Earn, Save, and Live Joyfully.
After my last post I received a bunch of emails from long time readers asking about our desire to provide items to guests. “Why would you fill your house with nice things?,” one reader asked. As I mentioned before we try to provide a happy, fun, easy atmosphere for our guests. We know that most … Read more
This year was not a stellar rental season for us. We received five bookings rather than the ten to twelve we’ve come to expect each summer. The rental company provided a bunch of excuses for the lack of bookings. Among which were “school let out late due to snow” and the “fourth of July fell … Read more
Ten years ago this week I spotted a cute, little, yellow beach house and made an offer on it. My husband and I spent a day weighing the decision and ultimately decided it made a whole lot of sense to purchase a second property. If I could go back in time I would definitely buy … Read more
Owning a second home is unbelievably expensive. To learn more about common rental expenses check out any of the links below: The Real Cost of Owning a Vacation Rental Home Decisions to Consider Before Buying a Vacation Rental Home If I Could Do It All Over Again Would I Still Buy My Beach Home? Spending … Read more
Over the years I’ve received a lot of questions about owning a vacation rental home in a beach community. I’ve written about my house numerous times and received lots of emails over the years asking about the property we purchased. I try to answer these questions individually as the need arises, but I thought it … Read more
I like the guests in our beach house to feel at home. While you hope for sunny days every day of the rental season you know that a few rainy days will creep in to someone’s vacation. In an effort to ease the blues that often go along with a gloomy day I’ve stocked two … Read more
I’d like to say I don’t have any debt, but for now my desire and reality are not one and the same. $600,000 is an enormous amount of money and it’s roughly how much I currently owe. In fact, it’s such a large sum that it’s difficult to wrap my head around. How on earth … Read more
Have you ever had one of those days when you run from store to store with a long list of items that seems to get longer and longer by the minute? Well Saturday was that day for me. My husband and I hit a total of 11 stores and restaurants in a three hour period … Read more
My husband and I have debated a kitchen remodeling project in our beach house for ages. While the current configuration works pretty well for us, the cabinets and countertop are original to the house, which was constructed in 1977. We’ve considered replacing the cabinets and reconfiguring the layout, but it would probably cost us at … Read more
My husband cooked the most delicious vodka cream pasta sauce for our lunches last week. This is the third or fourth week in a row where he’s cooked a big batch of hearty, goodness that we can take to work with us. Last week he made Indian food, which wasn’t nearly as tasty as this … Read more