The Penny Pincher's Pantry

Bored out of my mind and stuck in a never-ending, over-the-phone survey last night I started flipping through the November issue of Ladie's Home Journal. Much to my surprise, (I've only read the magazine a few times before), I and came across a couple of interesting articles. My favorite was a two-page write-up called The Penny Pincher's Pantry.

The article includes budget-friendly recipes for every day staples like pancake mix, chocolate syrup, fresh buttermilk, jarred spaghetti sauce, taco seasoning and packaged bread crumbs. The recipes are ridiculously simple. For example, to make fresh buttermilk mix 1 tbsp of white vinegar or lemon juice with 1 cup of milk. Let it sit for 5 minutes and use. The article says you can also combine 3/4 of a cup of plain yogurt with 1/4 cup of milk.

I rarely purchase buttermilk, so I tend to ignore any recipes that include it as a main ingredient. With the new found knowledge that milk and lemons will do the same trick I can pick and choose from a much wider range of dinner options.

I'm also interested in trying the taco seasoning recipe, because I absolutely hate buying those little taco packets from the grocery store. The recipe requires 4 tsp of chili powder, 1 tbsp onion powder, 2 tsp garlic powder, 1 tbsp ground cumin, 2 tsp paprika, 2 tsp dry oregano, 1 tsp sugar and 1/2 tsp salt. It says to use 2 tbsp of the seasoning for every 1 pound of beef, chicken or turkey. So I can use this mix for dinner one night and put the rest in the cupboard for another night's dinner.

I like that these recipes allow you to control the salt and skip out on the preservatives. Since there are only nine in the list I plan on trying them all. I'm all for buying less prepackaged items. I think it keeps us healthier and cuts down on our carbon footprint.

All That Research and Almost Nothing to Show for It

I spent the last few days researching title insurance companies in the state of Maryland and finally decided to proceed with Stewart Title. I found a very pleasant settlement agent to handle all of our paperwork and patted myself on the back for finding a cheaper solution to the title service recommended by our lender.

After reviewing the various costs and running all the numbers I realized we'd save over $280 with the new settlement company. Almost every fee was less expensive including title searches, title insurance, settlement fees and lien releases. The new settlement agent has a few extra charges for wire services and FedEx, but even with those additional fees the total cost was still $280 less! I must admit I was tickled pink with the savings. After all, we've refinanced at least three times before and this is the first time I'd ever shopped around for cheaper title insurance.

Unfortunately, my excitement didn't last long. I found out that our lender plans to charge us $200 to review the title work performed by the other company. Suddenly that $280 in savings dropped down to $80.

The last few days feel like a complete waste of time. Here I was trying to be proactive, trying to learn about the process and trying to make more informed decisions. Unfortunately the lender still wants a piece of our pie. While I understand the bank's desire to protect it's investment I cannot believe they plan to hit us with a $200 title review charge.

It seems I spent all this time researching title insurance regulations and contacting agents to save $80. While $80 is certainly not chump change it's a drop in the bucket of our overall closing costs. Oh the frustration.

Shopping Around for Title Insurance

Has anyone ever shopped around for title insurance? My husband and I decided to proceed with refinancing both of our properties, but I hate the thought of paying for two more title insurance policies. I believe the title insurance on our rental home can be reissued, but I think we will need to purchase a new policy for our primary home. Our lender provided the name and quote of a title insurance company, but I'd like to shop around first to see it's the best deal. Has anyone ever shopped around for title insurance? If so how did you go about finding and choosing the title insurance company?

$15 for Five New Strands of LED Christmas Lights

I've been eyeing new Christmas lights for the last few years. I love the energy efficiency of LEDs, but I couldn't bear the idea of throwing away perfectly good incandescent ones. I tried to donate our old lights but I couldn't find a donation center willing to take them. It turns out that Christmas lights are synonymous with household fires and the centers didn't want to take on the risk of selling them to anyone. So every time my husband and I passed by Christmas displays I'd point out the LED version and say "one day we need to make the switch."

Well that time has finally come. It turns out that Home Depot is holding a Christmas Light Trade-In now through November 15th. If you take in your old, incandescent strands they'll take $3 off your next purchase of LED lights (up to five strands).

At my local Home Depot the customer service representative told me to take the old Christmas lights up to the register along with the new lights I wanted to purchase. The cashier counted each incandescent strand, (five in total), and deducted $3 from each of the five boxes I purchased. Just like that I walked out of Home Depot with brand new LED Christmas lights and managed to send my old ones off to be recycled. Each box was less than $3.

