Your Personal Brand – It’s Important

I had a good friend recently tell me that I should share my thoughts and try to be better about writing/blogging. He said it was important in itself – but also important it that it builds your personal brand. I kind of agreed – in that, “perfect world”/where-I-had-time sort of way. I could see it would be good for networking, for positioning myself for the future, etc. – but it seemed difficult to start doing. Plus, I was always busy with something else in the short-term. No time for long-term stuff. Every time I would try to sit down and write something, I would either develop an immediate onset case of writers block or I would come up with ideas that were not “good enough.”

He told me this didn’t matter – and I was setting the bar too high. My definition of “good enough” and someone else’s probably were not the same. And just because I didn’t find something interesting perhaps didn’t mean much – the mere fact I’ve done something could be of interest to someone, somewhere.
Continue Reading

Stay Above the Median

I’m planning on buying a house with my wife in the (near?) future and we’re in the learning phase of mortgages, financing, PMI, debt-to-income ratios, points, taxes, blah blah blah.  It sounds exhausting doesn’t it?

Through the process I’ve thought to myself, maybe we should wait and put 20% down.  Then we can get a fixer-upper¹, save on things like private mortgage insurance², and probably get better rates from a wider variety of lenders.

That’s a lot of coin, though.  No matter how you dice it.
Continue Reading