Credit card points and airline miles are strange aspects of the modern economy. On the one hand, they’re not really worth all that much—airline miles, hotel points, and credit card reward points max out at about 1.5 cents per point, with most valued significantly less than a penny. On the other hand, they’re basically free money—you get them whenever you use the card, so as long as you’re traveling places you need to go to and buying stuff you need anyway (and not paying interest on those purchases), those points will eventually add up to something of value you wouldn’t otherwise have.

If you’ve got an airline-affiliated credit card like the United MileagePlus card or something similar, you’ve probably used the points you accrue mainly to offset the costs of travel. Points can be pretty easily used to pay for flights, hotels, and rental cars, and if the exchange rate is awful it’s still essentially free. But hotels and flights aren’t the only ways to cash in those points.

Donations

The points and miles you earn via credit card purchases or airline loyalty programs may not have much cash value, but they have some cash value. If you want to make the world a slightly better place without actually taking a hit in your bank account, you can probably donate your miles or points to charity. Most loyalty programs already have built-in relationships with charities that make this pretty easy. Keep in mind that these donations are probably not tax-deductible; the IRS views points and miles as discounts, not income.

Magazines

Your loyalty program or credit card website might have a built-in option to subscribe to magazines or newspapers, or you can check out MagsForMiles to see if you can trade those points for reading material. If you’ve got nothing else to do with your miles and you will actually get something out of the periodical, this could make sense—especially because points and miles are often high-value when used this way, for some reason. For example, with MileagePlus miles you can get a 15-issue subscription to Wine Spectator for 1,000 miles; that sub costs about $72 annually if you bought it directly, which values your point at about 7 cents each, which is not bad at all.

Gift cards

If you want to convert your miles or points into something a little more flexible, a solution most people overlook is a gift card. Most of these programs will happily sell you a gift card (you can also sometimes exchange your unwanted gift cards for points—United’s MileagePlus program does this—creating a weird kind of circular economy of craptastic gift cards). As with all points/miles transactions, you have to dig in to see if you’re getting any sort of value. A $5.00 Starbucks card through MileagePlus will cost you 1,666 points, making those points worth about 3 cents each. On the other hand, a gift card makes it a lot easier to actually buy things at Starbucks, so it might make sense. Plus, it’s a way to give someone a gift without spending any real money, you cheap weirdo.

Experiences

Yeah, the word “experiences” is kind of silly, but if you’ve got a stash of miles or points sitting in an account somewhere, you should look into the “experiences” you can either buy or bid on. MileagePlus offers a bunch of sporting experiences you can bid on with your miles, and Hilton Honors members can bid on a wide range of special events, like concerts, sporting events, or special dinners. Since these are usually auctions of some kind, you might get tempted into using more points or miles than you want—but since those miles and points are more or less free, it might be fun to just yeet them into an adventure you might otherwise never pay for.

Cash

While it’s generally legal to sell your points or miles to a third party like MilesBuyer, it’s not a great idea because most airlines and credit cards prohibit the practice. If you’re caught, you could lose your account and all your accrued points or miles.

But there are some options. Many rewards programs have options to cash out your points—Citi, for example, makes it pretty easy to convert your ThankYou points into a direct deposit into your bank account, a credit to your credit card balance, or even a check in the mail. That transforms your difficult-to-redeem points into actual cash, so it’s worth checking into the details of your program to see what your options are. But do the math before you jump on it—generally speaking, you want to get at least a penny a point before you convert to cash; otherwise waiting to redeem them for other goods or services might make more sense. For example, Citi’s ThankYou points are worth exactly one penny each when you turn them into cash, so 5,000 points becomes a $50 deposit in your account.

Sometimes it feels like privacy, as a concept, has vanished from the world. Advertisers certainly seem to know everything about you, serving up frighteningly accurate ads that make you think your phone’s microphone has been turned on and marketers are actively listening to your every mumble.

They’re not—yet. But they are engaged in something called “data mining,” which is the process of collecting enormous amounts of anonymous data from your every connected activity and then analyzing that data to infiltrate your life with advertisements and other influences. And it’s not just corporate America—criminals can mine your data in order to rip you off.

If that bugs you—and it should—you can take some steps to minimize data mining in your life. You can’t completely escape it unless you plan to live off-grid with zero Internet connection, but you can reduce your exposure. After all, it’s your data, you’re not being compensated for it, and it’s creepy that some anonymous marketing team knows you’re really into RPGs and craft beer.

Read those EULAs

One of the biggest vectors for mining your data is your smartphone, especially the apps you’ve installed on it. Every time you install an app you agree to its terms—the end user license agreement (EULA) and other requirements.

A first line of defense against data mining is to take the time to review those EULAs. You can’t negotiate, but if you see you’re being asked for blanket permission to send data back to the mothership, you might at least look for an alternative. The key warning signs that the app is just a data-mining vessel are granting permission to monitor your Internet activity, to explicitly collect personal information, or to use your computer or device for their own purposes. If you see anything that gives you pause, think twice before agreeing.

Check settings

When you install an app on your device, you probably click through a series of permissions that grant that app access to everything it needs to gather data about you. This is a data-mining goldmine.

A few years ago, for example, an investigation found that about 5,400 apps were siphoning data from just one person’s smartphone—1.5 gigs of data in all. And back in 2017, an app maker called Alphonso was caught tracking what people were watching on TV by activating the microphone on their smartphones.

If an app requires a lot of unnecessary permissions—does a game really need access to your microphone, location, and camera?—you should assume it’s more of a data-mining app than anything else. Your next line of defense: Stop installing garbage free apps and spend that dollar. Every app wants to make money from you, and if you’re not paying up front, you’re paying in some other way, most likely by having your data stripmined.

Be boring on social

Social media is very obviously a dumpster fire when it comes to privacy. You’re literally posting a photo of you at the store with the hashtag #LiveToShop, so you shouldn’t be surprised when that store’s ads start popping up all over your life.

If you’re concerned about data mining, you can take a few simple steps to reduce the access that data miners have to your social media:

• Set your profile to private. If your main goal on social media is to connect with friends or colleagues, restrict the reach of your posts to just those folks.

• Be a snob. Don’t accept every request you receive to connect—if you don’t know that person, they don’t need to be let in to your inner circle.

• Discretion. Don’t blast your travel plans, spending habits, or product reviews out into the universe.

Using social media compromises your privacy, but if you’re mindful of the information data miners want, you can at least refuse to make it easy.

Log out

When you log into platforms like Google or Facebook, that platform can pretty easily track what you’re doing. And as long as you’re signed in, that ability persists—even if you leave the site. These companies are really data mining companies, and they have perfected the art of following you around.

It’s a pain in the butt, but logging out of those services when you’re not actively using them (and clearing cookies and browsing history regularly) can slow down the vacuuming of data. It’s inconvenient to do so by design, but it has a real impact on how much information is being mined from your online activities.

Avoid memes

Data mining isn’t just about advertisers selling your stuff. It can also be weaponized by scammers to get personal info they can use to rob you blind, steal your identity, or steal your identity and then rob you blind.

One easy way they can do this is to just wait for you to respond to a phishing meme. These memes look like innocent fun quizzes where you supply some seemingly innocuous bits of personal information and receive a chuckle in response. Common examples include posting your “porn name” (a combination of common security question answers like your middle name or the model of your first car or something similar) or using the last digits of your phone number to do some math magic.

Luckily, there’s an easy way to avoid data mining via phishing memes: Ignore the memes. Your life will actually be incrementally better anyway.

Tech solutions

One of the most effective ways to cut down your exposure to data mining requires a bit more effort. Various privacy tools exist that can really stem the flow of your data to the unappeasable black hole of marketing:

• VPNs. Virtual Private Networks are useful for privacy because they obscure your location and IP address, which makes it a lot harder for data miners to collate the data they get. Since your data appears to come from a wide range of random locations, it’s impossible to build a coherent profile of your preferences and habits. Installing a VPN on your computer, phone, and devices will go a long way towards cutting off the flow of private information.

• Tor. The Tor Browser routes your web surfing traffic through many encrypted nodes, making it basically impossible to track your travels on the Internet. If you really want to go dark, combine Tor with a VPN and you’ll be practically invisible. If you’re not ready to use Tor as your everyday browser, use a privacy-focused browser like DuckDuckGo or Brave, or at least adjust the privacy settings in your browser to make it as secure as possible.

