It's all over...
We moved at the end of August and got everything out of the house in time for our closing.
Although the closing was delayed twice. The main reason for the delays was the buried oil tank that we had to get rid of.
Nowadays, a buried oil tank is just trouble no matter how you look at it. In our area, all of them will have to be removed or replaced in the near future so as a condition of the sale we had to have that done.
Buried oil tanks are a potential environmental nightmare. All of them eventually corrode and leak so our state is very strict on how they are dealt with. The must be handled as hazardous waste, the soil around them must be tested and if contaminated are also handled as hazardous waste.
Basically, the sidewalk in front of my house (I live in an urban town
outside of NYC) was dug up from the front of my house to the street and almost from one side of the property to the other. The hole, when all the digging was done, was 9 feet deep (down to bedrock!) and about 10 feet wide and 12 feet long. About 49,000 pounds of dirt was excavated and the resulting hole was filled by the same about of gravel.
The excavation, removal of the tank and dirt, fill and new concrete cost me $20k and took about two days.
The first delay in the closing was due to having this work done, the second delay was in waiting for the soil tests to return so that the remaining dirt surrounding the hole could be certified as non-contaminated.
All that took a week in time but once it was done we closed and got a nice fat check from the profit. I actually went out this weekend and spent a small piece of it buying a couple of toys for us (a Nintendo
DS for the boy, new video camera for me and a Blackberry Pearl cell phone for the wife). We worked hard over the last three months to get to this point and we
deserved it.
So, it's all done now and the bills are paid off and I feel good.
Labels: bills, boxes, brother, buyer, closing, debt, house, money, oil tank, selling the house
Moving Day Approaches
It's coming...
I can feel it like a freight train in the distance on a quiet plains night...
Moving day!
Our house has become more and more empty with the passing days.
All the pictures are off of the walls. Tchotcke's are packed away and moved to storage. Our clothes are packed in boxes and only the ones we need for the time from now till the move are out. The garbage men have been hating us for about a month now what with the piles and bags of 10 years of crap we have been saving for no real reason put on the curb twice a week.
I even paid a company to come clean a ton of old detritus out of our basement (I can't believe all the space we really had down there!).
We have a mover coming in about a week and I'm not sure we are going to be ready.
As far as the closing is concerned... We have tentative closing date that is about a week after our move but it is dependent on one major thing - we have to have the below ground oil tank dug up, removed, and any leakage remediated. This has to be done before we close. The contractor is scheduled to do this next week.
One other thing is that the bank that holds our mortgage has filed forecloser papers on us. Now it's a race to close and pay them back before they can get a judgement against us. I have to get the papers to the lawyer on Monday so that they can follow up on it.
I just can't wait for it to all be over.
Labels: boxes, buyer, closing, house, moving, oil tank, packing, selling the house
Karma
Apparently, the people that made the offer on the house
didn’t like our counter offer and are attempting to come up with a counter to our counter.
Hmph! Maybe my mistake was having the money counted and spent before we had an agreement. I guess it’s sort of Karma and Karma’s a bitch.
Our laptop seems to be faltering on us. Well, not really the laptop but the plug and socket that it gets power with seem to be the issue. Evidently, over time, its connection loosens and you have to jiggle it to make it work. The more you jiggle it, the looser it gets. This has happened to us once before and we had to take it in for repairs. I guess we’ll take it in this weekend.
Maybe I’ll have to buy a new laptop when we sell the house. There I go again – spending the money before I even have it… See what I mean?
Labels: cord, house, karma, laptop, money, offer, power, sell
Holiday
We made it through the holiday reasonably well.
Friday night we went out to dinner with my Mom, my older sister and my younger sister and her family. Not a bad evening actually but my younger sister just grates on my nerves. She’s so opinionated and
unaccepting of other points of view at times. What really
irked me was that when the check came for dinner, my Mom took out her credit card to pay but nobody else but me gave her money towards the bill. And I paid more than my share.
After dinner my Mom wanted us to come back to her house for cake. My wife and I
couldn't as we had to get the house ready for some prospective buyers that were coming by the next day.
Early Saturday morning, the wife had an appointment for a cat scan to help diagnose some of the health issues she’s experiencing. After that, we went out for our usual Saturday morning breakfast (although a bit later than normal).
Next on our to-do list was grocery shopping – another thing we almost always do on Saturday morning. Something to note here: has anyone else noticed how expensive groceries have gotten recently? I remember being able to get out of the store for less than $100 for a weeks worth of groceries most of the time no less than a year or so ago. Now, I’m lucky if I keep it under $120. This past Saturday, what with buying stuff for a barbecue, my bill was about $160! That is a very good example of how cost of living has inflated across the board.
After we got back from the shopping, it was time to clean the house (another usual Saturday function). We had to do an especially good job since we had prospective buyers coming to look at the house later that day and this week. I think we had 3 large garbage bags of junk we threw out at the end of that process.
The people came to look at the house and were gone by 3:45PM. We chilled out for awhile and then I went out to barbecue a chuck steak for dinner. I used a special seasoning blend I have and a basting at the end with Jack Daniels Steak Sauce. I also grilled some home made garlic bread. All in all, dinner was heavenly.
On Sunday, we slept in a bit late but I went out to get rolls and donuts for breakfast. In my town, that’s a traditional Sunday breakfast thing – we call it “rolls and buns”. Growing up, we almost always had rolls and buns for breakfast on Sunday morning after church.
