three financial things thursday
1. I sold my road bike this week, finally.
I was a pretty sad when it rolled away, but we're trying to make good financial decisions as we rebuild what has been lost this year, and this was definitely a good one to make. I would rather be out of debt than have two bicycles. Check.
2. Along those lines, I'm going to leap pretty severely off-topic here and let everyone know that I am also selling my Lawson Classical french horn. I've had it posted with a dealer for about two years now, but it hasn't moved so I'm trying to spread the word a bit (click here for the listing). For those of you in the music world, it's a nickel bronze horn with a clear and dark low register and a brilliant high Bb. I really do hate to use the blog for things like this, but I've decided to announce it along with the promise that when I do sell it, I'm going to donate a significant amount of money to each of the charities we decided on earlier this summer: Lost Dog and GRREAT. Hopefully that news will calm all the angry little hearts that are disgusted at my shameful attempts to continue to make good decisions for my family. It hurts my heart to sell my horn, but it hasn't been played in years and that chapter of my life has closed. If it pisses you off that I'm using the blog for this, just go ahead and click away, I won't mind. If you're a musician and wouldn't mind spreading the word, I would deeply appreciate it. Here's a picture of me being blonde and chunky and playing the horn for you to giggle at.
3. Since 2009, we've rented out two - and sometimes three - rooms in our house to roommates. When I was in graduate school, it helped make up some of the costs and we had some good people live here with us so it's almost never been a burden. When I finished graduate school, the poet went straight in, and then when he finished and the two great guys that lived here moved on, we decided to just live here by ourselves. That was this past....March? I was able to spend about five weeks walking around naked before I lost my job. We immediately turned the search back on and have rented the two rooms again. But recently we've started to wonder in a serious fashion if we could move into a smaller place with a smaller mortgage that is just for us.
The biggest problem with all of this is that when I bought the house, it was a foreclosure and I didn't pay much for it (although it was a giant effing hassle of paperwork), and then we refinanced this past winter to drop our interest rate from 5% to 3.67%. The reason that is a problem (my diamond shoes! they are so tight!) is because we would have to move at least 25 miles in any direction to find a home that was smaller (small townhouse is what we would look for, need a backyard for the booboos) without our mortgage being twice as high. My mind is continuously blown about the state of housing in the metro DC area, and I'm not sure how I lucked into my big falling-down foreclosure, but our small mortgage + having roommates is making it impossible to find a less expensive situation. We've also considered selling and renting, but rental prices in my neighborhood are significantly higher than our mortgage. So we're stuck, which isn't the end of the world for right now. Anyhow, that's not really relevant to anything, but I needed a third financial thing for Thursday and it's what has been on my mind lately.
What financial things have been on your mind lately? Sorry for the off-topic post, complaining about running is back on tap for tomorrow.
2. Along those lines, I'm going to leap pretty severely off-topic here and let everyone know that I am also selling my Lawson Classical french horn. I've had it posted with a dealer for about two years now, but it hasn't moved so I'm trying to spread the word a bit (click here for the listing). For those of you in the music world, it's a nickel bronze horn with a clear and dark low register and a brilliant high Bb. I really do hate to use the blog for things like this, but I've decided to announce it along with the promise that when I do sell it, I'm going to donate a significant amount of money to each of the charities we decided on earlier this summer: Lost Dog and GRREAT. Hopefully that news will calm all the angry little hearts that are disgusted at my shameful attempts to continue to make good decisions for my family. It hurts my heart to sell my horn, but it hasn't been played in years and that chapter of my life has closed. If it pisses you off that I'm using the blog for this, just go ahead and click away, I won't mind. If you're a musician and wouldn't mind spreading the word, I would deeply appreciate it. Here's a picture of me being blonde and chunky and playing the horn for you to giggle at.
The biggest problem with all of this is that when I bought the house, it was a foreclosure and I didn't pay much for it (although it was a giant effing hassle of paperwork), and then we refinanced this past winter to drop our interest rate from 5% to 3.67%. The reason that is a problem (my diamond shoes! they are so tight!) is because we would have to move at least 25 miles in any direction to find a home that was smaller (small townhouse is what we would look for, need a backyard for the booboos) without our mortgage being twice as high. My mind is continuously blown about the state of housing in the metro DC area, and I'm not sure how I lucked into my big falling-down foreclosure, but our small mortgage + having roommates is making it impossible to find a less expensive situation. We've also considered selling and renting, but rental prices in my neighborhood are significantly higher than our mortgage. So we're stuck, which isn't the end of the world for right now. Anyhow, that's not really relevant to anything, but I needed a third financial thing for Thursday and it's what has been on my mind lately.
What financial things have been on your mind lately? Sorry for the off-topic post, complaining about running is back on tap for tomorrow.