• Ad blockers. Almost every single website you visit tracks your activities and gathers data about you. While using a privacy browser is an effective way to stifle that, ad-blocking plugins can go the extra mile by denying intrusive access to your browsing experience altogether.

If you own a home, you’ve probably at least contemplated making major, dramatic changes to it; having control over your shelter is important psychologically, and one way we exert that control is by changing it to better meet our needs. And we increasingly treat our homes as reflections of our emotional and mental state, often turning to renovation projects when we feel stuck or unhappy in other areas of our lives (for better or for worse).

We usually discuss home renovation projects in terms of return on investment (ROI) or the practical impact the change will have on our daily lives and our families. But there’s a crucial aspect of home remodeling that we should prioritize more: happiness. How happy will that home renovation project make you? The National Association of Realtors (NAR) has quantified this to some extent with their “Joy Score,” which asks homeowners to rate how happy a home renovation has made them. Combined with some other factors, it’s possible to come up with a list of the home renovation projects that will make you the happiest—and they’re not always the most expensive or ambitious.

Happiness-inducing indoor projects

Unsurprisingly, one of the key factors in any home renovation project is how well the end result meets the need that inspired it. If your kitchen is barely functional before the renovation and does everything you need after, you’re probably going to be pretty happy with the project (assuming no soul-killing problems like massive cost overruns or your contractor dropping an uber-expensive countertop just inches away from installation).

But the renovation projects that will make you happiest in the house are often the simplest. All of these renovations received a perfect Joy Score of 10, for example:

• Painting. Painting the whole interior of your home or even just one room can be very, very satisfying. There’s some evidence that color has an explicit impact on your mental state, and many people subjectively experience a boost in mood with the right paint colors. Plus, painting is like literally erasing mistakes. Throw in the relatively low cost, speed, and ease of this project and the happiness factor is obvious.

• Home office addition. This is all about solving problems. If you’re working from home and find yourself balancing your laptop on your knees in the bathroom, creating a dedicated office space can make you feel like you’re a professional.

• New or refinished wood floors. Like paint on the walls, that new floor shine feels like shedding the mistakes of the past (like the time you dragged the couch to a new spot and left deep gouges in your floor). Plus the durability of the final result—an improvement that will last years—is very satisfying.

• Closet renovation. Our closets are like a personal Portrait of Dorian Gray—the public-facing parts of our home might be neat and tidy while our closets are overflowing nightmares. Organizing always feels good, so it’s little wonder that creating order out of chaos in our closets makes us happy.

• Attic conversion. Conquering an area of your house currently ruled by spiders is always going to make you feel better. Not only do you turn a dark and slightly dangerous place (where you can easily misstep and fall through the ceiling) into a functional and useful space, you gain square footage and increase your home’s value.

• New insulation. This might be a surprising one, but not if you think about it: Not only does new or upgraded insulation improve your home’s energy efficiency, which feels good, it also makes your home more comfortable—which makes people want to spend more time there.

Happiness-inducing outdoor projects

Home renovations outside the house hit a little different, but access to outdoor spaces can have a huge positive impact on your overall happiness, so it’s not surprising that some of these projects score really high on the joy scale:

• In-ground pool. A pool makes people want to spend more time in their homes, and gives them a higher sense of enjoyment of the property. Not only can you cool off and get some good exercise in a pool, you can also throw some pretty epic parties around one.

• Landscape lighting. Another perfect Joy Score involves adding light to your outdoor spaces. Solid lighting design outside can turn a dark, foreboding yard into a beautiful spot you want to spend time in. It also increases a sense of security, since you can actually see what’s going on. Plus, it doesn’t have to be a complicated project—some solar lights, used thoughtfully, is all you need.

• New patio or deck. Like the pool, a new patio area or deck makes people want to use their outdoor spaces more, because they provide comfortable areas to relax. A new patio or deck turns a blank canvas into an entertaining space or a spot for decompression, cocktails, and enjoying the fresh air.

• Fire feature. Fire can have a positive psychological impact—it can be relaxing and meditative. It manages a Joy Score of 9.7 because it makes our outdoor spaces more inviting, gives them more “personality,” and increases the amount of time you can enjoy your yard, patio, or deck because it allows us to use those spaces even when it’s a little colder than we’d like.

There are a lot of reasons people take on roommates, but one of the most common is simple economics: Rent keeps rising, half of all tenants in the U.S. are paying more rent than they can actually afford, and they can defray those costs significantly by splitting the rent and other bills with someone else.

All of those benefits are predicated on one assumption, however: That your roommate will keep up their end of the bargain and, you know, actually pay their share of everything. When considering a roommate, you have to consider how it will impact you both personally and financially—and be prepared for the possibility that your roommate turns deadbeat and stops paying their rent or share of the bills. Whether it’s due to their own personal financial hardship or because you accidentally let a sociopath into your home, a deadbeat roommate can be a disaster. If your roommate stops paying their share, here’s what you can do about it.

Gather data showing they aren't paying rent

Your first step when dealing with this situation is to get the facts. If your roommate is on the lease as a cotenant, has a separate rental agreement, or if you at least have a roommate agreement of some sort in writing, review the document to see what their financial responsibilities are and what consequences, if any, are spelled out.

Next, establish evidence. Gather records of missed payments and your attempts to collect the overdue rent. If you haven’t sent your roommate any requests for overdue payments, start doing so in a way that leaves a trail—emails or written requests.

Keep paying the rent. If your roommate is a cotenant or otherwise officially on the lease you might assume they are responsible for their share of the rent, but most lease and rental agreements specify that all tenants are “jointly and severally” liable, which means the landlord can seek the full rent amount from any tenant. If you only pay your share of the rent, you can get into serious financial difficulties if the landlord goes after you for the balance.

If you don’t have any sort of written agreement (if your roommate isn’t officially listed anywhere on the lease), you can’t just kick them out. You can ask them to leave, sure, but most states grant homestead rights to anyone who has occupied a home for a period of time, meaning they often have a specific grace period before you can legally make them leave. Check the laws in your state so you know how you have to proceed.

Try a (mediated) negotiation with your roommate

Once you know where you stand in terms of a written agreement, your next step is to open a dialogue. Note the financial burden they’re putting on you, and see if you can’t come up with a way for them to contribute at least some of what they owe. Calling in a professional mediator can keep things civil and offer a neutral way to discuss your issues; many cities offer mediation services for landlords and tenants to resolve conflicts—for example, in New York, the New York Peace Institute offers mediation services. If your city doesn’t, you can contact the American Arbitration Association for mediator referrals in your area. You can also try to negotiate a portion of the back rent—sometimes half of what you’re owed is better than zero.

If talks go nowhere, you can warn your roommate that your next step is legal action. At this point you could decide to cut your losses and try to negotiate a timeline for them to leave the apartment, using the possibility of a lawsuit as motivation. You might never get your money back this way, but at least you can stem the bleeding and remove this source of stress from your life.

If necessary, exercise your legal options

If all else fails, you might need to sue your roommate to try and collect the money. This isn’t actually all that difficult, but you will need to prepare:

• Agreements. Have copies of all written agreements with your roommate—a lease, sublease, or roommate contract are best, but any sort of written agreement that spells out their financial responsibilities should be acquired. If your roommate is on a separate sublease or rental agreement, ask your landlord for a copy.

• Demand letter. Next, send your roommate a letter detailing what they owe, called a demand letter. This should lay out in detail all the payments they’ve missed and your attempts to collect, including dates when you asked for the rent or other bills to be paid. It should also include a formal request for the money by a certain date. Send the letter registered mail or through any service that provides proof of delivery.

• Sue. You can usually bring a suit like this in small claims court, which means you won’t necessarily need a lawyer. As long as you can prove that a) you had an agreement with the roommate wherein they paid rent and/or a share of the bills, b) they broke the agreement by not paying, and c) you suffered a financial loss as a result (because you had to pay all the rent), you have a very good chance of winning. This is where all the data you gathered comes in handy: If you can show a written agreement, prove that your roommate didn’t pay as agreed and that you tried to collect, prove that you gave them notice, and show that you paid the rent on their behalf, you’ll have a solid case.

