Spinning, in my world, is not about stationary bikes. It is about stationary living – it’s about stagnation. The bike kind of spinning, and spinning tops, are good images for what I mean by spinning. In our world, spinning just refers to fixating on any mental or verbal point that keeps you stuck/still/in the same place when you are trying to evolve or progress. Spinning includes:

• Talking over your money problems and bemoaning how poor you are with friends, over and over,
• Repeatedly writing about, complaining about, fretting over the same issue or problem,
• Rehearsing a mental or verbal script of any sort that simply analyzes an issue to death without moving forward into any action.

We women are very verbal. I get that. We like to process things verbally, and we especially like to think through situations by talking through them with friends. There’s a time and place for that, but when it comes to matters of transformation, be especially aware that what you devote your attention and words to – grows. If you devote your mental bandwith and powerful words to lack, scarcity and the things that are wrong – that’s what will grow. If you devote your thoughts and words to abundance, prosperity or what you are doing to become and evolve your life – that will grow, too,

It is NOT easy, in this snarky, smart-girl world of ours, to consistently speak words of power and prosperity over your situation – especially when things are tough. (Trust – I can vouch.) It takes training and rewiring of your mental circuits and, frankly, sometimes even takes eliminating or reworking your relationships with people who have no other vocabulary than the lexicon of bitching and moaning.

It is a very short leap from verb to verbiage. In other words, executing your real estate vision and making real estate decisions that improve your life (rather than burdening it) requires that you have a fundamentally sound understanding of the terms of the trade.

This is what Rich Dad, Poor Dad’s Robert Kiyosaki would call cultivating your “financial IQ.”

Welcome to the first installment of what I intend to be a living, evolving glossary – straight from me to you. These definitions might not replicate what you’d find in a dictionary. Rather, these are my explanations – the words I’ve found make sense to my smart women real estate clients as they embark on manifesting their own Vision of Home.

Enjoy, and please leave new terms you would like added in the comments on this post.

Amortization – paying your mortgage off over time, with some portion of your loan payments going to pay interest charges, and some portion going to pay the principal loan amount (i.e., the amount you owe) off.  Mortgages can be fully amortized (meaning that some portion of every payment goes to pay principal), interest-only (meaning that for at least some period of time, the minimum payment does not pay any of the principal off), or negatively amortized (meaning that the minimum payment pays even less than the interest being charged on the loan, so that the principal balance actually increases)

Adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) – a mortgage in which the interest rate and payment adjusts over time.

Fixed rate mortgage – a mortgage in which the interest rate and payment are fixed over time.

Closing, close of escrow – the culmination of a real estate purchase/sale transaction, at which time the ownership of the property is transferred from seller to buyer. The ceremonies specific to any given closing differ in accordance with local custom; some involve both parties, their agents and attorneys sitting around a conference room table, signing papers, and the sellers handing over the keys. In other areas, closing might involve nothing more than a phone call from the escrow holder several days after a party signed their documents indicating that the deed has been recorded with the county.

Resale – the purchase or sale of a home which has previously been owned by another owner (i.e., not the builder or developer).

Subprime – the term for a class of mortgages which no longer really exists, loans with lending guidelines requiring little or no downpayment, marginal credit scores, and no documentation of income, in exchange for higher interest rates. Loans with low-interest and low-payment introductory periods which adjusted to fully amortized loans (sometimes doubling the monthly payment) also fall into this category.

Interest-only – refers to a type of home loan where, for a certain number of years at the beginning of the mortgage, the borrower is required to pay only the interest on the loan, and is not required to pay anything toward the principal.

Loan modification  – a lender’s agreement to alter any of the terms of a home mortgage. Most often, loans are modified to reduce the interest rate, monthly payment