Doug, do you have any good homemade vodka sauce recipes? I love a good gnocchi in vodka sauce.

I've made it a few times, its nothing out of the ordinary but it works..I probably spice it up more than most with red pepper flakes...what's in yours?

Oh, I don't have one. I'm still shopping around.

I dont really go off of measurements but.

cup or more of vodka
canned roma's with the juice as well as a can of tomato sauce
lots of garlic
olive oil
parsly
basil
heavy cream
red chili pepper flakes

you can even add chopped up prosciutto depending what your having it with

Do you find it necessary to add a bit of sugar when canned tomatoes are involved? I usually do.

do you find it too acidic?

I rarely cook anything with sugar but its works if you have acidic reactions

Careful adding sugar to sauces with alcohol already in them.

Use San Marzano tomatoes.

Saute the garlic and olive oil first. Don't burn the garlic.

Use actual basil leaves.

No sugar.

http://usawatchdog.com/mortgage-settlem ... #more-7122

http://www.appraisalinstitute.org/ano/n ... 4&id=17017

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Putting in an offer on a house next week.

Since I'm a disabled vet I get the zero down VA home loan with the 2.5% servicing free and all PMI waved. 3.88% financing.

Score.

Just curious (and I ask this all sincerity), but what terms would you have received if you weren't disabled?

I would have paid PMI (a huge deal), would have had to pay 2.5% of the house to the VA, and my rate would have been a bit higher. 3.95-4% prolly. The bank I am going through might charge a slightly higher rate, but they don't sell your mortgage to one of the big banks, and that's worth something to me.

Come on HARP 2.0. Come on Fannie.. let's get that Automated underwriter updated already.

Even with all that, the VA is awesome. I went through the VA for our house. I'm not a disabled vet but the interest rate was way better. Could have done zero down but put a decent down payment to get a better rate.

PMI is a killer. I'm glad my wife and I waited until we had a large enough down payment to avoid it. So many people throw money away on mortgage insurance and have no idea what it even is.

I weighed not doing zero down, but my rate wouldn't have been any different. With the zero down my "rent" still goes down $200 a month from what I am paying now for a roof over my head. This will allow me to put some money into the house immediately, and also pay down some of my higher bearing interest debt: read student loans.

Oh, I can also buy another assault rifle and a lot of ammo.

So much do you guys think is the cut-off for renting instead selling your house when you move? My total mortgage payment is around $1400 (less than $200k remaining) and rents in the area about $1600-1800. Is that enough for me to consider being a landlord?

After property management fees and maintenance, you're probably breaking even. If you're breaking even, you probably only want to be a landlord if you can't think of a better way to deploy the cash.

this has become quite the quandary in the spike household lately

My new house should be done in about a month.