I am bad at anniversaries
Oct. 17th, 2014 12:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mousmeTwo days ago marked the third anniversary of the day I moved into this house. Now, in a little over two weeks, I'll be moving into the little house I rented in Ottawa, right near work. Whatever little money I make off the sale of this house is going to go into a savings account, and I'll be adding to it for the next couple of years so that I can once again afford a down payment on a real, owned-by-me house.
I'm going to miss this house. It was (and is) my first, and I love it a lot. It's really big for just one person, with lots of natural light and beautiful hardwood floors. I love my neighbours and the quiet neighbourhood, and the dog park that's a two minute walk away. I'm going to miss the space, the quiet, the security of owning my own home. If I could just uproot the house (and maybe the neighbours, too) and take it with me, I would likely do that. Alas.
It's a move for the better. I'll be close to work, and won't exhaust myself commuting 600km a week or more. I'll save on gas by being able to walk to work most days. The rent on the house will be less than what I was paying on the mortgage and renting the little room in Ottawa, too. Not to mention that the room I was renting was in Nepea'n, which made for terribly long commutes through rush hour traffic in the evenings. All in all, I'll likely end up saving a couple hundred dollars a month, which does add up.
In the meantime, I'm kind of feeling the financial pinch. Don't get me wrong, I have good problems. I have problems other people would kill to have. Nonetheless, my finances this past year have been stretched incredibly thin, when in reality I shouldn't be having this much trouble making ends meet. So starting in December, when I'll be moved and settled, I'm going to start a regime of personal financial austerity that's going to make the Europoean fiscal practices of the past few years feel downright spendthrifty. :P
Okay, maybe not quite that bad. But I still have a good nine months of pretty stiff expenses ahead of me. The big expense after rent is the car payments, which will be over in May, and the daycare payments, which will end in June. After that, the money that was going to those two things is going to get funnelled directly into paying off the debt I accrued in the last year doing house renovations and travelling back and forth to a different city. My hope is to get almost all of the debt paid off within about 12 months, and still put money aside for a down payment on a house in about two years or so.
In the interim, I'll be using![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thinkingoutlaw's book to help me be thriftier in the kitchen. Have you all seen it yet? It's pretty great, and on Amazon for a very reasonable price! Even if you don't have an e-reader. Well worth the read, if you're looking to spend less on food yet still eat delicious, healthy things.
For now, I'm trying to focus on packing up my house. It's going very slowly so far, but I hope to pick up the pace in the coming days. Since the movers are paid by the hour, I'll need to make sure that I "waste" as little of their time as possible. The plan is to put as much of my furniture as possible together in one room (probably the space I use as a dining room), and to stack all the boxes together in the living room. I don't want the movers having to trot in and out of various rooms in the house if they don't have to. That way the only extra movements they'll have to make will be to fetch the appliances from the basement and the glass table I have on my balcony, which I don't think I'll be able to move on my own to the front of the house. I can at least move the chairs, though. The hope is that, if I consolidate everything, it won't take them three hours to pack up the house. I'm already looking at about five hours of travel time, so I need to keep the loading/unloading time to a minimum.
I also need to deal with a million details. Cancel the house insurance, acquire rental insurance, switch over the insurance on the car, change my address with Canada Post, cancel the utilities, all that jazz. So much to do, so little time.
I will come back with other updates later. There are lots of things happening, but they don't belong in this entry.
I'm going to miss this house. It was (and is) my first, and I love it a lot. It's really big for just one person, with lots of natural light and beautiful hardwood floors. I love my neighbours and the quiet neighbourhood, and the dog park that's a two minute walk away. I'm going to miss the space, the quiet, the security of owning my own home. If I could just uproot the house (and maybe the neighbours, too) and take it with me, I would likely do that. Alas.
It's a move for the better. I'll be close to work, and won't exhaust myself commuting 600km a week or more. I'll save on gas by being able to walk to work most days. The rent on the house will be less than what I was paying on the mortgage and renting the little room in Ottawa, too. Not to mention that the room I was renting was in Nepea'n, which made for terribly long commutes through rush hour traffic in the evenings. All in all, I'll likely end up saving a couple hundred dollars a month, which does add up.
In the meantime, I'm kind of feeling the financial pinch. Don't get me wrong, I have good problems. I have problems other people would kill to have. Nonetheless, my finances this past year have been stretched incredibly thin, when in reality I shouldn't be having this much trouble making ends meet. So starting in December, when I'll be moved and settled, I'm going to start a regime of personal financial austerity that's going to make the Europoean fiscal practices of the past few years feel downright spendthrifty. :P
Okay, maybe not quite that bad. But I still have a good nine months of pretty stiff expenses ahead of me. The big expense after rent is the car payments, which will be over in May, and the daycare payments, which will end in June. After that, the money that was going to those two things is going to get funnelled directly into paying off the debt I accrued in the last year doing house renovations and travelling back and forth to a different city. My hope is to get almost all of the debt paid off within about 12 months, and still put money aside for a down payment on a house in about two years or so.
In the interim, I'll be using
thinkingoutlaw's book to help me be thriftier in the kitchen. Have you all seen it yet? It's pretty great, and on Amazon for a very reasonable price! Even if you don't have an e-reader. Well worth the read, if you're looking to spend less on food yet still eat delicious, healthy things.For now, I'm trying to focus on packing up my house. It's going very slowly so far, but I hope to pick up the pace in the coming days. Since the movers are paid by the hour, I'll need to make sure that I "waste" as little of their time as possible. The plan is to put as much of my furniture as possible together in one room (probably the space I use as a dining room), and to stack all the boxes together in the living room. I don't want the movers having to trot in and out of various rooms in the house if they don't have to. That way the only extra movements they'll have to make will be to fetch the appliances from the basement and the glass table I have on my balcony, which I don't think I'll be able to move on my own to the front of the house. I can at least move the chairs, though. The hope is that, if I consolidate everything, it won't take them three hours to pack up the house. I'm already looking at about five hours of travel time, so I need to keep the loading/unloading time to a minimum.
I also need to deal with a million details. Cancel the house insurance, acquire rental insurance, switch over the insurance on the car, change my address with Canada Post, cancel the utilities, all that jazz. So much to do, so little time.
I will come back with other updates later. There are lots of things happening, but they don't belong in this entry.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2014-10-17 05:12 pm (UTC)Another excellent resource for thrifty cooking is:
http://www.leannebrown.com/
Her book "Good and Cheap" is designed for people on food stamps who have $4/day to spend on food, and is free to download from her website. I've made her recipe for Calzones and they were seriously yummy.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-17 05:15 pm (UTC)I will definitely take a look. My own food choices are more complicated now that I have to change my diet for medical reasons (I'll probably make a post about that soon), so the more resources I have to figure things out, the better.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-17 05:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-22 02:26 am (UTC)Also, depending on what your food restrictions are, A Girl Called Jack is pretty fantastic. As well as a blog called Cheap Healthy Good (if I remember correctly, there's a recipe for butternut squash risotto there that... mmmmmmm....)
no subject
Date: 2014-10-17 05:16 pm (UTC)