Eviction is tough, but possible

If you go through all of these steps and your roommate still won’t pay—or move out—you can consider trying to evict them. This can be a much more difficult process, and you’ll likely need to hire a lawyer to navigate your state’s laws around tenancy and homestead rights. It’s not a fast process (it can take up to a year), so going this route can cost you a lot of money while your roommate remains in your home, still not paying rent.

If you have a good relationship with your landlord and the roommate is on the lease, you can enlist their help in an eviction process. Keep in mind that if you’ve violated your lease by having an off-book roommate, you might find yourself being evicted right alongside them, so proceed with caution.

And, no, you can’t engage in what’s known as a “self-help eviction,” doing things like changing the locks, throwing their stuff into the street, or making their room unlivable in some way. Even if their tenancy is off the books, these tactics are illegal and will just put you in a worse position.

In the end, if your roommate turns deadbeat, your best bet is to negotiate with them, then try to recover your money through small claims court. Whatever you decide to do, be patient, keep records, and think about how you’ll avoid this situation next time.

If you’re like most people, you probably want to feel like you’re doing your part to avoid a Mad Max-style future in which we’re all fighting in the desert over dwindling resources. You recycle your plastic, metal, and paper trash. You bring a reusable bag to the grocery store.

Those are all great—and meaningful—actions, but they're not as effective as you might hope, because we’re all trapped in a wasteful lifestyle. The average person wastes 168 pounds of perfectly edible food every year, for example, and generates close to 5 pounds of garbage daily. And lots of your recycling isn’t getting recycled, including less than 10% of all the plastics we use. The engine of the world economy is a “take-make-waste” model that encourages a disposable relationship with just about everything, and it’s difficult to break out of it.

But you can do more by embracing what’s known as the circular economy.

Reduce-reuse-recycle

A circular economy is a model focused on reducing waste as much as possible. There are a few basic principles:

• Reuse: If something is worn out or no longer functions as originally intended, seek out ways to keep it useful instead of simply trashing it.

• Recycle: If you can’t figure out a way to reuse something, find ways to recycle it.

• Repair: When things break, figure out how to fix them instead of simply replacing them with a new model.

• Remanufacture: If there’s no way to repair or repurpose something that’s broken, only then make a new version.

At the core of the concept is to transform “waste” into a new resource that can be used. Some of this is obviously only possible at a societal level, but there’s a lot you can do on your own to follow these principles and live a more circular lifestyle.

Reuse everything you can at home

One of the easiest ways to embrace a circular economy model in your life is to change how you use the resources in your home by finding ways to reuse as much as you can. Water that goes down your drains can be captured to water your lawn or garden, or to flush your toilet. Food scraps and other organic matter can be composted for use in your garden (or your landscaping, or in other people’s gardens).

This concept extends to your stuff. You can repair a lot of appliances and other items with a little bit of knowledge and some basic tools, instead of throwing them away and buying new. Finding new uses for tools, gadgets, or materials that you’ve accumulated or that no longer serve their original function is also a key strategy of the circular economy—even something simple like using an old toothbrush to help clean the bathroom tile, harvesting the remnants of old soap bars to make new ones, or using the lint from your dryer as kindling in your fireplace or fire pit helps.

If you’re remodeling or renovating, choosing materials like tiles made from recycled materials or reclaimed wood transforms your project into a circular one. (You can also recycle the scraps from your renovation instead of tossing them in a dumpster.)

Borrow instead of buying

In a consumerist society, it’s easy to just buy things that we need, even if we’re only going to need them for a single use. A more circular approach is to borrow or rent the things you need. This is can as simple as borrowing tools from your neighbor when you need them, or renting equipment from a hardware store instead of purchasing it, using it once, and leaving it to rot in your garage for a decade before deciding it’s too old and throwing it away.

Another approach is to seek out a local tool library, or organize a neighborhood tool share. In fact, you can get together with neighbors, friends, and family to share a lot of stuff, like clothing (especially all those children’s clothing your kids grow out of almost instantly). Another way to make your lifestyle more circular is to use tools like Freecycle or Buy Nothing Groups to give away stuff you no longer need and to grab used items that still have a lot of life left in them. This kind of circular borrowing and lending has another big advantage: You can save a lot of money over the years by borrowing or finding free, used items instead of buying new all the time.

Choose products wisely

You can’t always find what you need at your neighbor’s house or on Freecycle. Sometimes you’ll have no choice but to buy something new. In those cases, however, you can still support the circular economy by choosing companies that have embraced the concept too. For example:

• Patagonia has built its business model on a circular and sustainable concept, including its Worn Wear program, which allows you to trade in your used gear and buy used gear in turn.

• Ikea not only works to use recycled materials in its products, it also offers a Buyback & Resell program allowing you to sell your unneeded Ikea furniture back to the company, which then sells it used to someone else, wasting nothing.

• Adidas has launched a Three Loop Strategy, which aims to a) use recycled materials in its shoes, b) reuse those materials when the shoes wear out, and c) eventually switch to using natural and renewable resources in making its shoes in the first place.

• Flor has a robust recycling program for its rug tiles, making it easy to send old carpet tiles back to the company to be recycled and reused in a sustainable way.

• Mattel has its Playback program, which makes it easy for families to mail in their old, used plastic toys so the materials can be recycled and reclaimed.

Choosing companies that are engaged with a circular economic strategy takes a little research, but once you identify them you can make your own efforts a lot easier by working with these companies when buying something is your only option—and establishing your own personal circular economy is the most effective way to lead a sustainable and eco-friendly lifestyle. (And think of the money you'll save.)

Whether it’s inconsiderate neighbors or roommates or just bedroom windows facing a busy street, all it takes is a few sleepless nights to have you Googling the word soundproofing. It’s notoriously difficult (and expensive) to truly soundproof a room that wasn’t designed and constructed with that goal in mind, though. If you’re in a rental and can’t actually renovate (or you just don’t want to spend the money and time to tear out walls), the situation might seem hopeless—but there are actually a lot of products you can buy that can greatly reduce the amount of noise pollution in your bedroom or other areas of the home. Here are your best options when it comes to a no-renovation soundproofing plan.

Temporary panels

One of the fundamental tools of soundproofing is the foam acoustic panel. While these are used to dampen echoes and sound within a room, they can also be very effective at dampening sound coming from exterior sources. If you have a specific wall or window that is transmitting noise (a shared wall with a roommate, or a window facing a loud street, for example), slapping some acoustic panels on the wall or window can help tremendously.

They sell self-adhesive acoustic panels that are easy to mount, but these can cause issues when you try to remove them, as the adhesive can take some paint or other finish off the walls and leave residue on window glass. An alternative solution is to buy some non-adhesive panels and use Command Strips to mount them. This way, when it’s time to get that security deposit back, you won’t have to worry about damaging walls and windows.

Window inserts

For windows, a pricier but more effective option would be a custom window insert, like the ones from Acoustical Solutions or Indow. These companies take your window measurements and construct a panel that fits snugly into your window jamb from the inside, improving the sound-blocking of the window without blocking the light. These sometimes do require some light drilling to install, but they’re 100% removable and can be very effective in reducing the noise entering a room through the windows—but they’re also much more expensive than foam panels; Indow’s inserts average about $372, for example.

Acoustic curtains and blankets

Another option for soundproofing a window or door is an acoustic curtain or blanket that covers them. These are essentially heavy acoustic materials sewn inside a fabric casing and can typically be mounted on top of the window or door and rolled up or down. When rolled down, they usually have a Velcro or magnetic seal around the edge to make them tight against noise intrusion.

Ikea makes the Gunnlaug sound absorbing curtain, which is attractive and relatively affordable, for example, and you can also buy insulated door curtains that install over your doors to block noise and drafts (you’ll get better sound-blocking from the slightly more expensive Door Buddy or similar products from soundproofing supply companies). You can also have custom-made acoustic curtains for both windows and doors that are a bit easier to live with because they roll up easily when you’re not using them.

You can also try adding weather stripping to interior doors; these are self-adhesive strips that help seal the door tight when closed, which can go a long way toward reducing noise intrusion. As with all adhesives, removing this might be a concern when you move out, although it might not be noticeable if installed properly.

Rug pads

A final strategy to quiet down your living space without tearing stuff up is to add floor coverings. A thick rug can help block sound in both directions, and adding a rug pad with acoustic properties like this one from RugPadUSA can augment that effect. Rug pads and thick carpets won’t eliminate sound drifting up from below, but they can definitely muffle it, especially if you cover most or all of your floor space.

