We Sold Our House!

It’s definitely been a crazy few weeks!

We sold our house!!!! EEEKKKK!

Here’s a timeline of the events…

Our house went on the market on April 6^th, we held an open house on April 8^th, received 4 offers by April 10^th, accepted an offer on April 11^th and left for Washington D.C. on April 12^th. Whew… It was tiring even writing that! Everything has been a whirlwind!

Unbeknownst to us, apparently the inspections were done while we were in D.C. too. We have a few “section 1” repairs that need to be done and paid for by us, as the owners. They only total $1005, so not too bad on a financial transaction worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. We are trying to get those done as quickly as possible to keep the escrow process moving. We are opting to pay to have all the work done, rather than doing it ourselves, for expediency and convenience. (That is, after all, why we took out a 401K loan, to make any necessary repairs in order to sell our house.)

We asked $330000 for our house and accepted an offer for $353000 (or $23000 over appraisal). Unfortunately, our house only appraised at $322000, so the sale price of our home will be $345000. Still not too shabby, and $15000 over asking, so we aren’t unhappy, just a little bummed that it didn’t appraise for the value we expected it to.

Our home is full of upgrades, from a full kitchen remodel to an upgraded bathroom, from a tankless water heater to a custom mantle, from all new double-paned vinyl windows to insulation throughout the house. I feel like, in the market we are in and where we live, our house should have easily appraised for $330000.

The only thing we countered on on the whole transaction, was the date escrow was to close. Originally, they asked for a normal, 30 day escrow; that would have escrow closing on May 11. We were out of town for fully 1/3 of that time and didn’t think we would be able to be packed up and out by then. We asked for escrow to close on May 30, 2017, that gave us more time and got us through the end of the school year. (Our school year ends on May 26^th.)

We are now on the hunt for new home. We have seen about 40-43 homes and haven’t found anything we feel we could live with. The Husband is really starting to feel stressed about our situation. I, too, am stressed, but am so thankful for the 5 different family members who all said we could live with them until we found a new place to live.

We are very sad to be leaving our house as we have truly made it our home, but we are also excited for the next chapter. The Kids are very excited, and sad, to be getting their own room. They are excited to get to decorate any way they want and to have their own space. I am too. Most of the homes we are looking at are about twice the size of our current home. I’m very excited to have more wall space rooms to decorate. But first, we need to find something that will work for our family!

In all honesty, I’m still in shock with how quickly our house sold. Both The Husband and I have had a hard time wrapping our head around it. Neither one of us expected it to sell so quickly so we thought we had some time to get used to the idea. Instead, the whole process has been full speed ahead! Both of us expected the process to take a while because we only have a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom house. And our house has some quirks. Apparently, in this market, buyers are willing to overlook some quirks. Our home sold to a single woman in her 20’s. In truth, I hope she will love this home as much as we have and that she will be able to truly make it her home as we did.

Debt Totals 4/25/17

Considering all our travel and spending, it was a decent month for debt payoff. Our credit card balance did go down as we our focusing all our energy on it.  It didn’t go down by as much as I would have liked, but a decrease is a decrease and I’m going to take it as a win. We are still doing a better job of allocating some money into all of our budget categories, however, that is at the expense of paying down debt, but if we continue to fund our budget envelopes, we shouldn’t need to charge as much going forward (vacations not included).

Since we are now focusing on our biggest debt, we, obviously, were unable to clear away any more debts this month, and probably won’t be able to for several months.

As of my last update in March, we owed of $28475.24. 

Here are our current debt totals:

            $11794.07        Credit Card at 15.49% - current minimum payment is $287

            $1350               The Boy (To pay off our other credit card, we borrowed from him.)

            $1350               The Girl (To pay off our other credit card, we borrowed from her.)

            $12055.25        Car loan at 0% - payment is $345

Our current debt stands at $26549.32

We paid off $1925.92, or 6.7% of our debt total; that’s even including stupid tax, aka, interest. Incidentally, that’s the exact same percentage we paid off last month, even though we paid slightly fewer dollars this month.

Overall, our debt decreased. That is a trend we hope to continue. Because of our D.C. trip, I don’t expect our debt payoff to be especially good next month. In all honesty, I’m hoping to break even on the credit card and to continue to make a little progress on the remaining three debts.

