Long Time No Taco

Welcome to Part 3 of " Why Did No One Tell Me?!? " or, " What High School Should Have Taught Me. " ( Part 1 is here. ) Buy a house. You need to live somewhere, right?  It seems obvious and an oft mentioned part of The American Dream, but if you're like me, you grew up in an apartment. If high school taught how to get from living with your parents to moving into your own home, I must have been sick that day. Besides what we learned in Part 2 about needing good credit , I was 25 years old before I heard anyone mention that the typical down payment for a home is 20%. To give you an idea of size of that challenge: According the the U.S. census , the median price for a new home in the U.S. is $315,100, so 20% of that is $63,000!! By the time I realized this, I had already been in the workforce for 9 years, and had saved nothing toward that - overly concerned with paying off student loans quickly, which I also discussed in Part 2.  Another thing I ha...

Many times I'm asked for advice on traveling to Japan. In addition to living there six years, I worked for the government of Hiroshima, and traveled extensively throughout the country. Trying to keep things as simple as possible, while still providing insight, I typed up a few pages of info, including helpful links and started attaching it to emails to those people. Now, I'm posting it here, without any of the pretty formatting it had in Microsoft Word, and I will add that back in over the coming week. Feel free to ask questions in the comments section! GEOGRAPHY of JAPAN: 4 main islands:  Hokkaido – Alaska w/public transportation, Ski/Snowboarding HEAVEN (horseback riding, hiking, cycling, and even paintball in the summer) Snow Festival in Feb.  Honshu – The main island, with most of the names, places, and things you’ve heard of Shikoku – smallest and most rural of the main islands, friendly farmers, hot springs and the great outdoors  Kyushu – Mostly rural, s...