Owning a rental property is tough work. In addition to understanding the legalities of leases (which requires a detailed knowledge of laws such as the Fair Housing Act), you need to make sure your tenants are a good fit for the property.

Every landlord has a screening process designed to ensure two things: that their tenants are able to afford the space, and that they won’t leave it looking (or smelling) worse than they found it. Both of these can usually be ensured through a criminal background check and a credit check, but even the most thorough of landlords may end up dealing with problem tenants.

Unfortunately, this issue can become greatly exacerbated when said problem tenants are your friends. Let’s take a look at three major reasons why you shouldn’t rent a room, an apartment, or a house to your buddy from college or your best friend from high school.

Maintaining a professional relationship becomes impossible

Tenant-landlord relationships are, first and foremost, professional. As the owner of a rental property, you are responsible for setting the rules and your tenants are responsible for following them. After all, leases exist to ensure that both parties stick to their end of the bargain.

When you rent to a friend, you’ll find that that professional boundary gets muddled. Your pal might start asking for extensions on rent payments, or begin blatantly ignoring the rules of the rental agreement because they believe your history together means you’ll give them a pass. Re-establishing those boundaries is hard at best and impossible at worst, and may lead to the next bullet point.

It could cost you your friendship

Being a landlord means being an authority figure. Your friend may struggle with that interpretation, especially if you’ve known them for a long time. At the end of the day, this can cause a serious rift.

If they continue to disregard your rules, you’ll be forced to lay down the law in a way that won’t sound so friendly. In such cases, you won’t just be losing a tenant when the lease ends — you’ll be losing a friend.

You’re the one has to pay in the end

Loss of friendship aside, you are still running a business. If your rental agreement states that no pets are allowed, and your buddy thinks you’ll be fine with his German Shepherd because you go way back, you’re the one who’s going to be left with a mess.

If your friend has a smoking habit, they may be inclined to light up regardless of any non-smoking clauses in the lease. From the cost of a complete deep clean (which can cost even more if cigarettes are involved) to general repairs, you’ll find yourself out of more money than you ever made from their presence.

Being a landlord is difficult enough as it is; you don’t want to add to the pile by putting a couple of your closest friends under a roof that you manage. Fortunately, you have plenty of tools at your disposal to help you find respectable strangers instead. Innovative software options like Turbo Tenant are uniquely designed to do all the digging for you — no muss, no fuss. Compared to the alternative (and all of its potential costs), renting to newcomers is always a better choice.

Rather than run the risk of a ruined apartment and a ruined friendship, establish one simple rule: no friends allowed. No matter what landlord-tenant resources you rely on, you’ll be grateful you chose John Doe over your favorite drinking buddy.

To read more on topics like this, check out the lifestyle category.

Fall means pumpkin spice lattes and leaf piles, but it also means something else: weddings.

Autumn is now the most popular season for getting married. If you’re a bride or groom planning a wedding for September, October, or November, you’re likely attracted to the cooler weather and lovely fall colors. The oranges, yellows, and browns will really pop in your wedding photos.

But while you should invest in a good wedding photographer, that’s not your only option for getting great photos. You can also ask guests to take their own photos for at least part of the wedding day. Here are some of the best ways to crowdsource wedding photos from your attendees.

Make your photo policy clear

Before the wedding starts, you should let your guests know when and how they can take their own photos.

For example, your photographer might have a clause in their contract stating that nobody else can photograph the ceremony. That means your guests can take photos after you and your intended say “I do” and walk back down the aisle. So you’ll want to say something like, “Please refrain from taking photos during the ceremony, but we’d love for you to use your camera to get some candid moments during the reception.”

This is necessary because wedding guests will often go one of two ways regarding photos. First, there’s the group that assumes they can’t take any photos at all. You’ll have to encourage them to take out their phones at certain times. If you want, you can even go old-school and leave disposable cameras on tables at the reception.

Then there are the people who you need to rein in a little on photos. If you don’t set some parameters, they might post unflattering photos or spend the whole reception taking photos. You want to enjoy the day with your guests, not feel like you’re being hounded by the paparazzi. If you think a couple of guests might go too far, try to gently pull them aside and go over some wedding photo etiquette tips.

