Rancid-Tea

Careless Acts and Careless Injuries

When I was a kid we had a game called Freddy Pharkas that I didn’t really play much, but I enjoyed reading the manual that came with it. One of my favorite passages was this:

There is a saying in the medical profession: “The only people who get burns are the people that deserve them.” This is our way of saying that burns can nearly always be prevented simply by being attentive, aware, alert and intelligent.

I took that message to heart. Unless you were picked up and heaved into a fire, chances are pretty good that you brought that burn on yourself. I’ve proven this twice in the last two months. First I overheated some hot wax and applied it straight to my leg without testing how hot it was a few weeks ago. I got a small burn that would have been a blister, except hot wax strips sometimes pull of Now that my leg is almost healed, I managed to burn myself again on Sunday evening by being careless with a blender… a blender filled with boiling hot soup. Thankfully I was able to shut it off as soon as I hit the wrong button, but not soon enough to prevent a spray of hot soup from coming up around the lid of the blender. Now I have blisters and big red marks all over the back of my hand and wrist.

Good News Everyone!

(hee hee, that always makes me think of the professor on Futurama) The offer we made on a property was accepted. Technically the property is still pending, because the bank who currently owns the property would like us to sign some special papers explaining that the house is being sold as-is. Once those are signed we’ll have a full inspection, and if nothing we don’t already know about turns up, then we will be closing on November 15th. That gives us about a month and a half to get estimates for all the repairs and find people who will do them. After closing, we have two weeks to move in and 6 months to complete repairs. The major repairs will be done before we move in, and then the smaller stuff, like plaster repair can be done while we’re there. So here’s hoping that everything falls into place!

Funny stuff for the lunch break

Visit ThisOldHouse.com and browse through their Home Inspection Nightmares (there are 8 of them). I was endlessly amused.

Quick Update

September is going by in a blur. I just sat here for a full minute in disbelief thinking it was the end of August, how could we be a week away from October already?

Ethan and I think we’ve found a home, though it will need some work. The upside is that it is very, very cheap. So cheap in fact, that even if it took 40K to fix it up, we’d still have a lower mortgage payment than most houses we’ve looked before taking repairs into account. There’s virtually no way it will cost 40 thousand to fix it up either, even if we did some unnecessary improvements.

We’ll be officially submitting an offer tomorrow, and hopefully they will accept. Our Realtor® said that one offer was already made, but it sounds like ours is better (we offered the full asking price without closing costs, which is a pretty good offer for a foreclosed home), so I’m still pretty hopeful. At worst we’ll just have to keep looking.

Since we’re already in ‘bare minimum spending mode’ we seem to be amassing large reserves, so that by the time we actually close, we might have quite the chunk of cash available for… well, whatever we might need it for. For sure we have enough to cover closing costs, a down payment, and any moving expenses (including our lease termination penalty), and repairs are included in the mortgage (woot), so we should still have a very comfortable cushion of money in case something very unexpected comes up.

This update has gotten much less ‘quick,’ and I have been in front of a computer for way too long today, so off I go.

Rooster

Rooster passed away a few nights ago. He suddenly lost his ability to balance one evening. Ethan and I did our best to keep him comfortable and reduce his stress, but the next morning he was no longer among the living. He was a very cute, friendly animal and he will be missed. I’m just glad that he went fairly quickly and apparently painlessly.

Oy Vey

So, as my last post (over two weeks ago…) mentioned, I have become very busy. Not necessarily so busy that I don’t have time to post anything, but so busy that whenever I think I should, I start thinking of everything going on, and how it would take a long time to explain it all, and then I get too tired thinking about it to actually post something.

The house search continues. It has been very frustrating so far, but we are at least getting the hang of it, I think. We found out that it is a mistake to not get pre-approved for a loan before looking at the bottom of the barrel properties. Banks who have foreclosed on a property already won’t accept an offer without a pre-approval letter. Ethan and I knew that getting approved would not be a problem, we are looking at homes that cost much less than banks say we can afford (one lender said he could approve a loan up to 170K, which would have a higher payment than our current rent… just what we need).

What we didn’t plan on was not being able to find ANY homes in move in condition, all requiring repairs. ‘Well,’ say the mortgage people, ‘we can’t close on a loan until the repairs are done.’ ‘But,’ says we, ‘we can’t make repairs on a home we don’t own.’ And says the mortgage people, ‘der…’ Seriously, I started thinking we were talking to people who did not realize that ‘AS IS’ properties are on the market (over 1/3 of the homes on the market in MN are corporate owned and therefore ‘as is.’ They won’t do repairs. Period. You have to do them somehow).

After much frustration and many returned phone calls (and a few NOT returned phone calls) we finally got a hold of someone who specializes in rehab loans. Yay! Someone who in fact only does loans where the house is in need of serious repair or updating. Mostly investors use this program, but apparently people unwilling to piss away over half of their net income on housing can use it too.

To make matters even better, of the properties we’ve looked at, three seemed like good deals. One was small, and needed a bunch of work, was priced very low, but was not appealing at all, except for the giant tree in the front yard, and one of the first things that would have to be done upon moving it would be to cut down parts of the tree, because it was destroying the roof. Another was in fantastic condition inside, and acceptable condition outside, then the bank repossessed it (it was pending foreclosure) and yanked it off the market. The third was in good condition inside and out, but since going on the market had lost a good deal of plumbing, and had developed a leaky roof; both were fixable for a price that we could afford… and someone else made an offer after we found our mortgage person (Saturday) and when he was able to approve us (today), seriously.

