Changing the balance of quality of life and financial independence

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Dont feel bad. The walk in closet is larger than my two smaller bedrooms in my current house.

[REWahoo]

Originally Posted by Cute Fuzzy Bunny

...After a while it got boring shooting from the 3-point area. I can hit them about 95% of the time from anywhere on the half court line. One handed.

Originally Posted by Cute Fuzzy Bunny

I'd imagine theres also a good amount of BSing going on

[KB]

Good decision, welcome back (well next door anyway). Your reasoning of better schools and safer neighborhoods is exactly why I've stayed here for the past 17 years. I moved to this area on a temporary 3 year assignment, and stayed.

Dealing with the annoying parts of living in a busy town is outweighed by the feeling of security. The house looks nice, large and roomy. I envy the large lot. While I would love a larger lot, I prefer living in a neighborhood with 24 hour security. And since the lots are not large here, I'll stay and deal with it.

Happy moving and selling the old house. Good timing to buy, from what I've seen the market is not yet heading back up.

[Donzo]

Sounds like a good move - Much closer to all the recreation this area offers also being closer to the Sierra 8)

[ladelfina]

Oh, yeah.. I can see that needs a lot of "fixing up"!!

Very nice. I like it a lot, despite the odd garage that recalls a copy/paste.

May I please have your new closet? Italians don't do closets.
Our house is bigger than we need, yet my clothes are stacked up at the foot of the bed.

Best of luck with the offer!

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Eh, it does need stuff. The shake roof is about done and I found a few prior minor leaks that were patched, but its due...about 18-20k worth. Siding is wood lap and wood trim and its getting a little overly caulked and painted with a little spec of dry rot here and there.

As is par for the course in this neighborhood around the time this house was built, the people who did all the flashing in the area stunk...theres a small leak inside the siding covering one of the chimneys, and a few windows have had very minor leaks that have made a nickel size area in the lower corners of the windows start to get a little crumbly.

16 year old furnace/ac unit. 16 year old built in oven/microwave/rangetop/dishwasher. Needs carpet upstairs and for some reason the seller painted the whole house interior but not the four bedrooms. All of the bathroom and kitchen fixtures are either original or not particularly expensive upgrades. Water is leaking into the garden shed a bit as they should have poured the slab for it about an inch thicker.

My plan is new roof, appliances, carpet and paint this year. Pull the trim, reflash and rewrap the house, overlay it with Hardiplank in about 3 years. Replace the furnace and some of the fixtures around the same 3 years out.

Probably run us about 30-33k this year and another 35-40k over the next 3 years.

I may miss my little stucco house with the concrete tile roof by about 2010 when my checkbook finally stops hemorrhaging

I think they had to "pull in" the garage a little to get the house to front face the lot in the right place. Its got a steep driveway but then the rest is pretty level. This area is very well known for "house on a cliff" and "house down in a hole" due to the hilliness of the region...so a level lot is a very big deal. But if they extended the garage out to make the house look less boxy the driveway would have been vertical.

Definitely no playing in the driveway with the tricycle for Gabe. All wheeled toys remain in the back yard! He'd hit about 40mph by the time he reached the bottom of the driveway. Which I'm sure would be great fun for him for about 1 or 2 seconds.

[Dreamer]

It looks very nice. I am sure that you will have it in tip top shape before very long, if your offer is accepted.

I talked with my sister this morning and she told me that my nephew is having a 6000 sq ft home built and was told by the builder that it would be the smallest home in this small development! They are debating whether or not to have a sun room added to make it a little larger. They have 2 small children and do not want any more. It is amazing to me the size of some houses nowadays!

[ladelfina]

I have an image of some kind of inflatable crash balloons at the foot of the drive!
Charge admission to the neighbor kids and amortize the cost.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

My wife and I looked at two homes in the 8000 square foot range (and around $5-7M). My agent has a good sense of humor.

[Jarhead*]

Originally Posted by Cute Fuzzy Bunny

You probably dont wanna go there. I used to spend a half hour every day shooting free throws when I worked for megacorp. After a while it got boring shooting from the 3-point area. I can hit them about 95% of the time from anywhere on the half court line. One handed.

Fuzzy: You brought me out of semi-retirement on this one.

Admittingly, I'm a sucker for B.S., especially if it's delivered with a sense of humor.

But I can't turn off my damn "bull-****" detector after reading your above quote.

NBA coaches, quit wasting your time with scouting reports, and contact "Fuzzy", the sooner the better, and save your franchise.

