A Review Of Popular House Flipping and Home Hunting Television Shows

By MoneyBlueBook

For a while now I've had an obsession with watching house flipping reality programs on TV. That is, until the real estate market collapsed. Since then, the hype and fascination seems to have subsided a bit with the feeling that perhaps many of these shows did the public a great disservice by over glamorizing the flipping experience. By oversimplifying the renovating process and featuring only the greatly successful flips, some of these housing shows perhaps gave many the misleading impression that flipping is so easy, even a caveman can do it - prompting many to foolishly dive in without proper real estate education.

These popular house flipping shows should be regarded as entertainment only and not seen as a step by step blueprint guide to flipping projects. If you are looking to get inspired and want to become more involved in the real estate investing business, watching these shows will certainly give you a good introduction into the realm of flipping. But they won't teach you how to properly finance your flip project or even address necessary aspects like how to obtain the appropriate construction loan or even how to properly budget for unexpected repairs. But entertaining they most certainly are.

Here Are A Few Of My Favorite Flipping and House Hunting Shows:

1) Flip This House (A&E Channel) - This show is probably the original house flipping program of recent years. Each episode tracks the purchase and renovation of a single home, listing the price of the home, renovation cost, and the

By MoneyBlueBook

I can't help it. I'm attracted to and fascinated by trashy reality television shows - the bigger the train wreck, the better. My newest reality fixation is Bravo TV's new millionaire dating show called The Millionaire Matchmaker. This show could easily be the next logical step up for those party girls from MTV's Super Sweet 16, which I previously wrote about.

The Millionaire Matchmaker features feisty Los Angeles matchmaker Patti Stanger who runs a modern and high end business of helping rich men fulfill their dreams of finding true love and potential wife, and helping gorgeous women marry into millions. On the show, her clientele of wealthy men pay a high fee to be introduced to an exclusive selection of beautiful and smart women, pre-chosen based on their compatibility factors. The men are given access to an array of high end staff of date coaches, personal shoppers, and interior designers to help them improve their personal self appearance and to spruce up the presentation of their millionaire dollar homes. Many of these men are workaholics who are usually too busy with their own careers to find time to date for themselves.

For women, joining the club is free so long as they can pass the high physical appearance requirements and aren't red flagged as possible gold diggers. From the start, Patti makes it clear that she is no Heidi Fleiss madam and that her agency is not an escort service as she strictly prohibits sex until both parties have

By MoneyBlueBook

I would like to wish my readers and my lovely girl a Happy Valentine's Day! For those of you who don't have a clue where to take your Valentine's date, I recommend The Melting Pot, a classy fondue restaurant. Fondue is basically a communal type of dinner meal shared around an earthenware pot cooked over a small burner at your table. The light fondue cheese mix inside the pot is usually cooked with traces of wine and kept warm while diners use specially pronged forks to dip bread and other bits of food into it. Although it's deliciously fun, the dining experience can be rather expensive.

Love May Be Cheap, But Fondue Isn't

The Melting Pot is definitely not a place for patrons who are financially squeamish about opening up their wallets wide for a rare romantic dinner. On special occasions like Valentine's Day, expect reservations to be in demand and planned dinner courses for two to cost upwards of $130.00. On other days, the price doesn't fare all that much better - at around $85 per couple. It's amazing how high prices soar for love-related events and merchandise during special holiday occasions like Valentine's Day (just look at the price of online Valentine's day flowers in my last post).

I'm not really a high end restaurant connoisseur (usually preferring to save my money by going elsewhere), but I've been there a few times and enjoyed the food and ambiance. Don't get me wrong - a dinner at the Melting Pot is incredibly expensive,

By MoneyBlueBook

Warning - alarm - I am about to drive off the personal finance road and head into the entertainment marshes.

Well it's been months since I rambled off topic but I think after having watched this year's 2008 Super XVLII, I feel compelled to comment on the deteriorating quality and excitement of the once highly anticipated half time musical performances. It used to be that I always looked forward to watching the Super Bowl half time shows since they used to feature pretty good superstar performances. But unfortunately, what was once an exciting party bash has in recent years turned into a safe and cautious yawn fest.

Tom Petty's Performance Was Decent But Too Safe For A Super Bowl Half Time Show

This year's half-time show featured Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, a band that probably caters more to the older generation than today's kiddies, myself included. While I will admit he did pull of a pretty skillful performance and sang some great songs, I've never been much of a fan of his band's music. I wasn't really moved or pumped up by their performance as it wasn't really much of a performance - mostly just a karaoke selection of his greatest hits.

I think future shows need serious tuneups. Ever since the whole Janet Jackson alleged wardrobe malfunction episode of Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004, the quality of the halftime shows have been sliding downhill. We really need MTV to bring back the excitement that the event once had or I think we're going to start

By MoneyBlueBook

When I read about the crazy sums of money football fans have been plunking down for a chance to watch the New York Giants play the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII (42nd), I was shocked, but not surprised. Just for the record, no - I didn't pay more than $4,000 for a pair of Super Bowl tickets to watch the two best football teams in the nation play this coming weekend. But I understand why feverish and passionate football fans would pay that kind of money to support their team (I've done it before, although not nearly to that level of degree).

If I were a Giants or Pats fan, I would have given some serious thought to shelling out the high scalper-driven prices to secure the coveted tickets and necessary hotel rooms for the chance to experience the event of a lifetime. Looking back at my earlier days, I wish I had jumped on the exciting opportunities when I had the chance. When my college alma mater made it to the men's NCAA basketball championship game I was still in graduate school and didn't have the financial means or the ability to take time off from classes to attend. Looking back I wish I had dug down deep and made the effort, because ultimately my school went on to win that national title game. I missed an opportunity that may not happen again for some time. Afterwards, I promised myself - never again would I give

By MoneyBlueBook

Back in the day, when you wanted to listen to music, you either had to listen to the song off the radio, or you had to visit your nearby record store to buy the artist's compact disc. Each CD usually went for $12-18 depending on the album's popularity and you had to store your music CD collection in a plastic shelf case. As your CD collection grew you usually had to buy more cumbersome storage. Because the CD surface was itself easy scratched, you always had to take great care when handling the discs to minimize damage.

Everything all changed during my last few years of high school when the internet arrived to the scene. At first it was only seen as a novelty and used by a handful of people, but gradually the mainstream began to adopt it, recognizing its information potential. The technology started out slow, bumbling along at 56k modem speed on the average home computer. Faster broadband technology was out of the question at the time due to the prohibitive cost. But when I entered college and became introduced to T-1 broadband technology, I knew the age of file sharing had arrived. By then music sharing had become full blown as every campus student had ready access to super fast download technology at their fingertips from on-campus computer labs to broadband enabled dorm room connections.

What Is Online Music File Sharing and How Did It Start?

Napster was the first and biggest free centralized peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing program during my early college