In the afternoon, we went to Mom’s for a casual barbecue. I was the chef for the day. I grilled some
pre-packaged baby back ribs (Tony
Siragusa’s brand) for an appetizer (they were not bad really – my home made ribs take 4-6 hours to make but are way better). Next was some
Johnsonville bratwurst, hot dogs and hamburgers. As sides, we had coleslaw, potato salad and noodle salad. A pretty good meal if I say so myself. Later, we had some watermelon and toasted some marshmallows. A very enjoyable day.
Monday was busy for a holiday. My son left early with my wife’s Mom to go to NYC to tour the naval ships in for Fleet Week. That left us home alone to get some things done.
We started with running out to do some minor shopping. The wife needed some shorts and I needed sneakers. On the way back, we stopped for some White Castle hamburgers – YUM!
When we got back, we cleaned out our spare room off of the kitchen. Man, we had a mess in there! Six big bags of garbage! And that was only ¾’s of the room since we left the food pantry shelves for later.
After that, the boy came home but went back out with his grandmother to a barbecue. We stayed home to relax.
We put on a movie and chilled out in our gloriously A/C cooled living room. One thing led to another and we were fucking in the bedroom in less than an hour.
Later, I grilled some chicken that I had marinated earlier with a fajita based marinade. It came out great and we had salad and baked potatoes with it.
It’s Thursday now and we had another couple in to look at the house this past Tuesday. They made an offer yesterday that is above our lowest price we’d take but not quite what we expect to get. We instructed the realtor to counter with a price $34k more than what they offered. We’ll see what they come back with but I think I’ll take it if they offer half of that $34k more.
Keep your fingers crossed for me.
Labels: barbecue, food, holiday, house, mom, son, wife
Today's News
The big news for me now is that we have decided to sell our house. We just can’t afford to keep it anymore. Taxes, water, oil, upkeep are just more than our income can handle and still live reasonably comfortable anymore.
We’
ve been living there for 10 years. My aunt (Dad’s sister) owned the house for many years. As she got older and Alzheimer’s began to take its toll, Dad asked us to move in to the second floor apartment to help take care of her. She passed away in December of 1999, 11 days before my Dad succumbed to cancer. He was her sole heir so my Mom inherited the house in Dad’s stead. We bought the house from Mom in the summer of 2000. Taxes were about $1,000 a year less than they are now. Oil and water were both about half of what we now pay.
Over that time, I’
ve been out of work 3 different times and it’s been a struggle to keep up with paying the bills and still live comfortably. We are actually about 6 months behind on the mortgage payments, oil bill and water bill. Selling the house is our best option to get out of this hole.
Thank God that our mortgage is through a very friendly local bank and they are working with us to allow us to sell. That way, at least we’ll get something out of the investment we made. If we sell for market rates (anywhere between $250k and $325k) we’ll make out pretty well even after paying off the mortgage and the bills. My best guess is that we’ll have somewhere between $45k and $90k left (even after putting some money away for the boy’s schooling). I want to invest about $10k to $20k of what’s left for future consideration and keep the rest for liquidity.
I told my Mom that we had to sell and she was cool with it. She told my brother and he called to tell us that he wants us to move in with him. He and my Mom had bought a very nice 2 family house last year that is two blocks from where we live now. It has an attic space that can fairly easily be converted to a loft apartment with the addition of some heat, a bathroom and a kitchenette. So he decided to offer us his apartment, he’ll move up to the attic space and we’ll have the 7 room second floor.
I’m very grateful to my brother as his offer solved a ton of problems for us: We won’t have to look for an apartment (with our credit issues that could be very tough). We won’t have to move out of town to find something we could afford. We won’t have to switch my son to another school since we’ll still be in the same district. I know my brother will be reasonable on the rent. We’ll be there to keep an eye on Mom (she’s 75 and not that mobile).
A few immediate concerns are that first, we have to keep paying the bank something towards the mortgage (not that hard and we are doing that now). Second, we have to pay the oil bill so that we at least get an oil delivery to get us through the summer (we use oil to heat hot water). Third, we missed one home insurance payment and the company canceled our policy so we have to get a new one. These are the most pressing issues and the one I am most concerned about is the insurance.
Other than that, life is not too bad. I think the temp job I’m currently holding may turn into a permanent gig. I like it there. My boss is cool, the office is great and the commute is pretty easy. The job is almost a no
brainer, too.
The boy’s hockey has settled down for now. We had no option but to have him tryout in other programs since the program he played in for the last two years is collapsing. He made a B team at the program we wanted most but it’s is a fair distance for us to go. He’ll do well there but it’s gonna cost us about $700 more a year in tuition. The new program is better managed, larger and dare I say a better class of people involved as well. The best part is that we are going back to Lake Placid again next season! We had so much fun there this past year and we are excited to go back. I definitely have a number of things I want us to do there this year and number one on the list is the bobsled ride!
My health has settled down. My blood pressure is good and I have had no chest pains at all. Besides having to remember to take 4 different pills at different times each day my recovery has been good. I have been going to my exercise program almost religiously but I have had trouble staying on my diet. That’s the hardest part but I am resolving here and now to get better at that.
My relationship with the wife is a bit odd lately… She’s been bothered by some of her own health problems and it’s caused her to be testy and short with both the boy and me. We’
ve argued a few times and they’
ve been serious enough that I stopped talking to her twice. She gets so worked up sometimes and then she just lashes out at us for little things. What I really don’t like is that she curses and calls us names. I never, ever do that to her or the boy and I really don’t want her to do that to us. She makes me angry when she does that and when she acts like the martyr in a situation or an argument.
Labels: bills, boy, brother, dad, debt, heart, hockey, house, mom, money, move, recovery, sale