Noise is no joke—it can have a real negative effect on your health and happiness. Spending a little to make your living space as quiet as possible without risking your security deposit will be some of the best money you’ve ever spent.

Renting a home has never been more challenging. Rents are soaring, there simply aren’t enough apartments and houses to rent, and many people have learned the true impact of inflation in recent years as they’ve seen higher wages buy less stuff—including housing.

All of these factors combine to drive up the rate of evictions, too, as people struggle to afford their homes or find affordable alternatives. If a tenant stops paying rent or breaks their lease in other ways, the property owner has the legal right to begin the eviction process—and when most people hear the word eviction, they panic. After all, the landlord owns the place. They can kick you out if they want to.

That said, they have to follow certain rules. It’s called an eviction process for a reason—landlords are generally required to go to court, obtain an eviction order, and then respect the rights of their tenants. Just because you’re behind on your rent doesn’t mean you’ve waived your fundamental rights. But evictions can cost money in legal fees, and can take anywhere from a few weeks to more than a year to complete, which drives some landlords to try what’s called a “self-help” eviction.

Self-help evictions

A “self-help” eviction is when a landlord bypasses the legal system and tries to get you to leave the apartment by making your life miserable. Common self-help eviction tactics include:

• Changing the locks (or removing the door entirely)

• Removing a renter’s property from the unit

• Refusing to make repairs

• Making verbal or written threats

• Turning off utilities

Some forms of self-help eviction are more subtle. For example, a lack of maintenance that degrades the experience of living there without crossing over into making the place uninhabitable, or a general campaign of harassment (constant visits, intimidation tactics, using adjoining properties for activities that create noise issues) can be used to “encourage” a tenant to vacate.

Some tenants assume their landlords are allowed to do these things, or that there’s no recourse to fight back, but that’s not true. Self-help evictions are usually illegal for two basic reasons:

1. They violate the right of due process that all American citizens enjoy.

2. They threaten the health and safety of the tenant. Landlords have a responsibility to maintain a “habitable” environment for their tenants—meaning the home must provide the basics for secure, safe shelter. Turning off the water, for example, makes the apartment or house uninhabitable, and thus is an illegal tactic.

Almost every state in the country has an explicit law against self-help evictions. Those that don’t have a specific statute (like West Virginia) still make it clear that self-help evictions are not generally legal. No matter how behind you are on rent or what other disputes you have with your landlord, if they want you out, they have to go to court and follow the legal eviction process.

What to do if your landlord is harassing you

If your landlord is trying to harass you out of your home, there’s only one weapon at your disposal: You can sue.

In most states, laws explicitly state the damages a tenant can get if they successfully sue their landlord for a self-help eviction. In New York, for example, a tenant can be awarded three times their actual damages (a value determined by the court to represent what the tenant lost in monetary terms due to the landlord’s actions). There can also be separate penalties for the landlord ranging from $1,000 to $10,000. Some states don’t have specific damages in their laws and leave it up to the court to determine, but almost all states impose damages and penalties of some kind on landlords that attempt self-help evictions. Some states will also force landlords who lose the case to pay the tenant’s legal bills, and sometimes even order that the tenant be allowed to remain in the home.

First, become familiar with your state’s laws surrounding evictions and self-help evictions. If your landlord has threatened you or prevented you from accessing your home by changing the locks or physically barring you, your first step is to call the police, who can instruct the landlord to cease the illegal activity and will provide you with a police report. You should also document anything you can that will support your case.

Next, hire an attorney. If you can’t afford to do so, contact your state’s legal aid office or tenant legal services office, if one exists. If not, there are some national resources you can reach out to. These entities can provide form letters that you can send (via certified mail) to your landlord demanding they stop their illegal practices, and put you in touch with an attorney who can advise and represent you if you decide to sue.

If you own a home these days you’re increasingly lucky in a lot of ways. If you bought before the recent interest rate hikes, you’re probably sitting on a nice, low rate that makes current buyers seethe with jealousy. And considering that there’s a lack of available homes to buy (the housing deficit in the U.S. is estimated to remain between 1-2 million for the foreseeable future), your property is worth more and more every day.

This explains a common experience among homeowners: The unsolicited call, text, or piece of mail offering to buy your house even though it isn’t listed for sale. A lot of homeowners are surprised when these start rolling in, because they assume you have to officially list your house to sell it—but of course you can sell your home at any time, to anyone, for any price (well, your lender might have something to say about the price, but as long as you can pay off your mortgage you can do what you want).

If you have no plans to sell your home but the convenience of a buyer just showing up and handing you a bag of cash for the place is appealing, however, you should think twice: There are three big reasons you should never respond to an unsolicited offer on your house.

Scams

Reason number one to ignore unsolicited real estate offers: They might be scams. Pretty much any time someone contacts you with an offer that seems too easy or too profitable to be true, it is. A few ways scammers utilize cold calling like this include:

• Up-front fees. They’ll tell you that they have a nice cash offer on your house, but you have to pay some administrative fees to get the ball rolling. No legitimate real estate professional will ask you for an up-front fee.

• Bank details. Some scammers are in it for your bank details, which they tell you they need in order to do a wire transfer. Instead, of course, they use the information to drain your accounts.

• Title. Sometimes the scammers lure you in with a “cash offer” that turns out to be an offer to sell your house on your behalf—and then they ask you to sign over the title to them to facilitate the process. They then legally own your home, and can do whatever they want with it.

It’s always hard to tell if an unsolicited call is a scam—so your best bet is to just ignore them.

Lowball offers

Most unsolicited real estate offers aren’t outright scams—but that doesn’t mean they’re a good idea. One big reason is simple: An unsolicited offer is usually going to be a lowball offer that won’t get you the most money for your property. That’s because these offers come from three main groups of people:

• Wholesalers. Wholesalers enter into purchase contracts on properties, then turn around and sell the house to a third party. Sometimes they already have a buyer for your home, sometimes they just think finding one will be easy. In either case, they’re going to lowball you on the sale price because they need to make a profit. If your home can get $250,000 on the market, they will offer you $200,000 and hope to make $50k in profit. They hope that the convenience of getting an unsolicited offer will tempt you into making an “easy” sale.

• Flippers. You’re probably familiar with the concept of house-flipping, where investors buy run-down properties for cheap, renovate them quickly, and sell them before they get too deep into mortgage payments. You might assume flippers always target foreclosures, but they also do cold-call outreach if your neighborhood is desirable—and it’s the nature of their business to lowball you on the price in order to maximize their profits.

• Individual buyers. Sometimes that unsolicited offer comes from someone who legitimately wants to buy your house for themselves. Homes are expensive these days—the median home price is about $413,000—so some folks try to beat the market by making unsolicited lowball offers in the hope that the current owner just jumps at it instead of doing their due diligence.

  Even if the buyer isn’t trying to scam you—and even if they make a fair offer on the property—you still might lose out because the unsolicited offer prevents any bidding wars that might drive up the price of your home and increase your profit on the sale. If an unsolicited offer makes you decide to sell your home, you’ll probably make more money if you list it.

Sketchy agents

A third reason to ignore all unsolicited real estate calls is because responding to one forces you to work with someone you know nothing about. They may not be licensed real estate professionals at all, and might encourage you not to involve a real estate pro in order to avoid their fees, or pressure you to work with their team to close the sale. In other words, they’ll appeal to your greed.

Bypassing a real estate agent can save you some money, but it also leaves you without their expert guidance and knowledge of both the market and the law—and leaves you reliant on some rando who called you out of the blue for your information. If the unexpected offer is appealing, you should seek the advice of a professional and research the entity making the offer to understand if they’re on the up-and-up or sketchy AF.

If an unsolicited call about selling your house makes you think it might be the right move, you’ll almost always do better by going through the usual process of selling your home. An unsolicited offer indicates your home is valuable, so you’ll probably get a better offer from the open market, and working with a legit real estate agent who understands your market will also probably maximize your profit even when fees are taken into consideration. Just like everything in life, the easy route is rarely the best one.

No one ever brags about their roof. We all have know people who actually send you photos of their perfectly manicured garden, or someone who speakings lovingly of their new kitchen backsplash. But the roof? No one thinks about their roof—until it starts leaking.