We are continuing to make slow progress every paycheck, one per month for me and two per month for The Husband, towards savings and paying our children back. We put $50, per paycheck, into savings. We are ever so slowly building our emergency fund and adding money to The Kids’ accounts. At this rate it would take forever to pay them back, but at least we are making strides. Once our credit card debt is cleared out, we will be able to pay them back quickly.

When planning our May budget, I did try to fund our different budget categories, which has been the problem in the past. I didn’t fund those categories, but the kids still need clothes, hair needs to be cut, and toilet paper needs to be bought. Although by funding these we pay off debt more slowly, it also keeps us from accruing more debt because we have, at least some of, the money we need to buy essentials. For the month of May, we allocated over $600 to different budget categories, not including food or gas. In all honesty, it’s probably not enough, but at least it’s a start. As we pay off more and more debt, we will be able to fully fund all our envelopes.  Many of those envelopes are starting to have a balance carry over from month to month, which will really help as we need to start spending money from those categories.

I do feel like 6% is a great number, and much better than the increase we had from November to February. If we were able to have 6% gains every month, that would be awesome. But, being realistic here, some months are better than others. The goal right now, is to not increase our debt totals and to keep them going down. My goal is to lower our debt total every month, whether by baby steps or leaps and bounds. 

For next month, my goal is to break even with our credit card bill, after interest, I want the balance to be $11794, or lower. Our Washington D.C. trip was very expensive and I’m hoping that we can “pay for it” using all cash. In other words, if we break even, we were able to pay for our whole trip, just not able to put any extra towards debt. Again, it’s going to be close. We do have some reimbursements coming our way from The Husband’s company and that will help us towards our goal too. We will just have to wait and see how much our reimbursement totals are.

A Goal Missed

Sorry for the radio silence the last couple of weeks. We were in Washington D.C. and we didn’t have a lot of spare time. Plus, I became sick as a dog on my second day of vacation and was sick for the remainder of my trip. Most nights, I went to sleep before The Kids and woke up after them, too. Blogging was definitely not my priority.

It was on this trip that I found out I missed my goal of being under $11000 by $794.07. However, that’s not the whole story. I did not factor in the fact that some charges from our D.C. trip would be on this credit card statement. Taking out the D.C. charges of $534.74, I only missed my goal by $259.33, but I still missed it.

I don’t know if that makes sense to anybody but me, but I know what I mean, you know?

I had finance charges of $170. I’m bummed I missed my goal, but I’m not totally surprised. It was a stretch to make that goal in the first place. On the flip side, my overall debt did go down again, so I’m going to try to focus on that. With all the charges for Washington D.C. before we even left: airfare, hotel, attraction tickets, etc, it was going to be difficult to get under $11000 in the first place. Even with all the extra money that I could scrounge up to throw at the credit card, we were unable to make the goal, but at least we tried. I guess it’s better to aim high and miss than have low goals that you are “successful” making every month.

We are going to continue to aim high, but realistic, as we go forward with our debt repayment.

Our D.C. trip was very expensive, but we had a wonderful time!

Leaving for D.C.

We leave for D.C. this week and things are crazy.

Our house sale is up in the air. We had an open house over the weekend and there was a lot of interest. There were 24 sets of people, 5 who came with their agent, and 2 who even came back during the open house for a second look. We had 2 people come check it out yesterday and another one is coming today (this one came during the open house and is returning for a second look). We do have one offer (it’s iffy because it’s an FHA loan and apparently those are very picky and particular). We are hoping to receive more by the cutoff deadline of today at 5:30, but we’ll see.

It will be difficult to deal with house stuff in D.C., but not impossible. We have yet to find a new place to live. We’ve been to many open houses and had several private showings, but nothing that has felt just right, yet. We are starting to feel the stress, but we are very blessed to have been offered to live with 3 different relatives if our house sells and we don’t find anything.

Going to D.C. should be a nice get away for us; time to spend together as a family, time to not have to think about house stuff, and time to explore our nation’s capital. We are really looking forward to it. The best part of this trip, is that it is mostly paid for. We have already paid for the hotel and our air fare. We only have to cover our expenses while we are in D.C. Many of the things we want to do are free: Ford’s Theater, the national mall, the Smithsonian, the zoo, etc. We will have to pay for Mount Vernon, the International Spy Museum and a few other things, but not too many. Food and souvenirs will be our biggest expenses. (With The Husband’s business trip, we are going to try to keep our food costs to a minimum.)

I hate feeling like things are so up in the air. I’m so Type A that I want my life to feel settled and organized. Right now, it feels anything but.

