Hello November!

Wow, where to begin, so much has been going on.

My achilles is doing really well.  I go back for my 6 week post-cast follow up on November 15.  I was put into a walking boot on October 1 and to be honest, once I realized that I could walk again and I felt comfortable, I started wearing the boot only when I was going out or at work.
At home I have been walking around like normal (or semi-normal). Walking down stairs was slow, but now I can bend my foot and actually go one step at a time.
I still have no strength in my foot, so no tippy-toes yet.  I hope to start physio here soon and build up my calf muscle again.

When I last left off, Murphy had paid a visit with the furnace and thankfully it was an easy fix with only the news that we may want to start looking at replacing it in the near future.
Well, Murphy has decided that he's not done with us yet.
We have 2 Electrical outlets that don't work.  One of them is located outside on the front of the house.  I am going to need these soon for Christmas lights. So we will put in a trade call for that.
Our Fridge is leaking.  We have a giant pool of water at the bottom of the fridge that if left, makes the fridge run warmer.  The icemaker is also leaking and makes for a really cool ice sculpter, but not so good for the freezer.  Another $100 trade call.

And finally, when we were looking at the furnace (when it wasn't working) one of the downstacks for the rough-in bathroom downstairs has evidence of leaking.  How did I know?  I grabbed the stack and it was nasty, sticky, and you can see 'dried' evidence of leaks.  Gross? Yes.  Not a huge deal, as it wasn't wet so we were waiting on that trade call.  Well the waiting is over.  We bought a nice new dining room set on Sunday and when I was setting up the Afghan rug J brought home from deployment I happened to look up.  And saw this:

It is right below where our master bathroom toilet is. So most likely the wax ring needs replacement.  But so will the ceiling that is damaged, because I do not want any mold or nastiness living there.
So, another $100 trade call.  We'll knock this out here in the next few days.

This month will probably fly by just like the rest of the year has.
Next week will be a nice short week for me.  Thursday my dr. appointment, Friday Saturday and Sunday J and I will be meeting my parents in Atlantic City for the weekend.  J and I went up there in October for a night.  We didn't win, but we didn't spend more than we had planned to 'lose'.  I think we did ok though.  Our rooms for this month at Caesar's are comped and we have RFB (Room, Food and Beverage).  Essentially, our room, any food and drink are also comped. 
Not only that, but we planned to go to Las Vegas next April for my birthday.  Our room at Paris is also comped for 5 nights already.  This is based on 1 night of play. We must have done something right....or wrong LOL
Wish us luck!

Who Invited This Murphy Guy????

Not our furnace/AC but looks very similar!

Why is it, when something happens to your home, as a homeowner, the first thing people say to you is "Welcome to Homeownership!" J must have heard it 15 times yesterday.  I think he must have been initiated now into the 'homeownership club'. 

On Sunday we returned from Gettysburg after having a nice day up there.  It was cold, and rainy and when we came inside, it was 65deg.  We decided to take a bit of the cold and dampness out, we would turn the heat on.
Heat turned on, and the furnace would not turn over or ignite.  The motor would run, just no heat.
Great.  We tried a couple of 'fixes' we found on the interwebs but nothing, nada, no heat.

Thank goodness when we bought the home, a Home Warrenty was included.  It's $100 deductible per trade call.  Put in the service request at 9pm and by 8am the next morning we had the company that would be providing service.
Instead of waiting for them to call us, I called them.  I Was COLD.  Sleeping was fun.  It was a lot colder than 65deg upstairs and it did get into the 30s that night.
They put us on a urgent list, but the earliest they could get in was today.
The tech has come and gone. And I have heat.  The Pressure Switch went on it.

Apparently, our furnace is crap, and is only good for about 10 years. The house is 7 years old.
Yay.
We asked for a quote for a replacement, a TRANE. Right now, if we go with the same capacity that we have now, it would be $5700 which includes a $1500 rebate and all labor.
We may do this in the Spring....but knowing that the system sucks, and that we've only lived here for 7 months sucks too.

Oh well, Welcome to Homeownership!

Life Is Semi-Normal

I've been in the house for 1 week now, and I'm still getting used to the different sounds, having 3 bathrooms, and which light switch goes to what.
I love this house though (although not loving the train), and I cooked my first meal here on my day off last week. Chicken Fried Rice which I love.

