Moving Day?
Parts of this entry have been rattling around in my head since Monday, but I get these weird blocks and come up with all these excuses why not to post things. Its my avoidance. If I don’t post about it, it doesn’t really exist to be dealt with.
Its come to this. After more than five years in my current apartment, I want to move. When I moved in back in 2000 (!) I had a tree and an old house out my back window, a fruit market down the street, a quiet lady with two dogs that never even barked lived below me, and I figured this would be my first job and I wouldn’t stay it for more than two years tops. Fast forward to 2005 and now my back window looks out into the backdoors of a strip mall, the fruit market is a parking lot, two loud stupid guys with a yippee dog live below me, and I’ve passed my five year anniversary at my job.
I need to make a change. I have to be honest with myself and admit that I’m not in a place to just quit my job or uproot myself right now. So, I look for a change of locale. I know that pretty much everyone is telling me to buy a place. I wish I would’ve had that kind of foresight five years ago, but alas, that is the past. Not worth regretting. I’m trying to get some information on morgages and whatnot, but really, right now, I just don’t feel like I am in a place financially to take on the responsibilities of homeownership. I know I have decent credit and all this. But I don’t have the money to buy myself a new stove if the one in a place that I owned broke.
But thankfully, there is my friend Adrienne. She is a doer. I mentioned to her a month or so ago that I was unhappy in my place and looking to move. She was instantly all about helping me find a place. So last week she was at some gathering of people and overheard a conversation from a girl named Rachel who had just lost her roommate to an unexpected engagement. So Adrienne, being the rock star social secretary that she is, stepped up and said “you need a roommate? tell me more.” Long story, semi-short, I went and met Rachel last night and saw her condo. I was telling myself that this was just to get the ball rolling on me owning a place, but I can’t stop thinking about her condo since I was there last night.
Lisa told me to make the time-honored Pro/Con list:
Pros:
- I’d save at least $200/month on my living expenses that could be used to combat debt.
- Mac can move with me (this is a huge thing for me)
- My car would have a garage to reside in
- Treadmill I could use.
- Huge bedroom with vaulted ceilings
- My own bathroom
- Walk-in closet
- Washer and dryer. No more quarters
- Nice little deck.
- Currently, there is nothing directly behind the condo other than a cornfield.
- Nice to have someone else around from time to time.
- But she’s a busy dental student so we wouldn’t be all up in each other’s lives all the time.
- Only 3 miles from work.
- Only a little over a mile to J&S’s new place.
- J&S could babysit the few nice pieces of furniture that I wouldn’t have room for.
- Its not a serious committment. If I want to leave in 6 months, I’m pretty sure I can.
Cons:
- Its as far on the SE side of Iowa City you can get. As far away from where I live now as you can basically get.
- Its not my own place. Can’t paint anything or get crazy with decorating. And I’m not building any equity into anything.
- I wouldn’t have guest space other than in my bed or on the couch.
- It would be a drive to the gym (until I could switch my membership to Core.)
- I’d have to ditch some of my furniture.
- I can’t wander around in little of nothing while I get breakfast ready. ;-)
Can you see that I’m leaning towards it more and more as the day goes by.
I know my mom has already mentally rearranged half my furniture and given the rest to J&S.
What do ya’ll think?
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Well, as I said earlier, you had me at “walk in closet”.
The pro’s are really alot stronger than then cons. You also mentioned that Rachel is only committed to the place until 2007 right? So that gives you time to pay off the debt and get yourself to a place where you are comfortable with home ownership.
If you dont move in are you going to buy in the next year?
I had a professor in college that believed that whenever you make the Benjamin Franklin “T” (the pro/con list) that you will automatically come up with more reasons on the side that you really want to go with. In this case it looks like the “pro” side is substantially longer. I’d go for it.
Or I’d maybe still consider buying your own place. I only say that because, well, when was the last time you remember hearing that someone’s stove broke and they had to replace it? I had many of the same trepidations when we bought our first house and, in retrospect, I’m really glad that Katie just forced me into doing it. It really turned out to be the right decision.
I use the stove example because that happened to me while I was living in this apartment (with D) and this place is relatively new. And I also had problems with my furnace here a few years ago (that was a lovely month with indoor temps in the 40’s)… all things that my landlord had to shell out money to replace and repair.
Those are the things that give me pause.
If you dont have a comfortable savings account to provide for any unforseen expenses, home ownership can really be financially draining. Even with a brand spanking new place, things can go wrong….
Within 2 months of moving into our house we had to but in a new sewer line. Granted its an older home in an old neighborhood, but the inspection didnt uncover any potential sewage issues. And you know how those pesky appliances are. When one goes, two others follow. Its a plot. ;)Our washer, dryer and fridge all up and died with in a few months of each other.