It’s hard out here if you’re trying to sell a home. The economy sucks. People are losing jobs. Banks aren’t lending. There are probably a dozen houses for sale within a few blocks of yours.

It’s downright depressing. So imagine if you got a letter like this from a buyer who wanted your house, but for waaaaaaaaay less than you wanted to sell it for:

“…buyers have options right now. A lot of them. I’m no different. Your home is great, but it isn’t unique. Few homes are. I know this may be hard to hear, since you’ve spent years creating memories here. But you may be waiting a long time if you hope to find a buyer with the same emotional connection that you have.” 

-NewYork Times, May 30, 2008

Ouch.  Talk about insult to injury.

How would you respond to that? The Times story suggested a letter like this as a response:

“You seem to believe that I’m not aware of how bad things are out there or that I’m in denial. But I do read the headlines, and I priced the house accordingly. I knew I might have to wait awhile to sell it…I’d just like you to consider what I’ve said and see if you find it convincing. In the meantime, other shoppers who are interested in my home now have a price to beat. So thanks for helping me out with that.”

How many times has this happened to you: you deposit a check into your checking account, check with the bank to make sure the money is available then proceed to go about your business, paying bills and having a lil fun. Then you find out that the money you deposited really wasn’t all there and the bank has charged you a fee for being overdrawn. Don’t act like I’m the only one.

In fact, it happened to me this morning. I had plenty of cash in my checking account at the beginning of the week, and deposited a check on top of that on Tuesday. Now, last week I lent a family member money to help them out, and also paid some bills, so I knew my balance would come down, but to nowhere near zero or overdrawn, especially since I’d deposited more money this week, right?

Notsofast, Mr. Reed. I checked my bank checking account online this morning and saw that the bank showed my available balance in the negative, even though my ledger balance was more than enough to cover anything I’d spent. How was this possible?

Pissed, I called the bank and found out that they’d partially cleared my deposits, but held some of the money back for several days. In the meantime, every dollar I spent with my bank card cleared instantly. What’s worse, the bank’s online system showed all my deposits as having cleared fully, making me think I had far more money available than I did.

Fortunately, I can run to the bank at lunch and deposit enough cash to straighten it out and avoid whatever ridiculous overdraw fees they charge. That said, I should have known better than to spend as much as I did in the first place.

Lesson learned.

I had one of the rare moments this weekend that made me think I absolutely need to buy my own crib instead of renting, even though I know that makes no sense for several other reasons.

My landlord wants to raise my rent…by $100 a month! Mind you this is not the first time my rent was ever raised and sure, I can afford it. On the other hand I live in a cheap city and a $100 increase in my rent amounts to a more than 13 percent increase in my monthly living expenses — not counting the incredible inflating gas prices or the fact that I won’t be getting 13 percent more space for my money.

What’s worse is the reason WHY my rent’s going up: I’m renting a condo from its owner who happened to have an adjustable rate mortgage on the place that reset. Now the difference needs to be made up in my rent, if I choose to stay. So if you were me, would you  a) pay the new rent and shut up about it or b) look for a new place to live?

For my gratuitous housing post for the week, let’s look at some numbers that show that right now is a really, really, really great time for some people to buy a house, and that it absolutely SUCKS to be trying to sell right now.

Example 1: This story, from CNNMoney.com, shows data from the National Association of Realtors that breaks down how affordable homes are in various cities around the country. You can look up your city on the list if you like, but pretty much, the most expensive cities in the country a few years ago are still so today. The difference is that across the board, cities are getting more affordable, mainly because the real estate market is still correcting itself. The headline says it all: “Homes are biggest bargain since 2004″.

But that’s the depressing news for people trying to sell. If you need to unload a house, you don’t want it to go at a bargain price, you want to sell at a premium. And in all but rare cases today, you ain’t gettin’ a premium for a house you bought anytime in the past five years.  According to this story, home sales are still down and those that are selling aren’t going for the prices the owners want.

“What’s your sidehustle?”

That’s what I was asked last night by this cat my boy introduced me to at a sushi bar. Not the first time I’ve been asked, but what made it significant was that he was less interested in what my 9-to-5 was than what I did when I was griding after hours. He puts in his 40-hours in sales at a big company here in Ohio, but dabbles in real estate on the side. My friend who made the intro works for another big corporation, but is a party promoter in his “spare time.” My regular job, I told him, is at a newspaper, but my sidehustle is blogging, writing for magazines and doing radio.

