Homeownership is the largest financial undertaking for most Americans and a key to building generational wealth. It can provide a base of security, as building home equity provides you with more financial options in the future. For instance, home equity can be used to pay off debt, increase savings, start a business or invest for the future.
Below are five first-time homebuyer tips to help prepare you financially for buying and owning a home.
- Save today for tomorrow’s financial goals.
If you know you want to be a homeowner, don’t wait until you’ve found the house you want to buy – start saving now. There are many expenses along your homebuying journey, including deposits, home inspections, appraisals, down payment and closing costs. Boosting your savings now can help you prepare for expenses that can occur even after you move in, including unplanned maintenance and repair costs. Begin by setting up an automatic transfer to your savings account from each paycheck and try to set aside bonuses and tax refunds.
- Exercise financially healthy habits.
Your credit score is an important measure of your financial health and gives lenders a good indication of how responsibly you use credit. There are several things you can do to improve your credit score, including using monitoring services offered by your financial partner. Set up alerts to track any new activity, including charges, account openings and credit inquiries.
- Describe your dream home.
The homebuying process often brings up a lot of questions related to your finances and lifestyle. How are the nearby schools? Is it close enough to work? Is this the right price? The first step to looking for a home is to consider what you truly need in your home. While you may have always dreamed of a two-story house with a yard, take the time to make a list of things you need and want in your new home. Having a clear understanding of your housing needs will help you identify what’s most important when looking for homes.
- Buy within your financial comfort zone.
Your true housing costs includes more than your mortgage payment. A good first step is to use a mortgage calculator to estimate your monthly payment, but you’ll need to add in utility costs (e.g., electric, gas, water and sewer), property taxes, homeowners insurance and any other monthly costs. Also consider the cost of home maintenance, including lawncare, unplanned repairs and a possible Homeowners Association fee. Utilize tools like Chase’s affordability calculator to help you determine how much you can comfortably afford based on your income and debt.
- Research down payment assistance programs.
Down payment assistance programs may be provided locally or even through your mortgage lender. Work with your lending professional to understand your options and what may be available to you. Chase, for example, offers eligible customers a $5,000 Homebuyer Grant that can be used toward down payment, closing costs, or even to buy down your interest rate. Learn more about this grant and see if a property you’re interested in is eligible at chase.com/affordable.
There are many resources available to help first-time homebuyers boost their knowledge of homeownership. For more discussions around the homebuying process this podcast, Beginner to Buyer – beginnertobuyer.com – offers conversations with real buyers and expert guests that take listeners through each step of the process – from navigating mortgage rates to preparing for closing.
For more information on home lending financial tools, such as a mortgage calculator, visit chase.com/mortgage.
Elon Musk’s ‘Burnt Hair’ Perfume Delivers Delayed, Now Selling For Profit On EBay
By Adam Eckert
If you ordered a bottle of Elon Musk’s “Burnt Hair” perfume in October, it’s finally arriving at your doorstep this week. And if you aren’t interested in smelling like “the essence of repugnant desire,” you can sell the fragrance on eBay for a significant profit.
With a last name like “Musk” and a serial entrepreneur reputation, it only makes sense that theTesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO would foray into the fragrance industry.
The billionaire runs several popular companies including Tesla,SpaceX, The Boring Company and Neuralink. He also purchased social media platform Twitterlate last year.
His companies are known for offering some of the coolest and often peculiar products in their merchandise stores. Tesla did a limited run of surfboards in 2018 and briefly listed limited-edition red satin shorts in 2020, which many assumed to be a shot at short sellers of Tesla stock.
Tesla also sold its own tequila in a bottle shaped like a lightning bolt and then famously launched the Cyberwhistle in 2021 and listed the product for sale on the site in Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) during the last crypto bull run.
More recently, SpaceX released a Starship Torch. It’s still available for pre-order, listed at $175 on the SpaceX site. But maybe the most popular item ever released by a Musk-run company was another flame-related product called “Not-A-Flamethrower.”
The Boring Company-branded flamethrower sold out of 20,000 units for $500 each pretty quickly. They demand high premiums on EBay Inc (NASDAQ: EBAY) to this day. Just this month, several of them sold for between $1,000 and $1,600.
The “Burnt Hair” perfume is a follow-up product to the “Not-A-Flamethrower” release.
“Burnt Hair – scent for men by Singed. Coming soon from @boringcompany, the same people that sold you a Flamethrower,” Musk tweeted last September.
The product went on sale for $100 on Oct. 11, 2022 and sold out within 48 hours. If you were one of the 30,000 to order a bottle, you may have finally received your burning delivery this week.
The product took longer than expected to hit customer doorsteps. In an email update from March, The Boring Company said the product took extra time to develop because the team had to wait for their hair to grow back to resume testing. The string of emails sent to customers over the last nine months was filled with puns and playful jokes.
“Anybody who truly nose about Burnt Hair will tell you that this fancy bottle and repugnant perfume is very close to being scent to you,” the company said in another update.
A card that was packaged with the bottle of perfume says, “Hey there, smokeshow. Congratulations on your purchase of Burnt Hair! It’s going to be lit.”
“But not (lit)erally … flip over this card for some boring legal language about flammability.”
Now that customers have the long-awaited bottles in hand, they are starting to pop up on eBay and are selling between $130 and $200 per bottle on average, with some going for as high as $300.
You could at least expect to get $150 for the product, which represents a 50% return in just nine months — a great investment by most measures. In fact, the bottles have appreciated more than Tesla stock over that time.
If you bought a share of Tesla on Oct. 11 instead of the perfume, it would have cost you between $215 and $225 that day. With the stock hovering around $272 per share at last check, the Tesla investment would have given you a return of approximately 21% to 27% depending on the price you paid in October.
By buying a bottle of “Burnt Hair” you could have more than doubled your returns. Musk’s perfume definitely smells like burnt something, but not money.
Produced in association withBenzinga
Edited by Alberto Arellano and Joseph Hammond