New England B.S. Thread

That's one way to think about it.

 

We did ours in 2015..the joke was "which family member will we murder to get the inheritance money to do the job?" which proved a wee bit prophetic sadly as my father in law passed in 2013. That said we did it for about 13K doing as much as we could ourselves. Those walls hadn't been apart in 50 years or so, old style built-in cabinets, etc. A wise idea to do the smaller stuff first when your larger stuff is at least functional. Plus it's better done during the summer so you can grill outside every meal and use paper plates etc.

Haha..we actually did a rustic type decor, found a table set from the 1940s (house was built in the 30s) and upcycled part of a Hoosier cabinet as a bar cart, among other stuff.

 

Watch out for black ice this morning guys

 

You weren’t kidding! Almost 40 when I left but the road was a sheet of ice.

 

Ours is up 50% since we bought it. It's starting to come back down a bit now. When interest rates go up is when we'll see the market come down a lot I think.

There's going to be a lot of flippers who are stuck holding the bag when the market does come down. I fear it won't be a gentle decrease it's going to come down hard.

We refinanced in January 2021. 2.625% on a 30 year. They took our value estimate without needing to appraise it, so we refinanced. Got our rate cut in half, and our PMI fell off. 2.625% is low enough that I have no incentive to pay it off early

That's the issue is now I have such a good setup and a nice house and location, it's hard to want to move into the chaos that is the housing markets in Texas. It's cold here but like, don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

Thanks for the heads up! My driveway was never cleared from the last storm. Homeowner is a lazy twat who decided to just clear a little bit of the snow and just drife over it until mother nature did her thing so the driveway is going to be slippery.

Silly lazy homeowner.

On the plus side the forecast doesn't dip into the 30s beyond Friday.

 

Yeah it was a flash freeze where the temperature dipped for just an hour or two.

 

I don't want to talk about MY kitchen... budget was blown.... and then some.

Oh hell yes. Was coming home from a call @ about 0230 this morning, and damn near blew it... thought WTF?... then the van slid again... crept the last 4 miles home...

Think there is still a crease in the seat....

On another note.. started working on pricing for a building... 24x30 or 24x36..
Trying to decide on 1, 16x10 door, or 2, 10x10...

If I can get the permits approved by the town and conservation commission..

 

I think you were right on the coil! It had a slight but noticeable improvement yesterday so I decided to take a light and actually take a really good look at it instead of the quick vacuuming I did earlier.

There was a pretty significant amount of dust further back that I was able to clean up with a brush and the vacuum. At the mid-point thermostat setting, it's consistently hovering at 36-37 degrees now and doesn't seem to be working hard to do it.

Thanks for the tip! Looking at replacements, anything in the price range I am looing at was backordered for a couple months. Mine is a lot nicer than some of the cheaper ones since I have a freezer light, more shelves and storage, and independent thermostats. I'd hate to step down just to get something quick. I figure I'll keep an eye on it for now. It looks like the cheap ~$300 studio apartment style fridges are easy to get so I could get one of those to get us through in a pinch and the cost is probably less than the amount of food I'd lose.

 

@js312 awesome.
For record, I usually use nitrogen to blow mine out.
Makes a helluva mess, BUT, only real reason anything would STICK, is oil, or airborne grease(kitchen). Coil is hot while running, so, SHOULDNT get damp.

In fact, I'm due to do both of MY fridges as well.... with the house being closed up all winter, haddwood floors, and 2 dogs........

 

I figure I'll bring the compressor in to blow it out some more. I wanted to drag it in anyway to blow out all the baseboard fins since it's been over a year for those. This one is on the bottom so it's kind of a pain to get to. The back of this fridge is completely closed off except for a very small panel near the bottom.

 

I've officially committed to joining the boring tire club. Install is scheduled for the Saturday after this one. It's through BJs - I'd rather go to an actual tire shop, but BJs was at about $960 after tax and everything and I didn't really want to call around and play the price match game. I might have someone local align it beforehand. With the conditions of the roads around here, I wouldn't be surprised if it's pretty far off:

 

True but still a wise idea to at least pay a little more on the principal. Even when we first moved in and were spending mightily on needed fixes etc we still socked an extra $75-100 a month on it. Base mortgage is about $850 a month. Since getting the major jobs mostly done and such we've been doing 300-400 a month extra for some time now. The less interest they make the better, plus in my case we are older.

