Tag Archives: shelter

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!

Roughing it – or not

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Last year our kids developed an interest in camping, so we thought we’d try it–in the back yard. They had a blast. We vowed never again. Of course time heals all wounds, or soothes all stiff muscles, and we tried it again last week. My conclusion? We are not ready to rough it. Or rather, we’re not prepared to make roughing it less rough.

For one thing, all we really have is a tent. The kids, who are young and flexible, sleep on blankets. We tried using an air mattress this last time, but it leaked, so by morning we were sleeping on the ground and in a banana shape. And, to be honest, sleeping isn’t entirely accurate for the waking-up-every-half-an-hour I did all night.

We need decent sleeping bags at the least. We had quilts, and it didn’t colder than the 60’s, but we were all chilled in the morning. Sleeping bags would likely have provided more padding than our blankets and quilts, too.

We need the means to cook outside. We ate all our meals in the house and only slept outside. We need a cook stove or something at the very least.

We had a couple flashlights, but nothing more than that. And that was rough enough, as our dog loves to chase flashlight beams. The mere presence of flashlights made her crazy and try to jump all over sleeping people. I’m hoping a good lantern would provide much better light without making the dog nuts. That may be too much to hope for.

There are, of course, lots of other little items and amenities that we would need were we to try camping completely independently of our home. Even if we never try camping in the wilderness, even if we had to live in an evacuation camp we’d be in pretty bad shape. The fact that we can’t even camp comfortably in our own back yard is probably a good sign we’re not quite prepared in that area.