally costs me more than average folks to pay for my basic expenses like housing, food and healthcare. While I am fortunate in that I have a degree that pays well, I'm not so naive to think that is the end of the story.

What makes sense for me at this stage for my life is different than what seemed reasonable in my 20s. Now, by the zillow zestimate, I have about 40% equity in my home after a little more than 3 years. Looking back briefly, it has been an interesting ride. I bought the property with about 20% down about 4 years ago. Then, I spent about 10k on repairs/painting etc. Next, I went to pay off ahead of schedule, often sending in principle payments of several hundred dollars every few months and pre-paying some of the payments. 

Refinancing followed not long thereafter when I decided that it made sense to make sure that I had the best situation given the way the economy looked pre-covid. Fast forward another couple of years and I had continued paying ahead and done some minor renovations. 

The question for many people in this kind of situation is whether or not to payoff the mortgage. And I think that is something that people really need to be thinking about and consider for their long-term security. For me, I am diversifying by looking at other kinds of investing opportunities besides just the stock market and my home. I think that is really important to make sure that I am not over exposed either in the marker or in my home. I'll talk more in future posts about this, but for now, I am looking at crowd-funded investments as well as different government sponsored options and crypto. Anything like this that has the ability to preserve some purchasing power is important as both an inflation hedge and a general diversifier.

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