Perfect world I can move south in the next few years.

We were lucky at least that appliances were not needing to be replaced. I told her let's just do exactly what you want now since she cooks and I don't. Did a couple weeks of working vacation ourselves, bought our own materials etc. Fortunately darts being a pursuit of many different worlds I have a few people that are contractors in my friend circle. That figure I mentioned was ripping down to barnboard, insulation, wiring, the whole shebang.

The studio style might be a good stopgap. I bought a mini freezer (think college dorm size but just a freezer) last year preparing for her surgery. Meal prepped a bunch of stuff easy to reheat and stored it there for her meals since I suck at cooking.

 

Hoping to wait until my parents aren't around before I move south and parry the damage of the market that way, but recent events at my job are going to force me to think about my future. Not a move I want to make but something has to give..it's getting to where I can't put myself on the back burner anymore in the name of the "good of the whole"

 

If my money reduces a 2.625% interest loan instead of making an average of 8-10% in the market, I've lost money by paying it down early. Even at the 4.25% we were at, we were aggressive to get the PMI to fall off but that's still such a low rate, we weren't going to make that the main focus for a while.

But, hey, now that I've actually crunched some numbers here, I am intrigued and may crunch down some numbers more and see if it makes more sense to invest or attack my mortgage I was expecting this to back me up, but it's proven me wrong

https://www.huntington.com/Personal.../budgeting-calculators/pay-off-debt-or-invest



(I used 22% for the tax rate in advanced, long term earnings vs. short term. If you move that to 0 for a Roth IRA, it changes things to make the savings way more worth it. And the amount you can save monthly matters too, just an interesting tool to play around with).

NEERRRRRRRRD ALERT

Edit: Yeah, so I upped it to 400/mo to save and it became more efficient to invest it instead. I also changed the tax rate to 0% for a Roth IRA instead of a taxable account, and now....



So, it just depends on some factors I guess. Dick around with the link above, it'll get you some good perspectives.

Also to add, even if you're CLOSE, say paying off the loan instead of investing saves you 10K in interest over 30 years, weigh it with the fact that after those 30 years, you have paid off the house early but have zero dollars invested once it's paid off, versus if you invest instead, you pay a bit more in interest BUT have savings at the end of the 30 years. So there's pure math and then there's the human factor too.

 

I'm kind of thinking of buying one to put in the basement. It can be used for extra stuff when we do cookouts and would get me through if my current refrigerator does die.

 

I was at 4.5%, went down to 3%. Had I waited a few more months I may have been able to get closer to 2% on my 15 year.

I also didn't really rate shop - I went through the same bank because they don't do escrow. Everyone I know with an escrow account says the bank has made a mess of it at least once. I pay my taxes and insurance just fine on my own - and that way I know it was done on time without needing to rely on someone else.

 

I went to the same guy that did my new home loan, shot him an email and he got us set up. We went in and signed stuff, never even saw our guy this time around haha.

I'm on escrow, haven't had any issues with it in my time. I wouldn't be opposed to bringing it under my control but not a big deal.

 

True, there is a balance. We have little debt other than the mortgage and a small payment on her Rav4. Credit card debt but we pay it off in full each month. I mean, it can't hurt to at least pay a little extra in the early years when you will really be knocking the principal down harder. I reckon one less night out could be a good thing to do, just drop that extra cash into the mortgage.

For us in particular the age thing is a factor, both in general b/c we're older and that I'd like to get her retired in about 3 years if possible.

Or if you find a good sale on stuff..we do use the mini freezer occasionally still.

Guy I know from darts did both my refinances, both times for a better rate. Wanna say it's 3.5 right now but I don't really want to start over again with another refi

 

If it wasn't for the PMI drop we wouldn't have refinanced. And it was going to cost us to get a reappraisal for the PMI thing anyway so F it. We were already there might as well look. We're in the green now I think if not then it was the next few months here - for it to have paid off to refi.

Yeah personal finance approaches can be wildly different. There's a few golden rules to follow but aside from that do whatever works for you. The best tool or approach is one that you'll use and follow. I say that at work all the time.