Tag Archives: relocation

Update: Step One – Shelter

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This weekend we entered contract to buy a house. It’s been a bit of a challenge, and it wasn’t looking good there for awhile. But we did it, and now we’re in the application and documentation stage.

The first problem came when I went out with the realtor to finalize which house we were going to pick. There were three to choose from; two we’d already seen and liked, and a third that we’d noticed and wanted to look at. At the first two we noticed problems we’d not noticed before, like signs of water damage, broken windows, evidence that the air conditioner was broken, etc. The third house, however, was looking pretty good.

And then suddenly it wasn’t. We realized that while it might be relatively close to my work, it was not going to be close to anything else that mattered to us. The layout started to feel wrong. Soon about the only things I felt good about were the neighborhood and the yard. We changed course and tried looking in some different parts of town that we’d not really considered all that much previously.

Oddly enough we found the best house yet on the first try. It’s got everything we find important: lots of bedrooms, good layout, plenty of storage, lots of mature trees, a big yard, a designated garden (well-cared-for and growing vegetables, no less), fruit trees, and room to practice baseball with the kids. It’s two blocks from the kids’ elementary, four blocks to the junior high they’ll attend, and four blocks to the high school. And while perhaps not as close to work as some of the others we were looking at, I’ll have several more options for my commute that may prove handy.

So we put in an offer, with several other parties supposedly hot on our heels. No other offers materialized, however, and while the sellers counter-offered, it was still acceptable. And we’ve found a lender who thinks he can get this closed in less than a month. So we’re ready to roll, full speed ahead.

We are going to love this house.

Step One – Shelter

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With my new job comes relocation. I’m not looking forward to it, and other than my new job itself, it demands the bulk of my attention every day. There are a lot of decisions to be made, and a lot of information needed to make those decisions.

There are four main issues here. First is that we have our current house. The housing market has not been good in our city, and even though we put 20% down when we bought it six years ago, we now owe more on it than we can likely sell it for. We have two options: Short sale, or rent it out until the market comes back.

Second is finding a place to live in our new city. The family is still in our old city, which makes it a bit difficult to look at houses together. Here the decision has been largely between renting a place for awhile or trying to somehow buy a house.

Third is the fact that we don’t have a lot of money left. We’ve been living on our savings for over two years, and we were just about hitting the bottom when I got this job. We don’t have much money for a down payment, and houses here are not cheap. Their “low” prices now are at the “high” range we hit in our old city before the real estate bubble burst.

Fourth is the fact that we are rapidly coming up on the start of another school year. We would very much like to get our kids into school on time down here.

In spite of the hurry we’re in, we’ve had to take it a bit slowly, trying to find out what we don’t know and then find the information. We’re putting together the pieces, and I hope to get the last pieces in place this week. We’re finding we have options, but we may not be able adequately satisfy all our concerns. The kids may have to start school a little late, perhaps. It may cost us more money to get what we want now than if we were to wait and build up our resources.

But other than the job, the place we choose to live is also very essential to achieving self reliance again. We want to place ourselves in the best situation we can for regaining a measure of security. This next week will be very important.

Stay tuned!

A New beginning (hold on to your hat!)

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Posting has been non-existent for the last few months because I’ve been very busy and very stressed. But barring some bizarre glitch out of nowhere I have landed a good job after over two years of un- and under-employment. While I will deeply miss the game store that my partners and I have dragged into profitability, I’ll be making significantly more than the game store is likely to provide any time soon.

The only trouble is that the new job is in another state. We will need to relocate. Subordinate problems include the fact that we are within a few thousand dollars of the bottom of our savings, the housing market locally is still fairly poor, and the cost of real estate is higher where we are headed. We’re also getting rather low on our food storage. And we’ve got perhaps a month and a half before school starts up again.

So we will be starting over practically from ground zero in a brand new place, and needing to do it quickly. On top of that, I feel a sense of urgency to get back to at least the level of preparation we were in before the recession hit. There are no guarantees that we’re not headed back down again, and I’d like to be able to ride it out again if necessary.

This blog will be taking a bit of a chance of direction. It’s now going to focus on my quest to achieve self-reliance as quickly as possible while trying not to drive my family crazy with severe austerity measures. It’s been a hard two years, and we need a little budgetary relaxation to help us decompress. At the same time, we’ve learned to get by on next to nothing, which will help us stretch my new income farther if we don’t relax too much.

So stay tuned! This could be fun! Oh yeah, on more thing, just to make things interesting: If there’s a “Self-reliance and Emergency Prep Mecca”, it’s Salt Lake City, Utah, and that’s where we’re headed. Self-reliance is practically a tenet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (of which I’m a member), but the Utah “Mormons” have made an industry of it. Some of it is good, and some of it seems rather exploitative. I’ll try to explore the culture and the businesses surrounding it a bit, and call it like I see it.

I may be out of touch again for a little while, though. I start work next week, and my time will be somewhat limited while I prepare to move myself, and then my family. I’ll post when I can, but I make no promises as to when or how often. Thank you for your patience.