A few weeks ago, I wrote about how my husband and I are moving to be closer to his new job. Well, it's been a whirlwind of chaos and uncertainty ever since. Since I wrote that post, we put our house on the market and began the search for a new home. And despite the fact that we're excited for the opportunity to move on with our lives, it hasn't been pleasant.

First of all, something happened that we never expected. Our house sold for almost full asking price in 13 days.Yes, you read that right. Thirteen days. This was great, of course, because we were able to put that part of the move behind us. And anyone who has sold their home knows how big of a pain it is to keep their house in prime condition, especially with small kids. Regardless, the fact that our home sold so quickly meant that we needed to find a new home….and fast. Plus, the fact that the buyers of our home wanted possession in 45 days meant that we had 45 days to make an offer on a home, negotiate a price, and close the deal.Gulp.

Searching for Our Dream Home

So we started our home search by making a list of the features we wanted in our new house. Fortunately, we were mostly on the same page. My main concern for our new home was price. Since selling our current home meant that we would have almost 100K for a down payment, I wanted to find a home that was as inexpensive as possible. One of our dreams is to be debt free (including our mortgage) as soon as humanly possible; so the more we burden ourselves with debt, the further we'll be from reaching that goal. Continue reading...

Once, I couldn't find a matching pair of shoes, so I put one foot in a ballet flat and the other in a tennis shoe and acted like I had sprained my ankle. True story.

You may wonder then why this girl is writing an article on decluttering and disorganization and their relationship to finances, especially since I still have a lot to learn. While there are definitely others who are more organized, I have come a long way.

I have no idea how much being disorganized has cost me directly, or how much a cluttered life affected my finances indirectly. But it's significant: Paying credit cards late, getting overdrafts, losing bills or other important papers, buying stuff only to find out I already had it, and on and on. It was painful in so many ways.

This article is written by Naomi Mannino. Naomi is a freelance consumer personal finance and health journalist who reports on health, medical and personal finance news and how it will affect your life today. You can follow Naomi on Twitter @naomimannino.

Some reader stories contain general advice; others are examples of how a GRS reader achieved financial success or failure. These stories feature folks with all levels of financial maturity and income.

Can you really buy a house at auction on the courthouse steps for $100? Do you have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars as the house-flipping guys do on TV?

As a new homeowner, I recently had to buy a homeowners insurance policy. And as a personal finance writer, I tried to take my own advice and "shop around."

To be honest, it was a pain, and the rates I was getting on my own were way too high. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if I wasn't also trying to close on a house. In the end, I found an independent insurance agent, and she saved me hundreds of dollars and lots of headaches.

But I also learned that there were things I could do to help her keep my premium low year after year. For instance, I had planned to install an ADT security system, which I later learned would lower our premium.

For someone who hates accumulating stuff, I sure have a lot of it. There's the skirt suit that I haven't worn in four years, for example. Or the ALF lunchbox that I just can't part with. Oh, and my indispensable collection of PEZ dispensers.

I could go on, but this is a money blog, not a humble brag about all the cool toys I have.

At any rate, lots of this stuff has got to go, and the good news is: it's yard sale season! The bad news is: I don't have a yard.

On April 1st, I got an unpleasant surprise, and it wasn't an April Fools joke or gag. I found out that one of our renters didn't have enough money to pay all of his rent.

Since nothing like this has ever happened before, I was definitely caught off guard. Still, it wasn't the end of the world. Since I pay all of our mortgages ahead of schedule, waiting a few weeks for payment wasn't going to affect my bottom line. And after talking with my tenant, I agreed to accept partial rent on the 1st and the rest of the money on the 17th of April.

I usually wouldn't make such a big exception. However, this particular tenant is a responsible man who treats our property with incredible respect and care, even going as far as fertilizing and edging the lawn. Since he and his wife have lived in my property for four years and never paid late, I was more than willing to break the rules just this once without giving them any grief. No big deal.

This story is from Karl Boericke. He is the author of The Frugal Berry, money-saving tips of all kinds for home, office, and small business.

In 1990, I was honorably discharged from the Navy and quickly found a job in an electronics manufacturing company as a technician in their test department. While renting an apartment at the time, I wondered how I would ever be able to afford to buy a house with my meager salary. I had heard that buying a duplex was an inexpensive way to live and build equity in a home.

After looking at a few mobile homes and quickly realizing the long-term downside to such an "investment," it became clear that buying a duplex was my best realistic ticket to home ownership. I lucked out in finding a great real estate agent who gave me some sage advice. Even though I could buy a duplex with a VA loan with almost NO cash up-front, she advised me to use an FHA first-time buyer mortgage. This would cost me some money at purchase, but it would give me the possibility of using my VA loan in the future for my "next duplex." This thought stimulated my imagination, and seemed like an impossibility at the moment, but I followed her advice and kept this long-term idea in storage for another time.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how I refinanced my mortgage for the second time in a year. The second refinance wasn't actually part of my master plan, but I ended up having to refinance in order to remove my private mortgage insurance. And although refinancing our home again proved to be a huge pain, we are now saving $135 per month by no longer paying private mortgage insurance premiums.

Thankfully, we managed to secure a no-cost refinance that only cost us in time and effort. It's a huge relief that the process is finally over, and I am fairly hopeful that this is the last time we will ever have to refinance.

Refinancing Has Its Perks

Luckily, I am no stranger to the benefits of refinancing. Not only did we refinance our primary residence, but we also refinanced our two rental homes within the past 18 months. We did so in order to take advantage of record low interest rates and to shorten the terms of their loans.

Financial success can be due to making good decisions or avoiding big mistakes. In many cases, the biggest mistakes happen after good decisions, because the stakes have become higher.

As an example, let's consider the dilemma of Motley Fool reader Jim, who emailed us this question: "Did I make a substantial error when taking money out of my IRA?"

To help answer that question, Jim sent along some details:

The 30-year fixed mortgage rate keeps getting lower and lower, making it a great time to refinance your mortgage and cut your monthly payment. But as Pat Esswein, associate editor of Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, reports, homeowners have to clear a few hurdles before they can refinance.

One of those hurdles is the appraisal, which determines the value the bank will assign to your home.

That's an important number because it determines your refinancing options and affects your monthly payment and interest rate. For example, if your home value drops and your loan-to-value is higher than your lender allows, typically 80 percent, you have to either increase your equity with cash or pay for mortgage insurance.