10 days to get away (mostly) from house stuff will definitely be welcome!

I don't know that I'll be able to write any blog posts during the trip so just because I don't write for a couple weeks, don't think I'm gone! Hopefully, when I come back my first post will  be all about how we kept our costs down in D.C.

Tidbits

Well, my goal was to be under $10000 of credit card debt by my next statement (4/15/17) and sadly, that’s not going to happen. L It’s not going to happen because we fully paid for our trip to Washington D.C. If we weren’t going to D.C., we would have made it. As it stands right now, I am trying to get the statement to be under $11000, including interest. It’s going to be close and actually, in order to make it happen, I need to come up with an extra $150 in the next week and I don’t know if I will be able to.

We did come into some extra money that is all going towards our credit card debt, but it’s just not enough to fall under the $11000 mark. The Husband earned $200, after taxes, in overtime that I already sent towards the credit card! Every little bit helps. The overtime he has been earning has helped to offset the 401K loan we took out. We have yet to have a “normal” paycheck with the loan payment amount being taken out, which is both a good and a bad thing. All the extra, over my estimated take home pay of $1700 has gone towards our credit card debt.

The Boy was very sick and missed 7 days of school, during that time, he missed a field trip (insert sad face) that we had paid for back in September. I was to chaperone and the cost was $30 per person. I received that money back from his teacher yesterday and we will be applying that directly to the credit card as well.

Even with all those little extras, we are still $150 short of making my goal of less than $11000 credit card debt, after interest, on our next statement. I’m trying to figure out a way to make up the shortage. I can roll some change we have, that might yield about $20 or so. And I do have some money in petty cash I could use, this time only, to push towards our goal. Whether or not we can make the goal remains to be seen.

Speaking of petty cash, I’ve noticed that the better we are at funding each of our envelopes: food, gas, clothes, school, hair care, car repair, essentials, and kids’ activities, the less we need money in the petty cash jar. A drawback of funding each of our envelopes, however, is that we have less money to send towards debt. I know that the reality is that we are actually accruing less debt too, because we aren’t having to charge essential purchases.

I have roughed up our May budget, for example, and I only have $1865 to send towards our credit card. Seeing that number was a little deflating. I really want to be able to send a minimum of $2000 a month towards our credit card debt. In that budget, I also put $50 into savings, paid $100 towards what we owe our kids, and filled our envelopes with $700 collectively.  That is $850 that could have gone towards debt, but if I did that, we would probably have accrued more debt paying for things that needed to be paid for.

I am trying to be more fiscally responsible, which means saving money for things we need to save money for so we don’t get caught unawares or unable to pay for things we need and paying off debt. I read blogs all the time that talk about how hard it is to save for multiple goals. Now, especially, I see what they mean. It’s hard to fund multiple goals. It would be much easier if we didn’t have debt! The goal here, is that by funding our envelopes, we will have to rely less on credit to get us through the month. Eventually, I would like to fund our envelopes at about twice the rate we are right now, but until we are out of credit card debt, we are unable to do that.

It's About to Get Real!

Our house is supposed to go on the market this week. I can't believe it!

Our realtor came over today with a photographer to take pictures of the house for the listing. I'm excited to see how the final photos actually look and if they make the house look good.

The past week has been crazy! We have been in overdrive trying to get the house sale and open-house ready. In the last three weeks we have repainted all of the window and door trim on the outside. We have replaced outside siding tiles and painted the house to be all one color. (Due to replacing all the windows, we hadn't matched all the siding.) We bought plants to plant along the front of the house and in pots on the porch. We bought new seat cushions for our bistro table on the porch. We mulched all the open areas of our yard. We laid sod in the backyard and cleaned up the heck out of the back yard. (For all of our remodels, the backyard has acted as our staging area and it definitely reflected that until it got some love in the last couple weeks.)

On the inside we've touched up paint on the inside of the house. Repainted a wall in the bathroom and a wall in the laundry room. We have finished the crown molding, door trim, and baseboards in the kitchen as well as baseboards in the rest of the living areas of the house. We've cleaned, swept, dusted, and vacuumed until we couldn't do it anymore.

Pictures were taken today. There's nothing more we can do at this point. We will clean again for the open-house this weekend and after that, it's all out of our hands.

We are listing for $330,000. We have to make enough on our current home in order to be able to put a good sized down payment on our future home. It's nerve wracking.