Point being — and this is something I posted about before — we’re in the middle of a sea change in the workforce and that brief conversation last night summed it up. Young professionals have grown so disinterested in spending a career working for any one company, or for anyone at all, that our side jobs — that thing that you do for the love but is more than a hobby because you do it for the money as well — often hold more relevance in conversation than whatever you actually do to make a living. It’s simply assumed these days that if you work for anyone other than yourself, you’re not doing what you really  want to do, and people would rather skip to talking about what your big dream is.

So what’s your sidehustle? What would you drop your regular job for in a second to have a fleeting shot at?

I was just driving back to the office when one of those department store came on the radio, the ones where they talk about their latest big sale and tell you you can even get extra money off if  you put your purchase on one of their credit cards! I know how high store card interest rates are, so I couldn’t imagine running to Macy’s and charging a pair of Ed Hardys and a Ralph shirt. If I can’t pay cash, I just won’t be that fashionable.

Then I sat at my desk and ran across this story on Yahoo Finance, that gives an ill insight into how credit card companies think. Basically, it says, you’ll be lumped in one of two categories: those who get a “free ride” from their credit card by paying it off in full before the monthly grace period ends, or a “poor fish” who gets whacked by interest month after month after month. Guess which is the better category to be in, and which one your credit card issuer would rather you be in.

Since I started my mission to eliminate just over $7 grand of card debt from my life, I’m happy to say I’m quickly moving out of the poor fish category. But I don’t know that I’ll ever be a free-rider, if only because after I’m done paying my balance off, I hope to never have to use plastic again, except in dire emergencies.

So which category are you in? If you’re a free-rider, were you ever a poor fish? If you’re a poor fish, how long will it take you to get rid of all your credit card debt?

Quick: List the top five things your family stands for. What’s important to your parents? What’d you learn from your nana that you want your kids to never forget?

What does all that have to do with money? It’s simple: families that are able to define what they stand for and pass that down to their kids have a better chance of also holding onto whatever wealth they have generation after generation. At least that’s what my lunch partner from last Friday said. He runs a company called Coppertree Ltd. that specializes in “family governance” — a fancy way of saying that he gets paid a lot of money to help people with a lot more money write plans for how to keep their families together. A big part of that, he said, is for families to sit down and figure out what’s important to them beyond how much money each kid will get when their parents pass on.

Think about your own family: how many brothers, sisters and cousins argue and fall out over small money? What would happen if those arguments were over millions?

Take a minute to think about it. What are the things you want your family to stand on so that money is more an afterthought rather than the main focus once you’re gone?

So today was finally the day I went on NPR to debate whether marriage alone could make for a better financial life for many black folks. Turns out it wasn’t much of a debate, at least not in a Jerry Springer-ish, throwing chairs and cussing for maximum ratings, kinda way. Either way, here’s the audio. Listen in and form your own opinions.

Does marriage necessarily make for more economically sound black households?

That’s what I’ll be on National Public Radio’s News and Notes debating on Monday. (Click here to find showtimes for the show in your area.)

I’ve been dying to do this segment since I read Black Enterprise’s series on love and money. One of the stories argued that “the path to greater wealth may start with making a commitment — of the romantic kind.”

I think that’s too simplistic an argument because it doesn’t consider a lot of economic factors that can make it harder for people, particularly some low-income African Americans to maintain a solid household to begin with. This study from the late ’90s advocated marriage as a way to deal with some of the economic problems we face, but it also points out that welfare policy, housing and job discrimination severely limited the financial prospects of many black males for several decades. And let’s be real: how many sistas are standing in line to marry a man with limited financial prospects?

Anyway, I expect a lively conversation on Monday so tune in. I’ll be on with Nisa Islam Muhammad, who founded Black Marriage Day.

Every other Thursday’s like the first of the month around my office. The admin comes to my desk with a pay-stub, and I rip it open like I don’t know it’s the same amount as the week before and like I the money hasn’t been direct deposited anyway. Everybody does it; herd behavior I guess.

But every few months something special happens: there’s an extra Thursday, which means three direct deposits instead of two. Of course, it doesn’t really mean I’m getting any extra cash since at the end of the year my salary will still be the same. But since I pay my bills based on when I get paid (utilities, credit card, student loans first pay, rent second pay), getting a third check means I got extra cash to spend.

This week was one of those weeks, and the temptation to blow the money was there. I was good about it though. I put an extra $700 on the credit card bill and I’m holding the rest. This morning I did try to cop tickets to the Steelers-Patriots game in November, but I couldn’t find two decent seats together. I also plan on making my first alumni contribution to my alma mater, which my company will match.

If you were me, what would you do with the rest? Hold onto it? Make your way to the casino, mall or booty bar this weekend (don’t front…you know who you are.) Do you have a plan to keep you disciplined so you don’t waste extra money when it falls in your lap?