Roof leaks always happen at the least opportune moment—like, when it’s actively pouring out. If you experience the horror of water dripping from places water’s not supposed to drip from, hopefully you have a roofer in your contacts and can get them over for an inspection pronto. But before you make that call, don’t waste any time—you’ve got some roof triage to do if you want to limit the damage from a roof leak.

Clear and contain

Your first priority is preventing damage. This is the moment to spring into action:

• Move stuff out of the way. Any furniture, electronics, or rugs should be immediately removed from the area where the water is dripping.

• Cover the stuff you can’t move, like a big, heavy couch or any built-in furniture. Any kind of plastic sheeting will do in a pinch. If the water leak is significant, you might also place the furniture legs in plastic containers or raise it up on risers if you’re unable to move it.

• Contain the water—place a bucket underneath the stream and mop up the floor to prevent the water from soaking into the flooring. If the water leak is causing your ceiling or wall to bulge like a balloon, pop the bulge to let the water drain; otherwise, the water will just slowly soak into areas far away from the leak.

Consider keeping a roof leak diverter (or two) in storage. These tarp-like contraptions attach to the ceiling and divert the water into a hose that can be run to a drain. This way you don’t have to worry about emptying a bucket while keeping your floors dry.

Pig Rectangular Roof Leak Diverter

$155.51 at Walmart

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Roof triage

Once you’ve restored order to the interior of your house, it’s time to see if you can put a temporary fix into place.

Start in the attic, if you have one. You might see the source of your leak immediately, or you might have to go hunting for it. Bring a flashlight and look for damp spots, slow seeping water, or literal holes in your roof. If you see obvious damage, you can try patching it from the inside with some roof cement or roofing tape, but keep in mind that while a successful interior patch might spare the inside of your house from further damage, the leak in your roof will still be there and will require repair.

If you don’t have an attic or you can’t see any obvious leaks from inside, your next step might be to get up on your roof. This is where you should be very careful—it’s a bad idea to head up onto your roof during a rainstorm. Wait for the storm to pass, and follow best safety practices at all times when you do go up there. When you do get up on your roof, it’s time for some detective work:

• Remember that water flows, so the source of your leak might not be directly above or even near the spot where the water came out inside your house.

• First, look for obvious damage: Missing or visually damaged shingles, flashing that has pulled away, stains or sunken areas, tears or cracks in the roof membrane.

• If you don’t see anything immediately obvious, look at the most common problem areas: places where vent pipes emerge from the roof, where two planes meet, flashing around chimneys or skylights, and roof valleys.

Once you’ve identified one or more potential sources of the leak, you can apply some roof cement (make sure it’s explicitly for use in wet conditions if the roof is still damp or if it’s lightly raining) or even some Flex Paste. If you’re dealing with discrete damage to your roof, this might stop the leak until you can have a proper repair done.

If you can’t identify a specific area to patch (or as an added layer of protection if you do patch), you can throw a tarp over the area where you suspect the leak is. The tarp should be at least six millimeters thick, and you’ll need enough of it to extend several feet around the leaking area. In a pinch, you can just weigh the tarp down with some lumber, but ideally you would secure the tarp to your roof using roofing nails.

Document

Finally, document the damage, especially if you have an insurance policy that includes roof coverage. If you wait until after the repairs are done, you might find your insurer reluctant to pay out on the claim. A few quick photos of the inside and outside as well as any damaged furniture or electronics will go a long way toward making that claim go smoothly. Plus, when you contact a licensed roofer about getting your roof repaired or replaced, you can send them the photos so they can determine the scale of the problem.

If you’re a book fiend and love reading, you probably accumulate books at an alarming rate. They overflow your bookshelves and start stacking up on the floor, on tables, in just about every nook and cranny of your home no matter how weird or inappropriate. Books stacked on the toilet tank? Sure, why not.

You might be able to handle this by buying more bookcases—until you have literally crammed as many bookcases into your space as the laws of physics will allow. And yet I can guarantee that even when you have filled every possible space in your house with books you will continue to buy more books. Such is the nature of this disease. If that describes you, don’t start purging your books just yet. There are ways to double the book capacity of the bookshelves you already have.

Risers

One of the easiest and most impactful ways of increasing your bookshelf capacity is to add some risers at the back of every shelf. This instantly and literally doubles the amount of books you can cram onto each shelf, as seen below. Essentially you’re creating a slightly raised second shelf, sort of like a display in a store. Then you can line up a whole second row of books in the back—they won’t be quite so accessible, so it’s best to put the books you don’t grab every day back there, but the extra space is magical.

You can do this the DIY route easily by using unneeded shoeboxes or egg cartons—just line them up in the back and cut them to fit. Or you can make your own—if you’re moderately handy with woodworking, a few pieces of wood will make a sturdy riser with very little effort. Or you can buy risers made of acrylic, like these—they come in a variety of lengths, so you can mix and match to accommodate the width of your shelves.

2 Pack Clear Acrylic Riser

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The riser solution works best with paperback books; hardcovers are larger and probably can’t be doubled up like this on standard shelves. If you have adjustable shelves, you might be able to raise the height of your shelves to make this work with hardcovers and larger books, but that will reduce the space for the other shelves so it might be a wash—you’ll have to do some measuring to see if it’s going to work.

Palette holders

One TikTok user shared a brilliant solution for increasing your bookshelf capacity: Makeup palette organizers, like this one, or this one. By filling these with books, you can horizontally stack your books and easily pull them out when you want to browse your collection—six or seven books deep, typically. The holders are easy to pull out, and you can mix them in with some traditionally vertically-stacked books for a more attractive look—or use as many as you can to get as many books as possible in there.

YESBAY Eyeshadow Palette Makeup Organizer

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Additional shelves

A basic but effective way to increase your bookshelf capacity is to add one or more shelves to the unit. You probably won’t double your capacity this way, but it’s an easy, cheap way to get more books in there. If your bookcase has pre-drilled holes for shelves, this is pretty easy:

1. Sort your books. First, organize your books by height.

2. Organize the shelves. Place your shelves so that each one has exactly enough height to fit a specific grouping of books.

Your goal is to be as efficient as possible, opening up enough space in the case for at least one more shelf. You can get standard-width (30-inch) shelves from Ikea individually that will match up well with most finishes (don’t forget to get some extra support pegs if you need them).

If your bookcase doesn’t have pre-drilled holes you’ll have to drill your own, of course. You can buy a shelf-pin jig that can make this a lot easier (and neater). And you can save a small amount of money by buying wood and cutting and finishing it yourself, of course, though you’ll pay in time and sweat equity.

Stacking horizontally

Finally, if you don’t want to physically transform your shelves, you can just stack your books horizontally. If you organize your books carefully, horizontal stacking will generally squeeze a few more books onto your shelves because you can use all the vertical space. You can probably put two layers of books on each shelf—although the back layer will be hidden and difficult to access. This won’t yield a ton of extra space, but it might be worthwhile if you just need to cram a few more tomes on those shelves.

Considering the expense and trouble involved in buying a home, it’s kind of amazing that most people only perform cursory research into the property. They might stop by a few times to walk around; they will probably hire an inspector to take a slightly more in-depth look (though most home inspections aren’t exactly what you might call exhaustive), and rely on a title search as part of the lender’s normal due diligence. Other than that, the place you’re about to drop a small fortune on is probably a bit of a mystery box.

For example: That deck in the back, that new second bathroom the Realtor wouldn’t stop mentioning, that new swimming pool—were permits pulled for those projects? Or was that work done by the owner themselves on the down-low? A home inspector, no matter how thorough, won’t be able to tell if a permit was pulled just by looking at the work (though DIY-quality work might alert them to the possibility that the project didn't have a permit). And you need to know, because un-permitted work on that house will become your problem if something goes wonky with it, and can have an impact on the future value of the house.

Necessary permits

Most local authorities require permits for a range of major renovations to a home. The list of projects that typically require permits includes major changes like additions, adding pools, changing the roofline, or major electrical and plumbing work. A permit can be expensive and time-consuming, but it ensures that the work will be done according to local building codes because it triggers an inspection process and updates the home’s valuation for tax purposes. In other words, pulling a permit keeps the work on the up and up.

But some people avoid pulling permits for the same reasons: They don’t want to spend the extra time and money, they don’t want to be bothered with inspections (possibly because they’re cutting corners and not doing the work properly), and they don’t want their property taxes to go up because they remodeled their kitchen. It’s not too difficult to get away without getting a permit, especially if the work isn’t easily seen from the street.