We don't know where we are going to live if our home sells quickly or if we just want to try to rent for a year. There is so much to think about. Plus, there's always the possibility that our home doesn't sell, or we don't get any offers anywhere near our asking price.

Our asking price is in line with comps in the area. Our home is only 2 bedrooms, but it's 1100 square feet. It's also beautifully remodeled on the inside and the outside is cute and charming, but it does have some drawbacks. It's on the corner of a busier residential street and it doesn't have air conditioning. Not having A/C where we live could definitely be a deal breaker for buyers. It gets hot in the summer, which is why we wanted to get it on the market in the spring, before it gets unreasonably hot.

We are nervous, excited, scared, and every other emotion you could think of when it comes to selling your home! And the last few weeks have been crazy and a whirlwind! Now that the pictures have been taken and the open-house is this weekend, we think we will have a little time to relax.

The one thing that has really irked us the last few days is that if we had put in a good 3 weeks of hard work, we could have had our house exactly as we wanted it, but it took us listing it, to finally get down to work to complete the finishing touches we wanted done. Oh well, c'est la vie!

It's been a very bittersweet time putting effort and money into a home, that's not going to be ours anymore.

We talked emotions, now let's talk dollars.

Because of all the upgrades we have done in the past, the amount of money we had to put into getting the house ready to sell was relatively low.

All told, we spent less than $2000 to complete everything we wanted. That includes the outside gardening and sod, which ran us about $600. Paint and supplies which was about another $200. We put a cabinet in the laundry room that was $130, new blinds throughout the house that totaled about $500, we spent another $400 on trim (which we would have needed to buy regardless of if we were selling or not), and the remaining $150 or so dollars was spent on odds and ends. I don't feel like that's too bad considering we would have needed trim no matter what.

Hopefully we will get our money back and then some, but that remains to be seen. Wish us luck for the open-house and that we receive many offers!

I know this post is looooooong! If you stayed with me this long, thank you!

Having a Life is Expensive

Life is expensive!

The Kids and I are travelling to Washington D.C. next month with The Husband. He is going for a work trip. His air fare, hotel for 4 nights, and food for 5 days will be covered.

Air fare for The Kids and I ran us about $1500.  We are staying for 10 nights. We are on the hook for the hotel for 6 of those nights. That is a cost, to us, of about $950. We also rented a rental car for while we are there to the tune of $450. Altogether, we are paying $2900 for 10 nights in Washington D.C. for four people. That amount does not include food or souvenirs. Overall, I think it’s a great price.

This is one of those situations where we are choosing to live and enjoy our life rather than get out of debt faster. The Husband is heading to D.C. for a business trip and since it fell during our spring break, The Kids and I are tagging along. What I’m about to say is not justifying our expense, just explaining it. By travelling to D.C. now, we are “saving” money. The Husband’s air fare is covered, and we only have to pay for 6 of the 10 nights. To us, it was a no brainer that The Kids and I would go to.

I’m most bummed that because of this trip, we won’t get our credit card debt under $10000 by my next update. The trip will be paid for (in fact, I’ve already paid for our airfare and half our portion of the hotel), but the money I used to pay for the trip, $2900, won’t go towards extra debt payoff now. Assuming we don’t charge much more in the next 2 weeks, our balance on our credit card will still be about $10900. All told, that’s not too bad considering we added $3000 of travel expenses to the card, but look where we’d be if we hadn’t and were able to only allocate that money towards debt!

In all honesty, I think the trip is worth it. The memories and life experiences we are giving The Kids and ourselves, far outweigh the extra couple months we will be in debt.

I’m just going to keep plugging away. I know it’s a cliché, but it became one because it’s true, slow and steady wins the race. I’m going to continue to throw all our extra money at the end of each pay period towards debt. As long as we keep our spending in check, we will continue to pay more than we charge and we will see small gains each month.

The trip is worth it, but expensive. I guess I should stop complaining, we made a choice to spend $3000 plus food and souvenirs. We could have sent that money towards our debt and we didn’t. Plus side is that we aren’t adding to our debt to take the trip and have paid for every part of it so far: air fare and hotel, and we are saving money for the rental car. We aren’t increasing our debt to take the trip!

*SIDENOTE – The Husband’s company has been such a good company to work for. He submitted his reimbursement for the D.C. trip on Friday, it was approved the following Monday and in our bank account the very next Wednesday. I recently started reading a blog where the author often complains that travel reimbursements from her company take upwards of 3 months. We are very lucky that our reimbursements often take less than a week!