Speaking of cooking in my house.  I need to start this again, and when J gets home in 13 days (yay!) we will definitely be eating in more and using the nice gas cooktop and double oven :)
I hope with that I will continue to be able to lose weight.  With the cruise only 258 days away I would like to be able to wear a bathing suit and not feel so self-conscious.

As of last Monday my weight was down, but that was due to stress and moving lots and lots of boxes and furniture.  I don't really want to know what it is now.

I MUST do this.  Back to water (or flavouring my water) and cutting the carbs (which I love!)

Finances.  We made our first mortgage payment for May 1 and I just set up our next one to Wells Fargo who bought the mortgage from Amerisave. I love this, because I didn't like Amerisave, J isn't so happy.  He had a bad experience with WF many years ago.  But we will deal with it. 
Reason I made our June 1 payment today is so that I can get 1 month ahead on it.  We will make the $1430/month payment from John's paycheck, and I will add additional principal from my paycheck starting here soon.
I would love to be able to at least make an additional $50/month in principal to it.

J has been having fun buying things that he never thought he would be able to afford. And I am fine with that.  As long as we'll be able to pay the cars, mortgage, utilities we'll be good.  And we'll still have fun money.

The credit cards have been used, but that's only because we are using it for airline miles and cashback.  It is NOT going to be like it was.  Charge charge charge and only pay a little back each month. That's how we got into trouble before.  For the most part, they are paid in full after the statement cuts.    I'm not one of those folks who doesn't believe in credit cards, or living completely debt free.  I just want to be financially responsible.  My parents live like this, they are happy and as far as I know have never had any financial issues.
And they are happy :)

Well, it's Monday and today is Truly Monday for me as I didn't work yesterday.  I have an interview for the supervisor position today, I hope I do ok.  I interview well so I should be fine. Wish me luck though!

Hope you all have a great start to the week :)

Home Sweet Home

As of Monday I had finished moving everything from the Rental.  I was so glad to have finished. And now I get to have fun putting things away in our new home.

So a bit of an update on work and my FMLA request.  I can't really go too much into it right now because I have to take things further in HR than I wanted to.
Basically, they denied my FMLA request twice and I have caught the Occupational Health Nurses in 3 different lies. My doctor's office is confused and angry with the situation that has happened.  I'm confused, frustrated and furious with the nurses, so much so that on Tuesday HR suggested that the best thing for me would be to not work that day as the nurse I had spoken to about the second denial had given me panic attacks and heart palpitations.
Let's just say that Tuesday was NOT a good day.

I will update when I can, but right now I am more concerned with J coming home in 17 days :)
Getting the house in order and loving life (and my jeep! which came home on Sunday as well)

Hope you all have been having a great week!  Mine has been up and down, but I have this entire weekend off and I plan to enjoy it!

Mini Break

Hey everyone!

Still here, still moving, still paying off the MBNA card :)

Just need to take a break from here for a couple of weeks.  I have to be out of the rental and completely into the new house by April 30 so I have to get my butt in gear and get the rest of the stuff out of here.  There's not much left, mainly the big stuff like couch, chair, bed, futon etc and all of the little stuff that really doesn't have a 'place' or has just been kind laying around.

And then I have to get my new place kind of put together.  Especially the kitchen.  That's where most of the boxes ended up. 
Plus, this Saturday is when the internet will be set up at the new place (hopefully!) I want them to put a new outlet in one of the other bedrooms that we want to use as an office and where the internet will be set up.

So, I am still reading you all and a big welcome back to Judy at Just Making My Way Back :)

Hope you all have a great week!

OUCH!!!!!

I knew that moving was going to be hard, packing things and moving them over has been going slowly but surely.

Today, before work I decided to get the rest of items out of the attic.  There were only a few smaller things left up there that were not in boxes.  I was literally moving the last 2 items down, when about halfway down the ladder, my foot slipped forward into the rung and I fell backwards.  Boom! Ouch!

Luckily I turned to the side, because if I had gone straight back I would have landed on the vaccuum cleaner.  Instead I landed on some soft stuff (well, my head anyway). My hip, back, foot and ankle not so much.
So I am taking lots of Advil, ice, and taking it easy. Including not going to work.  I have a bad feeling I am going to be really sore tomorrow.

On a good note, the attic is empty! lol
I also made a $3950 payment to the MBNA.  I will let you know the new updated number when it finally posts, because the statement may cut for it before the payment does, which would change the number a little bit.
It's amazing, a year ago, the interest would have changed it A LOT.

It's nice to see that number going way down.

