Ideal House

Spent the evening looking at finance information. Discovered, much to my dismay, that I owe $4775.14 on my car and that to refinance I must owe a minimum of $5000. Oh well.

I guess my new goal is to get a lower car insurance rate. When I checked, though, Progressive had actually lowered my payments and at this point I don’t think anyone can beat them. Damn. I’ll still look into it, but I don’t have much hope. I also want to pay my taxes this week, for this year and last year. I might do that tomorrow night if I can get everything else paid off in time.

After my auto refinancing disappointments I decided to walk through an online home loan application, doing everything but clicking the final submit button, just to see what the experience is like. Since R.’s house has a tax value of $116,000 I asked for a $120K loan. My bank estimates that my monthly payments, complete with escrow, will be over a thousand dollars. OUCH!!! A 1K house payment would be much more than the standard 20% of my income.

So, given this information, I have three options:

• Get a few more quotes, just to check
• Consider a different house
• Consider an apartment

And on reflection I’m really not sure a house is what I want. I only have $8K in the bank right now – nothing to fall back on in case something goes wrong. Wouldn’t it be better to build some savings first, and then purchase a home?

I want to do some pretty expensive things, too, like get another degree. If I get it from Savannah College of Art and Design I’m looking at $12K per year in tuition expenses. I can’t afford that degree and a house. I also want to travel a little, maybe go to Europe for a semester. Not cheap, and a house would complicate things.

And as much as I like R.’s house is it really what I want in a house? Sure, it has a few of the things I want, but there are other attributes I’d like to see in a home.

Maybe it’s time to make a list.

In a perfect world, my home would have the following:

• NEIGHBORHOOD




• No neighborhood association!!


• Arty, eclectic well-established neighborhood, quiet most evenings.


• Historic districts of interest.


• Low crime rate


• Walking distance from a university campus


• 20 minutes from work




• INTERIOR




• Wheelchair accessible a plus


• Open floor plan, lots of floor space, ideally a medium loft, like that will happen in Irving


• Lots of natural light


• 2 or 3 brdrm, 1 bath


• Hardwood, stone, tile, or concrete floors


• Kitchen must be adequate, but not gourmet


• Window seat





• UTILITIES




• Central air / Gas heat


• Decent-sized hot water heater.


• Modern up-to-date electricity, with plenty of outlets, hopefully one set per wall


• Ethernet or other broadband wiring a plus


• Good light fixtures a minor plus


• BIG shower – could care less about garden tubs, saunas, etc.





• EXTERIOR





• Preferably (field)stone (not brick) exterior.


• No yard, or minimalist xeriscape yard


• No pool – small whirlpool OK, but nothing larger

Financial Isues

Just finished watching The Full Monty. I think Calendar Girls was better, but this had its moments. It might have been funnier in the theater, too.

Today I finished removing all the website pages from the problem-causing templates. Chris has volunteered to fix Index Server again, so we won’t have to deal with that being broken much longer. My next goal is to make sure all pages have a login box, and to start work on the theme chooser. I’m trying to figure out the best way to make it work. Before I used session variables and cookies, but I’m thinking about using variables passed in the URL instead. Or maybe not – that seems awkward, too. I don’t really have a good way to fix the issue.

My goal for next week is to refinance my car. I’m paying 15% interest, and the rates have dropped considerably since I started financing it. Next I want to find more affordable auto insurance. Then, after I’ve finished those two tasks, I need to start seriously working on home financing. I want to get pre-approved, and then see a realtor and see what else in Irving is in my price range.

I still feel a little odd, even thinking of buying a house. I’d like to own one, but I keep thinking in a few years I’ll have to move in with Mom and Dad and help take care of one of them. I’m hoping that won’t happen until I’m in my late 50s, but it will probably happen a lot sooner. Dad just isn’t taking care of himself. I wish he would, but who am I to talk?

New Computer Arrives

My new PC is finally here, with all its pieces. I feel guilty spending this much on a PC when I should be making a down-payment on a house, but my old PC was on its last legs and I couldn’t justify pouring money into anything with an old Athlon processor. So now I’m typing in style – a new Dell Inspiron laptop with all the gadgets, including wireless networking and a Bluetooth keyboard/mouse combo.

Very sexy stuff.

I’m especially pleased with the Bluetooth keyboard. I went a little overboard, and bought the $250 Logitech set, but it’s very comfortable. It comes with a detached keypad called a “media center” which I can use to control music from up to 30 feet away. My bedroom is currently 15 feet away from the PC, so I can play CDs at night and turn them off when I’m ready to sleep. I was originally thinking about making this back room into a studio, but I might transform one of the front rooms instead, just so I can keep this convenience.