Also, be sure to create a wedding hashtag that people can use to post wedding snaps on social media. Put the hashtag on wedding invitations or, even better, on wedding programs. It can be as clever or as straightforward as you want.

Give them a place to share photos

While a hashtag is helpful, some brides and grooms want to go even further and look over as many photos as possible. But that can be risky, especially if people are posting those photos on social media before you can look at them. They might post a photo of the bride or groom with their mouth open eating cake, for instance, and that’s not flattering.

Luckily, there are ways to share photos online privately. A smart home device that manages your photos also lets you create shared photo albums that other people can contribute to. So you can create an album called “Smith-Jones Wedding 2019” and then let other people upload photos to it. You can then sort through those photos and pick out which ones you want to have framed or otherwise preserved.

This also gives you more control over any photos that may be compromising. We’re not just talking about photos of you eating; sometimes wedding receptions can get a little wild. The bride or groom may not be jumping in in-ground swimming pools at the country club, but some of your guests might, especially if they’re drinking a little too much of that special wedding cocktail.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, at least as long as no one gets hurt or damages the property. But that doesn’t mean those photos need to be shared far and wide. An exclusive online photo portal offers both you and your guests more privacy.

To read more on topics like this, check out the lifestyle category.

Americans like to break records. Unfortunately, we’ve been breaking stress-related records lately. In 2017, the American Psychological Association found that people’s reported stress levels had gone up significantly from the prior year. Something must be going on. People are working hard and trying to make enough money to get by, but the cost of living makes it hard to keep up. You don’t have time to get stressed out by things that should be easy. Those things include figuring out the best ways to decorate your home. Here are some tips on finding home decor without increasing your blood pressure.

Don’t feel pressured to meet a ridiculous standard

If you’ve ever read a celebrity magazine, you’ve probably seen a future about a celebrity showing off a palatial estate on the beaches of California. That’s nice to look at, but it doesn’t mean you have to try to imitate that celebrity. In general, you shouldn’t try to model either your diet or your home after a celebrity. Both of those standards are unrealistic and, in some cases, unhealthy.

Celebrities are famous for a living. Sure, they work hard at jobs such as acting and singing, but a big part of their personal brand involves looking a certain way. They can pay interior designers six figures to tell them that they should buy throw pillows that cost $1,000 each. You wouldn’t do that. Even if you could, you likely wouldn’t want to.

Focus on simple home decor that brightens up your house and gives off a welcoming vibe. Photos of you and your loved ones are a great way to do that. If framed photos are a bit too ordinary for you, head to a site like Simple Canvas Prints and get that photo printed on an elegant canvas. It will look a lot more expensive than it actually is, and that’s always a plus.

Look for home decor online

Some people love shopping. For others, though, it can be a real act of emotional labor. You may have heard of emotional labor as something that tends to disproportionately affect the female partner in heterosexual relationships. But it can be exhausting regardless of whether you’re married, single, or somewhere in between.

Shopping for clothes and groceries is one thing, but shopping for decor that fits with your home can feel even more intense. If you see a lamp or other appliance that you like, you have to wonder whether it will fit into your car. Then you have to make sure that it matches your home, and that can be hard to do unless you have a photographic memory.

When you shop online, you can look around your home and be sure the colors will complement each other instead of clashing. Even better, you don’t have to worry about stuffing it in your trunk and hauling it all the way from the car to your front door (or farther, depending on where the item is going in your house).

Make it personal

Sure, photos of flowers and landscapes are traditional home decor, but you should feel free to mix it up and make things more personal. You want your home to feel like it belongs to you. It shouldn’t resemble a random hotel room in the Midwest.

Your career or interests can guide you to decor that feels more like a statement than just something random you found on sale. For instance, maybe you’ve long been interested in the legal field, and now you’re finally going back to school and getting an online criminal justice degree. Why not find artwork that represents Lady Justice? If that’s too far out, fill your bookshelf with true crime books. Thinking of what you’re passionate about will make decorating your home feel much more natural.

To read more on topics like this, check out the lifestyle category.