If you buy a house with a lot of un-permitted improvements, all of those potential problems become your potential problems. And those problems can be major:

• Physical danger stemming from poor work – e.g., electrical fires from substandard wiring, gas leaks from DIY water heater installations, a collapsed deck due to improper construction

• Fines and expense if the work is discovered. You may be required to tear out un-permitted wiring, for example, and have it redone at your expense—and it will be your responsibility as the current property owner, even if you had nothing to do with the original work.

• Tax penalties if the home’s assessment should have increased after a major improvement.

• Insurance may deny any claims involving work done without proper permits and inspections, so if disaster strikes ,you might find yourself paying for repairs out of pocket.

Even if the work was done to a very high standard and you have no problems or complaints, un-permitted work can come back to haunt you.

Permit history

Luckily, it’s generally not hard to look up the permit history of a property. Here are the basic steps you should take:

• Ask the current owner. If the current owner claims all the work on the house was permitted, they should be able to supply you with the permit paperwork and inspection information.

• Contact the local construction office. Most municipalities have public records available online. You may have to create an account to access them, but then you should be able to conduct a search on the address and see all the permits that were pulled. Check these against any work you see that should have required a permit, or anything that your home inspector flagged as suspicious. If there’s no online portal, you might need to go to the office in person to request the records.

• Square footage. Compare the official square footage on file for the home with the square footage you actually see. Many municipal offices can give you this information; if not, sites like Property Shark may be able to supply it. If there’s a drastic difference—say there’s 500 more square feet in the house than listed in official records—it might mean an addition that wasn’t permitted.

Next steps

If you discover un-permitted work before buying the house, you have a few options:

• Have the current owner fix the problems: They may be able to retroactively pull permits if they pay a fine and arrange for an inspection. If the local authorities require removal or replacement of the work, they can pay to have it done.

• Ask for a price reduction. You can estimate the costs of pulling retroactive permits yourself and the costs of re-doing the work or removing un-permitted work, and ask the seller to reduce the sale price to compensate you, or even pay you a cash amount to cover the costs.

Finally, of course, you can just walk away: If a house has a lot of un-permitted work it might be more trouble than it’s worth—and if the sellers are already covering up their actions, you might not be able to trust them anyway.

As most of us learn once we become adults, money has a weird habit of vanishing almost magically. We employ a wide range of psychological tricks to stop ourselves from just YOLOing that cash out into the universe, and sometimes those tricks actually work and we manage to put together a tidy sum in a savings account. The average American, in fact, has more than $60,000 in savings (not counting retirement accounts)—although that number is a little deceptive, as the median average amount of savings is just $8,000, meaning half of Americans have less than $8,000 in savings. If you’re like most Americans, though, eight grand (or even significantly less than eight grand) is still a lot of money—and it’s not easy to save it.

That’s why sudden, large expenses are so tragic—you’ve put so much effort into building up your savings, and now a roof repair, car repair, or medical bill is going to wipe all those savings away. It can be demoralizing to see your savings vanish into the void—plus, if you have to use everything you have to pay a big bill, you're left with no emergency fund. Luckily, if you have savings there’s another option worth considering: a passbook loan.

Borrowing from yourself

A passbook loan (aka a savings pledged loan) is a loan secured by your own money. With a passbook loan, your bank freezes the portion of money you’re borrowing, but leaves it in your savings account. Then you pay the loan back as with any other loan, and as you do so the bank releases your savings back to you. You’re essentially paying to borrow money from yourself.

For example, let’s say you have $5,000 in your savings account, and you need to repair your roof (average cost: $1,150). You can take the money from savings and pay the repair bill, but then you would simply lose that money. Or you could charge the repair to a credit card and keep your savings intact—but wind up paying high interest on the loan. Instead, you can take out a passbook loan. The bank freezes $1,150 of your savings, and as you pay the loan back that money becomes accessible again.

Benefits

Borrowing from yourself—and paying for the privilege—might not seem like such a hack at first blush. If you simply pay the bill from your savings, you avoid paying interest on top of it. But there are several reasons why a passbook loan can make a lot of sense:

• You keep your savings. It’s not easy building up savings. If you have a nice little nest egg, depleting it to pay a bill is depressing—and there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to save that amount ever again.

• The interest is low. Because a passbook loan is secured against the money you already have in your account, you typically get a really great interest rate—often as low as 2%. It will definitely be cheaper than a personal loan or a credit card (unless you can get a 0% deal, although those have their drawbacks as well).

• The paperwork is minimal. Because you’re a customer of the bank, passbook loans are usually easy to arrange, without all the fees and red tape that personal loans incur.

• You're still earning interest. The money you borrow is frozen in your account, meaning you can’t access it until you pay back the loan. But it will still earn interest, which helps to both keep your savings plan on track and defray the overall cost of the loan—at least you’ll be getting some money back.

• You build credit. If you have a poor credit score, a passbook loan is a good way to build your credit because it is similar to a secured credit card. Your credit score won’t matter because you’re securing the loan with money the bank already has, so there’s zero risk to them, but paying it back on time will probably improve your credit score. Not all banks report passbook loans to credit bureaus, though, so this is something you should check on before assuming anything.

If you can’t get a loan from other sources because of your credit history, a passbook loan might be your best—and possibly only—option to avoid draining your savings to cover an unexpected expense.

Setting up a passbook loan is pretty simple. All you need is a savings account or certificate of deposit (CD) account with sufficient funds to cover the loan amount. Most banks will loan you up to 90% (or even 100%) of your account balance as a passbook loan, and often they have flexible payback terms that allow for pre-payment, so you can get the loan taken care of as quickly as possible.

Drawbacks

A passbook loan might not be ideal for everyone. There are some downsides to consider:

• The amount of money you can borrow is limited by how much you have in a savings account or CD. If you don’t have enough in your savings account to secure a loan of the required amount, you will need to look for other loan options.

• If you borrow a big portion of your savings, you lose access to that money. If another emergency expense comes up you won’t be able to use your savings to pay it, which might push you into an additional (and possibly more predatory) loan.

• If you default on the loan, you don’t just suffer a lower credit score and a growing debt—you will literally lose the savings you used to secure the loan.

• Even though interest rates on passbook loans are low, it will still cost more than simply paying the bill with your savings.

Every home comes with maintenance, repairs, and surprising challenges, which is why most of us already have the obvious essentials on hand—fire extinguishers, flashlights, basic tools, and the like. But there are a several items you might not think of as a “home essential” that are going to prove very useful to you one day. Here are the unexpected home essentials you’re going to be glad to have on hand.

Traffic cones

The first time a contractor needs to park on your street, or your in-laws are visiting and they like to park right in front of your house or you have a broken sidewalk that could lead to a messy personal injury lawsuit, you’re going to want traffic cones. Having a few of these babies out in your shed or down in your basement will make your life a lot easier if you need to block off areas or warn pedestrians or drivers—or just save your parking spot when you run to the store for.

Endoscope

It sounds fancy, but an endoscope tool is just a small camera at the end of a flexible wire. Having one means you’ll be able to see inside small, closed-off spaces without tearing holes in your walls or floors, you’ll be able to discover the reason your kitchen sink won’t drain properly, where that screw wound up when you dropped it, and what is making that disturbing scratching noise in your bedroom wall. There are a lot of affordable ones that work with your phone as a screen, and you’ll be glad you have it.

Rechargeable lighter

Blackouts are going to happen, and pilot lights are going to go out. Rather than relying on wooden matches you forget to restock (and that can go bad over time if stored improperly) or a traditional fueled lighter that you can forget to refuel, a rechargeable lighter needs no fuel and has a flexible neck enabling you to get it into tight spots.

Critter catchers

You might feel like spiders and insects belong outside, but they do manage to find their way in. Instead of smashing them or trying to catch-and-release with a glass or a paper plate, the Critter Catcher will help you scoop them up and deposit them back outside (without ever having to get too close).

Zip ties

Once you own them, you will use zip ties constantly. You’ll use them to tie stuff together, to tie stuff down, to make temporary repairs, and a dozen other ways. The simplicity, relative durability, and cheapness of zip ties makes them something everyone should have on hand in their home.

