The National Realtors Association keeps an up-to-date database of recommended books on real estate and personal finance. Check out their Weekly Book Scan for some good reads, many of which you may never have heard of before.

Sometimes that is good enough, not always, but sometimes knowing more than everyone else will allow you to advance. Of course it helps to know what everyone else is thinking before you claim to be smarter than them.

I just ran into a site called Buzzdash. They constantly run polls and about all kinds of things. The stock market, business, and finance being one of them. While I wouldn’t be using this information directly to invest, it can possibly help you determine some trends of everyday people.

Personally I will be sticking with Motley Fool’s CAPS, as that holds people accountable for their predictions and any market analysis that they make. Although with the market’s recent turns, I am not so excited to log in and see how my ratings are doing!

Last night, I picked up “The Everything Homebuying Book” at my local library. As a real estate agent, I expected this book to be as dry and mundane as my real estate courses were. But the book was surprisingly to the point with tidbits scattered throughout.

The book covers everything from buying a fixer upper to selecting your town (with consideration to taxes, schools, and community programs) and determining the perfect home and finance strategy. The only thing the book lacked from my opinion was sample paperwork. What does a deed look like? How about a buy/sell agreement or rental contract when I rent out a bedroom?

We have an article on Aridni that might be useful to you, too.

And when you’re thinking of buying a home, this book may be invaluable to you… especially if you can get it for free at your local library, too!

Everyone is just like you… or are they? Have you ever noticed that people don’t always take the action or make the move that would gain them the most immediate ground, Perhaps then you might have determined that people don’t always have the same motives? Most of the time, most businesses have a similar motive, create the highest value for the shareholders.

But with individual people, victory at any cost might not be the goal. Or perhaps it is. Many people assume that everyone else is competing for the same result as themselves. Or that a majority has the same thoughts as themselves and sees things in our world in the same, or at least a similar light.

Everyone will define their own values and write their own rules. Many of them are not going to align completely with yours on all of the issues. But you won’t know that they are not on your side until the issue comes up.