I hope you all had a nice Easter.  Another celebration without J.  But he will be home in 40 days :)

I am so thankful to have a husband who has made the sacrifices he has, for a family who has been there for me while he has been gone, and for my fellow blog friends who have been supportive and keeping me busy reading their blogs for the last year :)

Just Keep Moving, Just Keep Moving

Sorry for the lack of posting the past week or so.  We have a House!!!

The closing went off without a hitch.  It only took an hour and half for me to sign my name and then J's name and then my name again as the power of attorney.  My wrist hurt afterwards.
It's amazing how much paperwork needs to be signed and so much of it is repetitive or the mortage company/VA covering their own butts.

But that's ok, because we have a HOUSE!!!! lol

I've been moving boxes and containers over since then (we own a lot of crap, and not things that I can just purge as most of it is for our re-enacting. I told J that most of it is going to be stored in the garage until he comes home and then we need to organize, document and take pictures of it all for insurance and sanity purposes.  I can't tell you how many times we've been packing for an event and we can't find an item because it could be in any one of the 5 million containers we have that would be stacked 4 high in the shed or up in the crawlspace/attic (and the attic would be 100+ degrees so you'd have to shower after going up there because you sweat just going up there and not moving....think sauna). This is funny to think and write about, but in real life it sucks lol.

I've been thinking about hiring a company to come and steam clean the carpets, or renting one myself.  But since I've never done it, I'm not sure how well that would go.  Has anyone used either service?

I also have to start thinking about window treatments, because the sellers took all of them, when they were to supposed to convey.
My realtor and their agent were going to give me $100 each (which my realtor still hasn't given to me, and I haven't heard from since we closed.)  I'll need to contact him to get that (I think he said he was going to get a giftcard from Lowes)

Anyway, things are 'moving' along :P

Have a great week! I'm off to work today (boooooo)

3 Days to Go!

I never ever thought I would be so excited to be in debt for the next 30 years!

Seems like a complete 180 of the point of this blog.  But the point of starting this blog was to pay off our debt, which for the most part is gone, and to live our lives in a responsible manner.

I think we have reached that goal.  Yesterday, J said something to me that I haven't heard him say once during our relationship together.  He told me he would like to put a new WWII re-enacting uniform together (this isn't anything new, he says this about once a year lol) but in the past we would put the impression on the credit card and deal with it later.  Yesterday, he followed up his statement with "but I will need to save my money before I do that.  That's what we need to do in the future right? No more impulse spending, save and pay in cash". I think I nearly hit the floor.  He finally gets it!  I think he also realizes that we won't be living paycheck to paycheck any longer so we CAN save for it, and be patient before making those impulse purchases :)

Now, onto the 3 days to go.  3 days before we (me and me as J's Power of Attorney lol) close on our very first house.
We are just waiting on the Final Settlement Statement but that should be there tomorrow.
We have been wanting this for years, and it would not have been possible if J hadn't made that sacrifice to spend a year in Afghanistan and put his hard earned money towards paying off the debt we had.
I still cannot believe that we have paid off (as of today) $47,000 worth of credit card debt (both our US and my Canadian).
When we paid of the US Credit Cards, when I added up all of the minimum payments, it gave us an extra $800 every month back to us.  And the amount that I had been putting towards my Canadian credit cards will give us $1500 back every month as well. 

I've never been so excited to add more debt to my life (except for maybe the WWII Jeep :P lol)

It's been a long journey for us, and I hope and even longer journey in our new house :)

Oh, and only 56 days left until J comes home....to a new home which he will own :)

Hope you all have a great Sunday!

Clear To Close!

Got the email today that we are clear to close!!!

All of the documents had been given to the bank by Tuesday (they needed another bank statement, so my CU had to fax that over).  I was told that we should hear something by today, and boy did we!
I was told at about 1pm that all of the conditions had been signed off on, and it was going for it's final audit.

By 3:45pm the loan was cleared to close!

I'm so happy that this is almost finished.  Just need to sign mine and J's name about a million times next Wednesday.  I have his Power of Attorney, so I get to sign my name double on everything, if you see me in a sling, my hand is sprained.

Can't wait to get the keys and start doing some moving and getting things set up (cable - need a cable connection in one of the small bedrooms for our office; setting up utilities; possibly having an estimate on window treatments, since they took all but a few blinds - even though it was in the contract that window treatments were included)

This Saturday is also an exciting day for me.  I will be receiving my 1st Dan Black Belt in Taekwondo.  It has been 4 months since I tested for it, and we have a large ceremony to celebrate the recipients (me being one of them!) and have a traditional Korean style buffet.