I know some people are skeptical of whether or not companies actually recycle, but here are the details according to the Home Depot ad:

How Lights Are Recycled:
The light bulb coupler and the socket plug are manually clipped. Three byproducts result and four categories of raw materials. Each byproduct is independently shredded for separation, returning glass HDPE plastics, and non-ferrous copper as well as ferrous steel. The prepared separated raw materials are then sent to licensed smelters for re-casting or re-molding, all in accordance with local, state and Federal statutes.

I'm really happy my husband and I made the switch.

Thursday Night Link Love

Just a few of my favorite posts and articles from the last two weeks:

• Empty Your Brain: The Key to Productivity (Who couldn't stand to be more productive?)
• How to Stop Being a Workaholic (I constantly struggle with my type-A personality.)
• Least Stressful Jobs (My job is included in this list.)
• The Regrets of Christmas Past (Every Christmas I wrestle with the question of what to buy my family members, particularly my niece and nephew.)
• Can you Buy Your Way Out of the Rat Race? (The freedom of not working is one I think about every time I drive to work.)
• Is There a Generation Gap in Saving? (My husband and I have discussed this topic quite a bit.)
  

Inexpensive Donations for Toys-for-Tots

I picked up seven games from Toys-R-Us today including Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders, Hi Ho Cherry-O, Memory, Cooties, Don't Break the Ice and Don't Spill the Beans for $3.99 each. For spending $25 on Hasbro games I immediately received back a $10 gift card that is valid through December. I also mailed off a rebate for $2 on each game, for a total of $14. After subtracting the rebate and gift card from the total I spent only $3.93 on all seven games. I plan to donate three or four of the games to Toys-for-Tots. The rest will be shipped down to our beach house for renters to enjoy.

Stumped by a Low Appraisal

A few days ago my husband and I were shocked by an unbelievably low appraisal on a small piece of property in North Carolina. After inquiring about the property and submitting a bid we contacted a lender to apply for a loan. The lender immediately hired an appraisal company to value the property. While I thought the seller's price might be a bit higher than the appraisal I was shocked to find out that the vacant lot appraised for $100,000 less than our offer.

It is my understanding that appraisers search for real estate sales that follow specific guidelines. I thought appraisals were typically based on sales within a one mile radius that are less than 12 months old. This was not the case with our appraisal. The appraiser compared our lot with sales on properties that are ten miles away and over a year old.

We're looking to purchase a waterfront property in an area with very little vacant land. Over the years the majority of lots in communities in and around our area have been built upon. Rather than looking at all land sales within a one mile radius of our home, the appraiser looked only for sales of waterfront properties. He had to go 10 miles away to find sales on vacant waterfront lots and found only three within the last year and half. He used those three properties as the comparables in his appraisal.

Of course, as anyone knows, you cannot compare lots that are over ten miles away from one another. Heck, in our neighborhood in Maryland the price of houses in our immediate community ranges between $400,000 to $850,000. If you walk down the street and into the next community, (less than half a mile away), you won't find a home worth more than $300,000. If a few blocks can cause that much variation in price you know that it is impossible to compare properties that are over ten miles away.

So what can you do about a low appraisal? Well, in our case very little. Our lender will not accept independent appraisals, so our only option was to refute the valuation the original appraiser provided.

We provided detailed documentation to the appraiser, including a number of properties in the area that sold for $100,000 to $150,000 more than the valuation he provided. We explained that sales that are more than ten miles away and over a year old are not a reflection of the current real estate market in our community.

Of course, just as I expected the appraiser refuted each of our points and explained that the lot had to be compared to waterfront property and that none of the recent sales in our community were waterfront. Hmmm, that's funny, because usually waterfront views increase the value of a property, yet this waterfront property is valued at nearly half of some of those lots.

Honestly, I didn't expect the appraiser to change his valuation. His number is so off the mark that he would look like a complete goon if he went back and revised his original estimation. It turns out that the appraiser is a trainee that is from a community far away from the lot in question. Odds are that he is both unfamiliar with the appraisal process and our community.

So where does that leave us. Well, the lender certainly won't provide us a with a loan large enough to fulfill our needs. They will provide us with only a 66% loan on the property valuation, which is quite a bit less than we require.

At this point it is fair to say that the lender will not further decrease his price. He dropped $35,000 off his asking price already, so if we wish to proceed we need to explore other financing options.

I wonder how many times an appraiser revises his valuation. Based on this experience I would imagine that it happens very infrequently.