Monday, December 18, 2017

Our retirement home~

We have finally closed on our retirement home (I call it this because we are in our mid 40's and this is actually the home we will continue the rest of our lives in) on December 8th. I gave the title company almost 21,000 dollars at closing. We have been packing, moving, unpacking, and cleaning the rental. We have been living in our new home for almost a week now. It is a blessing to have a new build with out any major issues that need to be addressed on a regular basis.

We cleaned the rental. We have the carpets being professionally cleaned tomorrow. We have four cats and a small dog, so this is a requirement as part of our lease. This will cost 0.25 cents a square foot.

We broke the lease. There is a penalty fee of 3,000 dollars. I will have this to give to the property manager on Wednesday morning during the final walk through of the rental house.

I will turn the water and electric off after the walk through with the property manager on Wednesday since it states in my lease that this will be done after the walk through.

We have the water and electric on at our new house. We have groceries. We started with a pest control service since this is Florida and we do not have a hard freeze or a traditional winter. They came this morning and treated the kitchen, both bathrooms, the in the wall tubing system, and the outside. They will come every 90 days to perform this service. I paid 112 dollars for today as an initial treatment. The quarterly cost will be 94 dollars and my own peace of mind is worth every penny.

We had the internet installed finally this morning. We are an internet family and were starting to go through withdrawal. The monthly cost for internet service is 54 dollars a month. We opted not to get cable since we are not really television watchers.

We have a new security system. In the area we moved to (on the other side of town) has a lot of construction workers, people walking around in the evenings, numerous realtors, folks that are window shopping for homes, and we felt that having a new security system would help us feel more comfortable until the homes in this area are bought and there is less people traffic. There has been an issue in the city with break ins and this way we will have peace of mind. The cost for the ADT system is about 90 dollars a month. I paid for the installation and January's payment yesterday.

I have been working a lot. I did some overtime last week and it showed in my paycheck. I have not touched my savings other than the closing money. We had blinds delivered through my mother in law from J C Penny. They are too big and we have to return them. J C Penny stated that since the measurements were incorrect that they would send someone out to remeasure them and get some new ones installed. We will be returning the blinds on Wednesday.

We have a new washer and dryer. The washer is a top loader and requires HE detergent. We had to buy some and this was a challenge as the grocery store only had Tide or Gain in HE. We bought a package of Tide HE pods and there was 32 pods in the package for almost ten dollars. So far, since we wash clothes in the cold cycle the pods really haven't given us any trouble. I would really like to find a cheaper price for HE detergent. We are so used to using dollar tree liquid detergent as we have never had a HE washer before.

Dinners this past week have been an adventure. We had burgers and fries one night. Another night we had pasta, italian sausage with peppers and onions, with some spaghetti sauce. One night we had a pot roast in the crock pot with veggies and gravy. There were a couple of nights with left overs. One night we ordered pizza since we were exhausted from moving.

I am working tonight. I had to take my middle DD to the urologist this morning. She has another kidney stone and we have to get another CT scan on Thursday when she is off work. The cost for this office visit was 25 dollars and we were given samples of rapaflow to use instead of flomax. IT is a seven day course of meds.

I went to the doctor today as a follow up from the swallow study I had last week. He has decided to send me to the GI specialist and get evaluated for esophageal spasms. He has also continued the nexium which I feel has not make any difference since he thinks I have reflux disease.

Tonight's dinner is hot dogs and baked beans. I have to work soon and needed an easy dinner to feed everyone. It prevents me from having to get take out (which I really can't afford) and continues to use what we have in the pantry, fridge, and freezer.


4 comments:

  1. If the break the lease fee the rent that would have been paid through to the end of the lease? In CT, the landlord has to show due diligence (showing and advertising the unit), upon written notice of vacating and breaking a lease. The original tenant who breaks the lease is only responsible for any months the unit goes unrented. What about your security deposit? As far as HE detergent-please read the instruction booklet that came with the washer. I have a top of the line Speed Queen, and have had 2 other HE machines. The bulk of detergent sold around here is HE formulation. Whether HE or not, I measure 2 oz of detergent (The powder detergent sold at Dollar Tree works really well!). I despise pods. I had a deal on a large bucket of Tide pods. They were awful so I contacted Tide and long story short, received a $19 check, which was more than what I paid for the dam* things. In order to use them and not have either blue streaks or clear sticky bits (the outer pouch of the pod) leaving marks all over (the outer casing of the pod wouldn't wash out, I had to spend several minutes per blob to pick it off, using a scrub brush).Many have thrown clothing out as a result and also have thrown out the pods. Do you have either Arm & Hammer or Purex HE formulation at your stores? Both often go on sale $1.99/50 oz jug. HTH

    ReplyDelete
  2. There was a clause in our lease when we signed it stating that there was a minimum 90 day stay at the rental and after 90 days we could break the lease with the penalty fee being paid. We are not required to pay for the rest of the lease which would have ended in July 2018. The rental property manager stated that he started advertising the rental as available as of the 15th of this month. We did the walk through yesterday and they stated that there has been a lot of interest in the rental and this hopefully will help them recoup the costs.

    I was told yesterday after the walk through that we would be getting the security deposit back in full. It is a total of 1,500 dollars which will go back into my savings account. The property manager asked me if we got the rental professionally cleaned prior to moving (which is not in our lease requirements) and I told him that my husband and I cleaned the rental. I did have the carpets professionally cleaned as this was a requirement in our lease.

    We have a samsung washer and dryer which was a gift to us from my husband's family from Lowe's when we bought the house. I am not very familular with this type of machine as we have always had the basic washer and dryer and have used detergent from the dollar store with the same brand fabric softener dryer sheets. Thank you for mentioning the powder detergent at dollar tree as we do a lot of our shopping at Aldi and the dollar store. I have not had any issues with the Tide Pods (we always wash in cold water) but I never used tide before this and it makes me itch really bad. We will finish this detergent up and will look at Dollar Tree for the recommended one. We do have Purex and Arm and Hammer HE at the other stores in town and will look into the costs per wash.

    ReplyDelete
  3. HE machine means I measure out 2 oz of detergent. I have used HE front loaders for years (well water and septic system so water usage remains a concern). The detergent from DT, I posted on that: https://ctonabudget.blogspot.com/2017/11/product-review-new-laundry-powder.html you can see what the pkg looks like and read my review of it. Awesome product, VERY popular-it flies off of the shelves. Lots of you tube reviews of it as well. I am sure that you are happy to have the rental behind you, and can now settle into your forever home.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We are very happy to finally be in our "retirement home" and are looking forward to spending our years here. We have been unpacking and found that we are in need of good quality book shelves since we are avid readers. We will be looking into the thrift shops and see what has been put out there for folks to purchase.

      In regards to the detergent, I will stop by the Dollar Tree (about ten minutes from my house and close to Aldi) when we have our next grocery shopping adventure. We shop maybe every three weeks and try to stretch it out as far as possible.

      Delete