Mover’s dolly

Whether it’s a couch, a washing machine, or any other large, heavy, bulky object or appliance, you need a mover’s dolly. Hang it in the garage and forget about it, and then when you need to transport your old fridge to the curb you can glide it out there with ease, or when you decide the living room needs to be totally re-arranged to encourage positive energy flows, you won’t break your back trying to move every piece of furniture by lifting it.

Spacekeeper folding hand truck

When not in use, this moving dolly can be folded up flat to be stored.

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Museum putty

If you’ve ever used that blue gunk to put a poster up on the wall of your dorm room or rental, you know the fundamental nature of Museum Putty. But this stuff is incredibly useful, because you can use it to ensure that nothing ever slips off a shelf. Anything you want to display can be secured in place, and no amount of roughhousing children, clumsy guests, or earthquakes will knock it off. You can also use it to stabilize the shelves themselves if they wobble or rattle on their supports. It won’t damage surfaces and comes right off when you need it to.

USB outlets

We've got so many devices to charge, and all those cords and dongles need somewhere to go—installing USB outlets throughout your home will make your life easier. You won’t have to hunt around for the right adapter, you won’t have things plugged into your laptop all the time, and you’ll be able to plug in immediately if your phone or tablet (or anything else USB-powered) gets a low-battery warning. And they are easy to install even if you have no experience with electricity.

Magnetic pickups

If you've ever dropped (and subsequently lost) a tiny screw or nail into a narrow opening, you need a magnetic pick-up tool like this one. Never lose a screw, bolt, or other tiny metal object again—even if it goes down your bathroom drain.

Where once it was standard to have just one bathroom in our homes, the number of bathrooms considered normal has steadily grown over the years, and the majority of new-build homes have at least two bathrooms these days. It makes sense: Why not have a private bathroom just for you and a second bathroom (or two) for the kids or guests?

This often leads us to wish for more bathrooms, for a lot of reasons: If you only have one, adding an en-suite bath feels luxurious, and having a dedicated guest bath makes your home feel more inviting. If you’re going to have a long-term guest (like a parent or close friend living with you for a while) or have frequent long-term visitors, a bathroom just for them almost feels essential. And if you plan to renovate your one existing bathroom, you might hesitate because you don’t want to run across the street to use a public restroom in your local coffee shop every day.

But adding bathrooms is expensive—it costs $90,000 on average to add a bathroom. Not to mention the non-monetary costs of time, inconvenience, and disruption. If all you need is a functioning bathroom, however, you can actually add one to just about any spot in your home for much less, without the need for plumbing, permits, or months of your life. All you need is a room. Here’s how to add a bathroom without plumbing.

How to choose the best space

First, think about where your bathroom should be. You’re not limited by the location of water or sewer lines, because you won’t need either one. A few ideas include:

• Closets. If your goal is to have an ersatz en suite bathroom, a moderately-sized closet can work. You’ll need to measure out all the stuff you’ll be cramming in there, of course, but a general rule of thumb is 15 square feet for a half-bath concept, and 30 for a three-part bath. Those numbers assume you need to pull permits and pass inspection, and thus incorporate typical minimum spacing for drains and such, so you can likely go a little smaller.

• Spare rooms. If you have a bedroom you’re not really using, or a flex space that was never defined, it can become a more spacious bathroom. Ideally, of course, you’d want a door—though you could always add an adjustable wall with a door to turn a bonus space or even a large landing into an additional bathroom.

A big consideration is water access. You don’t need to have water, drain, and sewer lines run—but if you want a shower in the room, it’s a lot easier if you can position it near a functioning water line like an existing bathroom or a washer hookup. If that’s not possible, you still have options, however.

The gear you'll need for a bathroom without plumbing

Here’s what you need:

• A dry-flush toilet. The most important thing to have in a bathroom is a place for you or your guests to relieve themselves. Composting toilets don’t require plumbing or a drain, but they do require a vent pipe, which would require cutting through a wall or roof. A better option is a battery-powered dry-flush toilet like this one. It uses a vacuum-sealed mylar bagging system, and can be operated literally anywhere.

• A portable sink. Portable sinks can look just like regular vanities, but have two tanks inside the cabinet—one holding fresh, clean water, one holding the drained-off gray water after use. They usually require a plug to run a pump for the faucet, as well. All you need to do is dump the gray water and fill up the fresh water tank as needed.

• A portable shower. To really go for it, adding a shower to your unplumbed bathroom is the real power move. The Shower AnyPlace portable indoor shower hooks up to any faucet and pumps the gray water to any drain using a hose, which makes it a great choice if your bathroom location is near another bathroom or a laundry area, or even a kitchen or outdoor space. The EMS Portable Shower from Freedom Showers operates on a similar design.

  If you want to be a little more luxurious, you could also consider adding a portable tub like this one, as long as you can run the drain hose to an appropriate spot and can easily get hot water to it.

Whether you need it for a few weeks to accommodate visitors or a renovation, or want the convenience of an extra bathroom without the cost, it’s a viable option—and since nothing is permanently installed, you can always remove it later. For just a few thousand bucks, you can have a usable bathroom in just about any room in your house, without any construction or plumbing needed.

If you own a house with some trees on the property, you probably don’t think about them much unless they require maintenance—and in those moments you think of them as expenses. Sure, those trees have value due to their natural beauty and shade (or possibly the fruit they grow), but few people think about the trees in their yards in terms of having a monetary value.

But you should, because trees on your property actually do have value—and that value is often substantial. First of all, maintained trees in good condition add property value in general—as much as 15%. But some species of tree can be worth a lot of cash if they’ve been allowed to grow to enormous proportions in your yard—a nondescript elm tree with a 20-inch trunk, for example, might be worth as much as $30,000. And some trees have been appraised for more than six figures. Some trees are so valuable poachers actually invade people’s property to steal them.

If you’re currently peering out your window at the trees in your yard and wondering if you’re sitting on some sort of woody goldmine, here’s how to find out the tree value on your property.

Online calculators

The simplest way to get an idea of how much your trees might be worth is to use an online calculator like this one, which uses the USDA Forest Service’s i-Tree software, or the slightly simpler ones here. These calculators rely on you to input accurate information, so you might need to sleuth out the species of your tree and do some measurements and observations in order to get a truly accurate valuation.

It’s important to note that these tools offer a sense of the value your trees are adding to your property—by providing shade, cleaning the air, removing carbon, and cooling your home. If the calculator says your tree is worth $15,000, you probably can’t just sell it for $15,000, or add that amount to your home’s listing price when you sell your house. But these tools do offer a starting point for valuing your tree.

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Tree appraisal

If you want to get a more accurate value for your tree, you’ll need to hire an arborist to conduct an appraisal, which is a real, actual thing with a lot of science behind it. You can find a consulting arborist at the American Society of Consulting Arborists (ASCA) website.

Tree appraisals are mostly used to determine insurance values in case your trees are damaged, destroyed, or improperly removed from your property and you need to make a claim. But you can sell a tree from your yard if the tree is valuable enough, and if you can find a nursery or other entity interested in buying it. And if you have a lot of hardwood trees on your property, you can find companies like Sell Your Trees that will pay you for them, then come and remove them at their own expense (making an appraisal even more important so you know you’re getting fair value for your trees). If your trees are valuable and mature (meaning they’re fully grown and not a sapling, like the trees you buy at a nursery), you can also sell them on an online marketplace like Re-Tree, which can also give you an idea of how much that specific tree is worth.

The most valuable and easiest to sell trees (based on Re-Tree’s catalog) include:

• Japanese Maple. These majestic and colorful trees can sell for $400 to more than $8,000 depending on health, maturity, and specific type.

• Flowering dogwood. Whether pink or white, these beautiful trees can be worth as much as $4,500.

• Tricolor beech. This ornamental tree changes colors with the seasons, making it a beautiful addition to any landscaping project, and can sell for as much as $8,000.

• Gingko. These slow-growing trees are terrific shade trees, and can sell for $5,000 to $6,000 each.

• Black Walnut. The wood of the Black Walnut is valuable for furniture makers, and can sell for as much as $2,500.

Even if the trees in your yard aren’t super unique and rare, you can still often sell them for a few hundred bucks if they’re healthy and mature. If you’re looking to monetize your trees, it’s worth having them appraised and seeing what the market will bear.

