How to live with less.

 

 

 

If you've already started your spring cleaning, chances are you're all too familiar with our society's obsession with "stuff"?. For those of you looking for some inspiration to purge those unneeded things, you might want to check out this New York Times article , "Living with less -- a lot less" by Graham Hill.

 

Hill made a killing during the Dot Com era, and immediately spent his fortune on material items - houses, gadgets, cars, you name it. The article explains how managing these items became a job in itself, and how it eventually started to suck the life out of him.

After achieving his "ah-ha"? moment, he purged everything and now lives in a 420 square foot condo in Manhattan. Without a lot of extra stuff taking up space, he's been able to organize it in a way that allows him to entertain dinner parties for 12, accommodate overnight guests (in their own room) and watch TV in his own "media room"?.

Here's a video of what his new lifestyle looks like:

http://gizmodo.com/5967622/the-tiny-transforming-apartment-that-packs-six-rooms-into-350-square-feet

Hill is hoping his next business venture will get more people living a minimalist lifestyle. Life Edited offers similar living solutions to those that exist in his condo.

http://www.lifeedited.com/

Whether you're living in a 420 square foot condo or not, it's always good to partake in some regular decluttering to avoid letting things get out of control. If this is what you're planning on doing this spring, good luck and happy purging!

How to tell if your home is overvalued

It seemed natural that with the introduction of record-low interest rates, threats of housing bubbles wouldn't be far behind. For years, the Federal government, Bank of Canada - and now, the International Monetary Fund - have warned about potential housing overvaluation across the country.

The thing is, saying that houses across Canada are, on average, 10% overvalued doesn't make much sense. Canada is a vast country - and housing markets vary drastically from one area to the next.
So how can you tell if your house is overvalued? Well, that's a difficult - if not impossible - question to answer (unless you're an economist - but even then...). That being said, I've always liked this concept that was printed in the New York Times way back in 2005. It employs a mathematical equation similar to that used in the stock market, to determine if stocks are overvalued. The equation looks at a house's "rent ratio": You take the price of a house in a typical area and divide it by the cost to rent it for an entire year. The result is the rent ratio - and the lower the ratio, the better. Typically anything under 20 is considered "bubble safe".
The article acknowledges this is an imperfect measure - mainly because it's not always easy to find out what your house would get on the rental market. That being said, it has proven to be somewhat useful - and is definitely worth a shot if you're worried about buying a home that's potentially overvalued!