We starting moving our things and sleeping at our new home the day after Thanksgiving, so we’ve been in our house for exactly 2 weeks! It’s been really cool going home to my own house! In the past two weeks we have really gotten a lot done! In addition to the contributing to the economy via all the shopping we’ve done, we also learned a few major things this week.
1: Starting up a new home from scratch is more expensive than expected. Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely thankful that we have the means to purchase everything that we need for the house. Still, it’s a little painful seeing money fly out of our account so fast!
Since we both lived with our respective parents for a while, we didn’t have any of the basic stuff that most people bring to their new home. Buying all of the startup items, both large and small items add up. It’s getting pretty expensive and we still have a lot more to get! I’m hoping all the spending will slow down by the time January rolls around. Looking beyond all the start up purchases, even with our awesome budgeting, I’m a still little nervous to see our first water, gas and electric bills!
2: Our realtor is an idiot. We’ve proven that point again. We pay association fees for our subdivision. When we bought the house we were told by our realtor those fees include snow plowing and trash removal…well, that was a big fat lie! Last Tuesday was trash day, so we put out our trash. But guess what? Everyone’s trash got picked up except ours! We were like, “What’s going on, what’s up with that?” At work the next morning I asked some questions. There are two people that live in the same city, so I asked them what their trash situation is. Apparently, we have to pay for our own trash pickup! We had to get an account with one of the several waste management companies that service the area. I was like “Whhhaaat?” LOL, neither one of us have had to deal with that before. Both of our parents live in cities where trash pickup is included in the cost of your taxes. When I stop and think about it, we originally thought it was odd that we had to pay for it through HOA fees. So, now that we know that’s not even included in the HOA fees, needless to say, that is another expenditure we weren’t expecting. It’s like $200 a year. It’s not a really high price, but still, something else we didn’t expect to have to pay for. With the problem solved, we got trash pickup this past Tuesday! Woohoo!
3. Double check the situation before buying appliances. There are both a 220 outlet for an electric dryer and a gas hook up for a gas dyer. We ordered electric. The delivery guy comes to install and guess what?!? The outlet doesn’t work. OMG. Come to find out, the previous owners disconnected the wires from the outlet, so we either had to swap out the appliances (at a additional costs of course) or call an electrician to run a line to the outlet. Why would they disconnect the outlet...who the hell knows. After we thought about the hourly cost of the electrician and the possibility of opening a can of worms, needless to say, Sears got a phone call.
Next on the immediate to do list…move our large items in and put together our dinette set! Yay!
~ Tamara
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