Love it.!

[unclemick]

Careful Jarhead!

Remember Texas the best college team in football. My heart was with the Saints but my money stayed in my wallet. At least this year my sister didn't call about the Pats after the Indy game.

So who's the pick for March Madness

heh heh heh heh

[donheff]

Nice place CFB. Liking where you live is a huge part of being satisfied with ER - or working for that matter. DW and I could live a lot cheaper elsewhere but we really like where we are - so here we stay. You just need to adjust the numbers a bit and encourage your SO to keep working for a while.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Well thats part of the deal Don, we gave up a percentage of safety towards long term financial independence for a safe place and great schools for our son, and the house my wifes always wanted to live in. Her end of the bargain is more years of work before she turns in her stethoscope. Good news is that she'll change to a hospital down there and there are a couple she really has always wanted to work for and she'll get paid better too.

Originally Posted by Jarhead*

But I can't turn off my damn "bull-****" detector after reading your above quote.

Hey man, I'm serious...and one handed leaves the other one to put into someones face while I take the shot.

Seven years of half hour practices...which I think puts me about.....a million hours more than Shaq!!!

We offered a huge cut from their asking price, and I just got word that the seller has countered for 5k more, which is a pretty dang great price. We'll take it.

But that did leave me with the lingering afterthought...was it really worth testing me as a buyer for the extra few bucks they countered with, which amounts to less than 1% of the sale?!?

Now for the next part...the guys relo company will take ownership of the property and become the 'seller' to me. Never did it this way before, I presume its a good thing as they'll be less emotional about any problems with the property. Anything to watch out for?

And the last part...metal or composition roof? House has a pretty simple square style, very little overhang, and none of the roof is particularly visible from the ground because the house sits so high up on a hill. In fact the only place you can see the main roof is if you get up on a ladder at the highest back corner of the property and use binoculars...which of course I did.

Parameters are that its frickin hot here, so anything that rejects/ventilates heat is a very good thing. Price is a high factor, and lifespan/resale is also a good thing. I hear good things about metal, but is it noisy when it rains? We get some serious rain sometimes in the winter. Its done with cedar shake right now. Whats left of it. But the good news is that the seller agreed to paying for a 2 year roof certification as part of the deal.

[SteveR]

Metal roofs are great in snow country because they let the snow slide off before it pile up enough to cave in the roof. I doubt that will be a problem where your house is. We had some leaks with the metal and I am not sure I would go with it in a lower elevation house. Composition is what I have had in all my houses. Cedar is nice for a while but unless you get up there to treat it every couple of years it will decompose. Composition wears out slowly over time--2-30 years depending on climate and quality of the shingle.

How about clay tiles? They will be cooler because of the airflow under them and are designed for hot dry climates. They are costly and heavy but not sure how much heavier than composition.

Since you roof does not show from the street..cheaper might be better. I would go with a lightly colored composition.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

A lot of the shake roofs arent engineered strong enough for clay or tile. Light 30/40 year composition is what I was thinking but all the talk a while back on metal made me wanna ask.

No snow...

[Cut-Throat]

Don't shake roofs catch on fire easily? - I believe I heard that they have been banned in some states?

Are the traditional California tile roofs expensive?

[cute fuzzy bunny]

They're treated against fire, but fire insurance on a shake roof house is higher, regardless. So I'll save money on my insurance by changing my roof.

Tile can be pretty spendy to install as its a bitch to haul all the tiles around. But they're cheap...a buck a tile is what I've been paying to replace the ones I dropped and broke.

[MasterBlaster]

This thread has started me to thinking about being FIRE'd and downsizing.

I'm not singling out CFB, however his thread is an example of what happens when life gets in the way.

If you downsize your lifestyle so that you can FIRE, you better make sure that you can live with and enjoy your downsized lifestyle. Otherwise you may have some regrets.

So if you sell everything and move to a small house/the midwest or the south/ a foreign country, If things don't work out and you are unhappy you just may be undercapitalized for your FIRE lifestyle.

- That's something to really ponder before you pull the plug.

[bbbamI]

About the relo co taking over the house.

Years ago our Mega corp moved a bunch of us to another state. All of the homes were taken over by asset mgt. I never heard anyone discuss fallout from this. No buyers ever got in touch with the original owners...it didn't happen to us either. But, it's got a lot to do with the co that does take the house over.

It was a sweet deal for us. If we got the appraised value and got a contract before we moved, asset mgt would give us a bonus. We did and they did. $10k...ah those were the days.