Tentmaking Tips

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but you wouldn't believe how many people leave money on the table when they go to sell their home. And I'm not talking a few dollars here and there. I'm telling you people leave thousands on the table, that could be theirs, when they sell their home.

I don't want that to happen to you. Next time you sell your home, I want to help you get top dollar for it.

My wife and I have sold many homes at top of the market value, sometimes even over market. We've had houses under-appraise on several occasions. That means the appraiser doesn't even think it's worth what someone is willing to pay us.

Here are the 5 items you need to focus on to sell for top dollar:

1. Remodel the areas of your home that are in need of being updated

   People don't want to pay top dollar for a home that doesn't look top dollar. That doesn't mean you need to spend

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I'm not a licensed financial advisor (which may be a good thing for this blog post). I'm neither a CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) nor a CFP (Certified Financial Planner).

I'm just a Tentmaking Pastor sharing educational information that has helped me and may help you as well.

When I first started saving for retirement, the professionals that I talked to recommended that I place my money in actively managed mutual funds that would hopefully "beat the market." No guarantees of course. I didn't realize at the time how much they, and many others, would benefit from me investing in these types of mutual funds. And I also didn't realize how often I wouldn't "beat the market" by investing in these funds.

I figured if I was going to be saving hundreds of thousands of dollars over my working career investing in these mutual funds via my retirement accounts, I better understand how they work.

What I ended up learning from the likes of Warren Buffett, J

It’s not really an every day tool like a budgeting app. It’s a tool I’ll glance at monthly or every few months.

The focus of this tool is on tracking your net worth. Your net worth, as calculated by this tool, are your assets minus your liabilities. You can import all of your asset accounts and all of your liability accounts into this tool and it gives you a big picture view of your financial health.

As you think ahead toward retirement & financial freedom, you want to see your net worth number growing over time. This gives you a good indication that you'll be financially prepared for the time in your life when you don't have any income coming in from your job.

Types of assets you can import:

• Bank accounts (cash)

• Investment accounts (IRAs/401ks/HSAs/529s/stocks/bonds, etc)

• Real estate (primary home & rental property)

• Cars

• Jewelry/Art

• Businesses

• You can eve
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The financially wise person will usually tell you to keep those funds liquid in preparation for a rainy day (car breaks down, AC goes out, etc). Meaning, don't lock them away in investments where you can't easily access them or where they could lose money.

The only problem with this is that parking these funds in your checking or savings account usually yields very little interest. In fact, the currently advertised interest rate on my bank's savings account is 0.01%. Ha!

I realize this rate will fluctuate depending on interest rates and market conditions, but it leaves those of us with emergency funds looking around for better options.

Enter HYSAs. Heard of them? The acronym stands for High Yield Savings Accounts.

I'm const

It’s true. And sometimes they are very generous.

Chances are you have several thousand dollars at your primary bank that can be moved around. Perhaps this is your liquid emergency fund or some money you’ve been saving for a future purchase.

Use that money to redeem the best checking account bonuses when banks offer them.

Let me give you a few examples.

Chase Bank recently offered a $300 bonus for opening a new personal checking account and a $300 bonus for opening a new business account. I opened both. After completing a few activities, they deposited those bonuses right into my account.

Citi Bank then had a promotion offering up to a $750 bonus if you opened a new checking account with them (bonus varied depending on how much money you deposited). I signed up for this one as well and moved some money over.

Different banks offer promotions at different times, so just make a habit of