Chances are you have a lot of stuff in your house. Possibly also in a storage unit. And maybe at your parents’ house, your ex’s place, and liberally scattered throughout the globe. We all accumulate a ton of things as we go through life—it’s estimated that the average home has about 300,000 things in it, if you count all the small stuff like that bowl of paper clips on your desk.

Every now and then you get the idea to clean it all out and maybe sell some of it, to free yourself of all that clutter while making a tidy profit on stuff you don’t even use any more. If that’s the mode you’re in right now, consider parting out some of your stuff instead of just selling it whole, because you can potentially make a lot more money that way.

What is parting out?

“Parting out” is the process of disassembling something and selling the individual parts, which often have a distinct value all their own. If someone has an old car that won’t run because it needs a replacement part, they probably don’t want to buy an entire replacement car when they could just buy the part they need—and they’re often willing to pay a premium for the convenience.

Parting out your possessions isn’t always easy—it takes time, effort, and some knowledge to do it effectively (not to mention specific tools, in many cases). But if you’ve got a bunch of unused stuff lying around, look into what might be worth parting out instead of just dumping on eBay as-is. You can part out almost anything—if it has parts, there’s a decent chance someone, somewhere is looking for them—but not everything is going to be worth your time and effort unless you’re going to spin it up into a business. For example, parting out vacuum cleaners can be profitable, but also requires a lot of work, and parting out your old vacuum when it stops working won’t necessarily be worth it.

An easy way to tell if the parts in your junk are worth something is to pop into eBay and search around there—this can also give you an idea of the prices you can charge for parts, and whether the potential profit is worth your time. There are also often specific forums or marketplaces online for different parts, so it’s worth googling those as well to see if your parts are in demand.

Vehicles

Cars are by far the most common things to sell for parts. People are keeping their cars for longer than ever, and car parts are in short supply, which drives up their value. And if you have an old, vintage car rusting away in your garage, some of those parts might be worth serious money. Even non-vintage car parts can net you some cash—depending on mileage, condition, and the make and model of the car, the engine might be worth $500 or more by itself, and the airbags could be worth $150-$200. If you have the tools, time, and expertise to part out a car (or a motorcycle, or even a bicycle) you can gather estimated value for each part and compare it to the price you’d get for selling the vehicle as a whole.

Computers

If you have a computer, whether it’s a tricked-out desktop gaming machine, a cheap Chromebook, or even a Mac, you can part it out. Between hobbyists building their own machines and frugal folks trying to keep an old warhorse running, there’s a lot of demand for many of the components inside your home computer—and plenty of places to sell them. While some of those components require some tools and knowledge to remove, others, like the RAM sticks and graphics card, are pretty easy to pull with just a screwdriver and some patience.

Laptops can be more challenging because of their compact nature; many components in a laptop are soldered into place or very difficult to access. But if the laptop isn’t functioning anyway, it can still be worth your time to harvest parts. Searching the internet for your specific model of computer and seeing what parts people are looking for or selling will give you an idea of what’s worth salvaging from that old computer.

Board games

If you have some old board games piled up in the garage or basement, don’t toss them—they could be pretty valuable to collectors and enthusiasts. And they’re going to generate more money if you part them out, because people often find themselves missing the original pieces from an old game purchased at a garage sale or found in their basement or garage. In fact, eBay has a dedicated section just for board game pieces where you can research what you might make. Most of these pieces don’t sell for a ton of money by themselves, but you can make more money parting out that old game than from selling it as a unit.

Electric guitars

Setting up a guitar requires knowledge and skill. Tearing an electric guitar apart requires a screwdriver. Like everything else on this list, unless your guitar is a classic vintage axe that can fetch a lot of money, it’s usually more profitable to part out an old beat-up electric guitar, selling everything from the neck to the humbuckers separately on eBay or another online marketplace. Many musicians want to build their own guitars from specific parts, or need to replace worn out parts on their guitars and want to save some money by doing the work themselves (or have trouble finding a rare part), and you can profit from that.

LEGO pieces

People who love LEGO are serious about it. As you might imagine, assembling a complex LEGO set only to discover you’re missing a few pieces—or maybe, most infuriatingly, one piece—is incredibly frustrating. That’s why sites like Bricklink exist—so you can find and purchase LEGO parts. If you have some LEGO sets you’re looking to liquidate, you can use Bricklink to find out the rough part out value, which can be a surprisingly high number.

Large swaths of the United States were built with the assumption that everyone who lived there would own a car, but that can be an expensive prospect—the average labor rate for auto repairs is hovering around $60 an hour, and can rise into the triple digits, depending on the make and model of your car.

At the same time, the skyrocketing cost of new and used cars means lots of people are hanging onto their vehicles for longer—the average car on the road today is now 12.5 years old, and older cars mean more repair bills.

If you’ve got a beater that needs work done but you can’t afford to bring it into the shop, there’s another option that can save you a lot of cash. All you need is some mechanical skills (or a friend with some skills) and the location of a DIY garage near you.

What is a DIY garage?

A DIY garage is a full-service car repair shop where you can rent a bay, a lift, diagnostic equipment (including computers), and tools, all for an hourly or daily fee. Some will also provide the guidance of certified mechanics—although many people rely on Youtube, manuals, and the free advice of their fellow DIY mechanics. But you do all the actual work on your vehicle, saving yourself a huge amount of money in labor costs.

It’s a fairly straightforward process:

• Determine your needs. Depending on the repairs you’ll be doing, you should make a list of all the equipment you might need. People use DIY garages for more than mechanical repairs—some folks repaint their cars, repair rusted roofs, or do other body work.

• Locate a DIY garage near you. There’s no national listing of DIY garages, so you’ll have to rely on a Google Search—this page has a preset search box that allows you to enter your zip code and see a list of DIY garages near you. (Here’s a list of DIY repair shops in the New York City area, for example.)

• Book your time and tools. Now you just book what you need and show up. DIY garages will supply everything you need in terms of tools, but you’ll need to supply parts and, of course, labor.

The costs of using a DIY garage

The fact that DIY garages can save you money doesn’t mean they won't still cost you some. Here’s what you can expect to pay in order to repair your vehicle at one:

• Base cost. If you just need a bay to work in, most DIY garages will charge about $20 to $50 an hour. For example, My Mechanics Place in Michigan charges $20 an hour for a basic bay, U Wrench It in New Jersey charges $24.99, while Your Dream Garage in Los Angeles charges $50 an hour. A lift bay will run you $30 to $35 an hour, and a paint booth is typically about $100 an hour. These prices sometimes include access to tools, but sometimes there’s an extra fee of $10 to $25 for that. Most DIY garages also have daily and even monthly rates, which can be a better bargain if you need that kind of time.

• Expert assistance. Many DIY garages offer the option of having a professional mechanic advise you through the repair for an extra fee. For example, U Wrench It will provide a professional to assist you for $55 an hour on top of the bay rental. This can be a great middle option if you’ve never done serious car repair before and you’re nervous about relying on videos and friendly advice.

Considering the costs of labor, a DIY repair done in one of these shops can save you a few hundred or even a few thousand dollars, depending on how much time it takes.

What to consider before using a DIY garage

A DIY garage isn’t the right solution for everyone, of course. A few things to consider:

• Insurance. If your repair stems from an accident and insurance is involved, your insurer may not approve DIY repairs and might require that the work be done in an approved shop. On the other hand, you might be able to keep some of the insurance money if they simply cut you a check for repairs and you do them yourself.

• Liability. Most DIY garages will require you to sign a waiver releasing them of liability if you are injured unless the shop is negligent in some way. State laws vary, but if a DIY shop is operating the law most likely places liability on the consumer. Make sure you know what happens if you’re injured, or if you somehow destroy your car while trying to repair it.

• Cost. If you rent a professional to help with your repair, your hourly costs may exceed what you’d pay in labor costs. If the average hourly cost for a mechanic is $60 and you’re spending $75 for a bay and professional help, you’re not actually saving any money at all.

• Quality. Saving money is great, but if your DIY car repair doesn’t hold up because you don’t know what you’re doing you’ll wind up in an even worse situation.

• Education. A DIY garage can also be a great way to teach yourself about car maintenance and repair. If you have a non-essential vehicle that you can tinker with, spending some time at a self-service garage is a hands-on way of learning.

If you’re reasonably mechanically inclined or have some experience fixing cars—or if you know someone who does and who is willing to help you out—renting a bay at a DIY garage can save you a ton of money while keeping your wheels on the road.