Got Home Improvement Plans? Read This Advice!

Home improvement projects have the potential to make or break your wallet, your investment and your resale value. This article will give you lots of great advice on how you can protect the investment you’ve made, get the best bang for your buck and not go broke in the process.

Installing a breakfast bar can divide your kitchen and dining or family room without a cramped feeling. The open space provided by a combined kitchen and family room can make any home feel larger; however, it can also make it difficult to treat the rooms as separate spaces, especially regarding décor. A breakfast bar can serve as a functional divider that separates the rooms without closing them off.

A great tip for home improvement is to avoid putting your own personal stamp on improvements. This will make it less likely that you will earn a return on the investment because what looks good to you may not look good to someone else. If you use renovations simply to express yourself, do not consider the renovations as an investment in the resale value of your home.

A good tip for home improvement is to make sure you make smart investments in your home. Try to improve parts of your home that potential buyers would be interested in when you plan on selling your home. This will insure that you get the most out of your money.

TV entertainment stands cost quite a bit of money. A great viable alternative to those expensive stands is buying a nice dresser. You can put your TV on top and use the dresser drawers to store your DVDs and CD’s. Your remote controls and electronic manuals can also be stored in a drawer preventing it from being an eyesore.

If you have an unfinished basement on your property, finish it. A finished basement can almost double your property value if you finish it the right way. Carefully consider the floor-plan before you begin work. If you cannot do it all at once, just build one room at a time according to the plan.

You can easily change the look and feel of your furniture simply by purchasing distinctive new knobs, handles, and drawer pulls. These accents can be purchased individually or as part of a set for added savings, and the selection of colors, materials, and shapes is virtually infinite. This is also an excellent option to update antique or vintage furniture that is missing its original hardware.

In any home with original wood floors, the homeowner considering home improvement projects, should avoid replacing the floors, at all cost. The older a wood floor is, the less likely it is that it can be replaced with an equally attractive floor. It is much better to refinish existing wood floors. Even in cases of the most extreme damage, laying a new floor over the original one is preferable to removing it.

As you can see, there is a lot involved in even the most simple of home improvement projects. But, if you follow this advice and use it to make really wise investment decisions, you should have no problem choosing the best projects and the best money saving ideas for your home.

* Updated for Summer 2020

Most people probably wouldn’t consider Bill Gates a value investor.

After all, Microsoft was basically the poster child for the tech boom of the 1990s – a boom that Warren Buffett famously did not participate in – and the company continues to be considered a “growth” stock today.

But I’d have to disagree.

Bill Gates might not be picking stocks, but he still thinks and acts a lot like a value investor. At the very least, he has more than a few things in common with Warren Buffett. Here are a few examples:

1. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are very close friends, and the two often play bridge together.
2. Gates sits on the Board of Berkshire Hathaway and Berkshire is the largest holding in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation portfolio.
3. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s portfolio is managed by a guy called Michael Larson. Larson is a buy-and-hold value investor, with a strategy similar to Buffett’s. Since Larson started working for Gates in 1994, the billionaire’s net worth has increased from $5 billion to $80 billion.
4. And, just like Warren Buffett (who reads 500 pages a day now and used to read 1,000 pages a day when he first started his career) and Charlie Munger (whose secret is to “go to bed smarter than when you woke up“), Bill Gates is a voracious reader and reads over 50 books a year.

So, if you’re looking for some good books to read this summer and want to expand your knowledge, here are 5 books that Bill Gates is recommending for 2020:

Cloud Atlas: A Novel

by David Mitchell

Gates: This is the kind of novel you’ll think and talk about for a long time after you finish it. The plot is a bit hard to explain, because it involves six inter-related stories that take place centuries apart (including one I particularly loved about a young American doctor on a sailing ship in the South Pacific in the mid-1800s). But if you’re in the mood for a really compelling tale about the best and worst of humanity, I think you’ll find yourself as engrossed in it as I was.

The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company

by Robert Iger

Gates: This is one of the best business books I’ve read in several years. Iger does a terrific job explaining what it’s really like to be the CEO of a large company. Whether you’re looking for business insights or just an entertaining read, I think anyone would enjoy his stories about overseeing Disney during one of the most transformative times in its history.

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History

by John M. Barry

Gates: We’re living through an unprecedented time right now. But if you’re looking for a historical comparison, the 1918 influenza pandemic is as close as you’re going to get. Barry will teach you almost everything you need to know about one of the deadliest outbreaks in human history. Even though 1918 was a very different time from today, The Great Influenza is a good reminder that we’re still dealing with many of the same challenges.

Good Economics for Hard Times : Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems

by Paul Collier

Gates: Banerjee and Duflo won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences last year, and they’re two of the smartest economists working today. Fortunately for us, they’re also very good at making economics accessible to the average person. Their newest book takes on inequality and political divisions by focusing on policy debates that are at the forefront in wealthy countries like the United States.

If you’re interested in books, you should check out our free E-book on how to value invest like the professionals. 

Have you read any of these books? If so, let us know what you think in the comments section!

Read more great articles at Vintage Value Investing.

—————-

By: Dillon (Mr. Vintage Value Investing)
Title: The Bill Gates Summer Reading List
Sourced From: www.vintagevalueinvesting.com/the-bill-gates-summer-reading-list-books/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-bill-gates-summer-reading-list-books
Published Date: Tue, 19 May 2020 05:00:53 +0000

Did you miss our previous article…
http://insurancequotesforless.net/investment-advice/mcig-inc-mcig-announces-corporate-name-change-to-bots-inc/