This is the seventh (and final) weekly installment in Luneray’s homebuying adventure. Previous entries include:

Week one: Looking at houses
Week two: Making an offer
Week three: A lifetime of debt
Week four: The calm before the storm
Week five: Preparing to close
Week six: Closing the deal

This week, Luneray is a homeowner!
The paperwork has closed and the title transferred and recorded. We are homeowners. But all I feel is numb.

Oscar and I spent the afternoon down at Our Place doing a wee home improvement project before we moved in. It was a really simple project. Really. I thought it would take us three hours max.
But we hadn’t yet learned the Laws of Home Improvement:

A project, no matter how simple and small, will take you at least three times longer than you think it will. This does not include the time it takes for various goos and putties to dry and cure.
No matter how well you plan in advance, you will [...]

I have several reader-submitted items languishing in my mailbox. Rather than let them grow stale, I’ve grouped them into a single entry.

Sean Blanda at College v2 is starting his “College Money” series.
I’m soliciting all tips and tricks you use to make your life financially stable. How do you manage your bank accounts? Do you invest? How much money do you spend on food? fun? Topics to be covered include: personal finance blogs, an introduction to banking, investing for young people, the best books, student loans, scholarships, and more!
The first entry in the series explores the fragile art of commuting — Blanda offers tips on how to save money if you don’t live on campus. Yesterday’s GRS post about how to get the most out of a college job is the second post in the series. Look for more in the next few days!

Kay writes to share her experiences as a frugal grocery shopper:

Your site [...]

Last Friday I wrote about Casey Serin, the young man who is deep in debt because of risky real-estate investments. He’s blogging about his predicament at iamfacingforeclosure.com. Casey stopped by Get Rich Slowly yesterday and had this to say:

I don’t see why a person CANNOT get rich quick… but still do it in an honest and safe way. Whenever you hear “Get Rich Quick” you think somethhing bad.
And yes, if you read my story, it DOES sound like i’m just a big screw-up. AND YES.. I did do some stuff that I am NOT proud of (liar loans). However, I am learning my lessons and hoping to make a comeback.
I am determined to find a way to make an honest buck in real estate in a down market. My mentor “Rich Dad” did it. It took him only about 10 years. Now he has 20K+/mo in PASSIVE income from REAL ESTATE.
Is [...]

A college job can be a chore. Or it can be the doorway to future success. The choice is yours.
I asked Michael Hampton, director of career development for Western Oregon University, for advice on how college students should approach work. What should they look for in a job? What should they try to get out of it? Are college jobs really that important? We drafted the following seven tips, which we believe can help you to get the most out of your college work experience.
Connect Jobs With the Future
Try to connect your jobs — even part-time jobs — with something you enjoy doing. Ideally each job would relate to something you think you might want to do later in life. (This isn’t always possible — it’s an ideal.) This can help you determine if the job is actually a good fit. Test-drive jobs like you would test-drive cars. Students often think [...]

A couple of weeks ago, I shared the first part of an interview with Scott Durbin. Durbin is taking an entrepreneurial leap, leaving behind a safe job to pursue a dream, starting a rock band for kids. This is the second part of the interview.
What was your family’s financial situation at the time you started the Imagination Movers?
At the time the Movers started, I was entering my sixth year of teaching. Picture if you will, being the ‘bread winner’ on a teacher’s salary. Ahhh, the luxury of it all. My better half worked full time-ish as an office manager for a web firm and was earning a little less than me. Our income, however, was supplemented by a rental property. Even so, we rented to friends and consequently asked for $150 month lower than market value for the area.
Having two wee ones, we were quite honestly living paycheck to paycheck. We had some credit card [...]

Wesley writes:

I wanted to share a book that really hit home with me in my collegiate days. It’s called Possum Living. Now granted, these folks take living cheap to extremes, but they make good points periodically. I’ve taken their advice, and I’m close to paying my house off at the ripe old age of 28….it seems to be working well.

Possum Living: How to Live Well Without a Job and With Almost No Money was written in the mid-1970s by a teenaged girl named Dolly Freed. She lived with her father on half an acre outside Philadelphia. The book was originally published in 1978.
Possum Living contains information on

Raising rabbits, chickens, pigs, and goats for meat
Catching and cooking fish
Gardening
Preserving food
Making moonshine
Low-cost housing
Utilities
Clothing

This book does take cheap to extremes. (It reminds me of Thoreau’s Walden.) Most of us don’t want to live like this. But for those interested in frugality or homesteading, there’s [...]