Each time we go out for showings, we have to spend hours looking at listings, trying to weed out the really bad ones. We also are cross checking the county website to see if the tax information is correct (it so rarely is), and what the assessed value is. Then (this helped tremendously, we found) we drive around to a few we might want to see, in case there are obvious, bad problems not visible in the photos (like the siding/roof needing replacement, or all of the houses on the block being boarded up, or even bullet holes in the front of the house (again, seriously). After that we have a short list to give to our Realtor who has to schedule all the showings and then we lose either a weekend day or an evening looking at homes, in the hopes of finding one we like. Considering the amount of time he has spent on us already, and the amount of money he will make from any purchase we make, I really am starting to feel like we are wasting his time.

So, if you’re wondering how goes the house search, it’s sort of like looking through a dumpster to try and find something worth taking home. Afterward you feel exhausted and dirty, and empty-handed, and when you do find something that seems good, when you get it home, you find out that the insides were destroyed, and it doesn’t work anymore. It might, in fact cost more to fix than to just buy a new one…

Busy!

So… in the last few weeks plenty has happened, but I haven’t had much time for an update.

Ethan and I went to Valley Fair a few weeks ago, because I had coupons and Ethan had never been on a roller coaster. We went on all the coasters and quite a few other rides. It was great fun and we managed to only spend money on the entrance fee (we did save over $20 with the coupon) and an ice cream cone. They were selling bottled water for over $3/20 oz bottle, so we asked for water at one of the stands and they had some for free (but sorry, no ice).

Having no roommate and not wanting to find one, we decided it might be easier to buy a house. Right now there are quite a few homes available in various states of foreclosure that you can buy for a pretty good price. We could live in a house for a mortgage that is 2/3 our rent, including insurance and taxes. We had a few showings this weekend and are planning to see two of them again sometime this week.

Peeve gave us a scare this week, because he was acting very strangely. We took him to the vet; 2 days and $240 later, he was given a clean bill of health (“no sign of anything wrong”) so we’re not sure exactly what was wrong. I’m happy he’s doing well though, so no worries I guess.

Hopefully I’ll have more to report soon.

Dilemma

Ethan and I recently stopped using one of our credit cards in a plan to eliminate them altogether soon. The card had ‘Thank You Points’ rewards, which allows the card bearer to earn 1 or more points per dollar spent on the card (there was a period where gas and groceries were earning 5 points per dollar) and then you can redeem them at roughly 100 points to the dollar.

Unfortunately the Thank You network seems to be pretty schemey, which shouldn’t surprise me, since it’s tied to a bank/credit card. They allow you to buy a lot of things from their site, but they overcharge (every DVD is between 2400 and 2800 points, that’s roughly $24 – 28, quite a bit over the going rate) and they have a limited selection. They also allow you to exchange for gift certificates for certain vendors, such as Best Buy, Shell gas station and a number of other places. For Best Buy and Circuit City you get the best deal 10000 points = $100, but some of the others give you a worse exchange rate. Shell for instance gives $10 for 1500 points. Going with gas cards loses you a third of your money. You can also get a check sent to you for the same rate, losing you your cash.

I’ve wanted a Nikon D40 camera for some time and the price has been coming down, from over $600 to just over $400 in the last few months. $400 is still way more than I can convince myself to spend, especially given our current tight budget, but I thought if I could knock another $200 (the amount of gift certificates we could purchase from Best Buy or Circuit City) then it might be a pretty good deal. Both places still charge $600 for the camera! Best Buy is a misnomer, and should be translated into Biggest Markup. I would only save about twenty dollars buying the camera there with a $200 discount versus buying from an online vendor that just charges less. What a deal.

With the camera pretty much out of the picture (no pun intended) we have to figure out what to do with our points. They expire eventually. We could buy something we don’t really need for more than it’s worth, get gift certificates to Best Buy and get DVDs that we want and pay a more reasonable price (though still almost double what Target charges), or get a bad exchange and get only about $150 in Shell gas cards. I don’t think I even know where a Shell gas station is, so that might be a huge waste of money.

Any thoughts?

Whole Wheat Bread: Success!

We decided to try a different whole wheat bread recipe this weekend, and it worked out much, much better. Our new yeast bloomed, the dough rose and even though Ethan was horrified by my kneading, it turned into a nice loaf of bread, worthy of sandwiches. We did swap out rice milk for dairy milk, and next time we make it, we might use egg replacer. If we can make a nice vegan whole wheat loaf, it will be quite the accomplishment.

1 Roomate = $400/month

Very recently, Ethan’s brother moved out of our apartment, leaving us with the option to find someone else to move in or pony up an extra $400/month in rent by ourselves. I guess there is option c: move to another location or another unit in the building. I think if I have to move, I’m moving into a house that I own. I have very little desire to own a home in the Twin Cities, so that’s not much of an option.

It’s not a very nice situation to be in. We can afford living in the same unit on our own, but just barely. By that I mean, if we stop eating out, going to movies, and buying anything we don’t absolutely need. Since we already live quite frugally, it’s not easy to trim out expenses. We only eat out 2 or 3 times a month, and see movies 1 – 2 times a month. Our only really unnecessary expenses right now are Netflix (<$15/month) and booze. Without being able to go out to entertain ourselves, Netflix becomes more and more necessary (we don't have cable), though we could easily stand to drink less. Even so, we certainly don't spend anywhere near $400 on alcohol in a month.

The other option is to work more, with isn’t really an option for Ethan, as he can’t work overtime and will soon be starting classes again. I would only have to work a few more hours a week, but I would either have to start coming in earlier (probably not a realistic option, since I have great trouble pulling myself out of bed) or working a few hours on weekends. There isn’t anything urgent going on at work right now though, so that would make it a little weird to be putting in extra hours.

If we don’t have any definite word on a roommate by the end of October, we’ll probably just suck it up and ask our building manager about open 1 bedroom units in our building. I really hope it won’t come to that.