Everybody Loves Your Money

I’m not sure how long Mint.com has had this feature but I just noticed it today. Now you can add assets like real estate, vehicles and any other valuable assets you have. You can even associate an asset (like a house) with a particular loan so that it calculates your equity in that asset.

I found these features by clicking on the “Your Accounts” link in the upper right hand corner of the site once I was logged in. They do have a feature where you can plug your address in and it will go out to a third party to get a current value estimate, although that didn’t work for me. I ended up manually putting my values in based on a conservative method I’ve used for calculating values.

Anyway, if you are a Mint user, go check it out. If you aren’t a Mint user, you might want to check it out. I’m thrilled with the app.

I’m not sure if being home sick will be healthier for me, or if maybe I should have just gone to work. Now that I’m sitting here trying to feel better, I’m watching too much tv and reading too much on the Internet. It’s not looking good out there. You can’t load a financial type website without reading about the latest layoffs, or poor earnings and sales for “insert company here”. Even my favorite company in the whole world (Costco) is struggling.

Yesterday I took advantage of the 63 degree weather here to spend a bit of time outside. My neighbor pulled in and didn’t exactly have a smile on his face. After briefly discussing the new roofs that we were both going to have to put on this summer, the conversation turned to the current economy. He got a somber look on his face and said he didn’t think he was going to avoid the coming layoffs at his company after being there for 15 years. He’s a district manager for his company and they are looking to combine as many territories as possible so that they can reduce their overhead costs. He’s nearly 50 and I know that he’s dreading the prospect of searching for a new job. The reality is that there are a LOT of people out there that are already laid off and looking for work. He’s thinking he might go back to school to get a few more credits so that he can revive his teaching degree. Probably not a bad idea. Luckily he sold his old house last year and is sitting on a significant amount of cash that should carry him through this downturn. He said he’d been contemplating rolling all this cash in to his house to lower his payment but I offered that might not be the best strategy because cash is king these days. It might lower his payment a bit, but he’d probably be safer to keep that money in reserve and just use the interest from the money to help supplement his house payment. Even if he had to eat in to the principal a bit, it would still carry him much longer and provide more security. Anyway, I think that’s the route he’s going to go.

I honestly felt bad for him and could easily see myself in his shoes. I’m still not confident that, after last Friday’s round of layoffs at my company, they won’t do it again mid year as the economy continues to struggle. I guess we’ll see.