I hope to post some pictures here soon of the house and the black belt ceremony.  I've been holding off on the house just because the pictures I had still had the other owner's belongings in it.  Now that they are gone, I will get some pics when I get enter as I please :)

Tomorrow is Friday, one more day of work for the week yay! :)

Mortgage Midway Point

I know I promised numbers last week, but with this house buying process moving Really quickly now, I have had a roller coaster of a week!

The beginning of the week I was so stressed out I didn't know what I was going to do.

By Friday, I was in a happy place.  It's amazing how quick it can all change.

Monday: I didn't know where in the mortgage process we were at, I didn't know when the house appraisal was going to happen, I didn't know when the seller's had the pest inspection scheduled for, I didn't have the specialized POA from J yet.  Essentially, I didn't know what the heck was going on.

By Thursday: I had the conditional approval for the mortgage.  They just need some paperwork and explanations for things that we have (statement from retirement showing proof that the deductions from J's paycheck are for 401K loans, wedding licence since our last names are different, a copy of J's DD214/discharge papers, copy of cancelled check for Earnest Money and statement showing it cleared, POA, and explaining the inquiry from American Express in February....if we 'pay' for the cruise in full we get $500 on board credit.  It will 'pay' for it, but it gets paid immediately with the cash we already have saved...I wanted onboard money! haha)

So on Thursday, I had most of the information they needed.  I called our 'other' credit union and requested the check copy. I'm actually a little miffed they don't make the images available on their website. That way I could have just printed it off. But no, I have to pay $2.50 for them to mail it.

By Friday: I had to call the credit union again for a certified printed copy of our transaction history for March showing the Earnest check had cleared. Then I had to fax the request to the head teller (I did this at 1pm, and the $2 it would cost was not deducted, so I'm assuming that it didn't get done.  I don't know if I have ever mentioned it, but I am not a fan of our 'other' credit union.) If I have to, I will drive the 2 hours to the closest branch to get it done.
I received the specialized POA in the mail on Friday, yay!
The appraisal had been completed on Tuesday, and the pest inspection was done on Thursday.

Everything is falling in place, and all we need now is to have the loan approved (which I don't see a problem in happening). The sellers have moved out, as they are relocating to Oklahoma and have already signed all of their paperwork.  I'm hoping to get in there and find out what I need to have someone come in and do before I move completely in (special window treatments....if needed).

So there we have it, almost done, and if all goes well closing in less than two weeks :)

Hope you all have a great Sunday (I have to work) and a great week! :)

And We're Off To The Races....

So now we're in the mortgage waiting game.  All of required paperwork was handed over to our loan officer yesterday and we locked our rate in for the 30 year VA mortgage at 3.75%.

I received an alert today that our credit was pulled again since last time was 4 months ago.  I hope we don't have any issues mainly because we only have 20 days left to get this financing completed and close on the 28th.

A friend of mine who used to work with me is now working at a Title company and we will be using her for our closing and title work.  My realtor (who also works with me, and knows my friend) was trying to discourage me from using her, and use his 'regular' guy.  Sorry...this is MY process and I am going to go with someone who I trust.  And boy am I glad I did!

Turns our that we need a specialized Power of Attorney for closing.  We have a General POA, but we NEED a specialized one.  That needs to be signed and an original copy returned to me.  Greeeeeeat.  Ok. I need to POA created, that's for Virginia and real estate.  Hmmmm what to do, what to do.  Well, friend at title company spoke to her boss, and they have written it up for us :)  Would buddy of my realtor done that? Who knows.  All I know is that is pays to have friends you can trust.

So now J just has to have it notarized and send it back to me.  I hope USPS can get it back quick.

Tomorrow is payday for J and Friday for me.  It'll have a bit of extra pay for President's Day holiday which is always nice.

Come early next week, there will be number updates, and just for Rafiki I will include many '0's :)

Home Buying Change Of Plans

Well..... First off, Happy Anniversay to J and I.  5 Years ago today we vowed to love each other for better or for worse, through good and bad, and all the rest.  This past year has been tough but we've survived and are finally in a position to be almost credit card debt free, buying a home and starting a family of our own :)

Now, on to the house.

Where to begin.

If you recall, we have been patiently waiting for the purchase of a short sale. It was perfect.  5 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, really good size, fenced backyard, on a cul-de-sac.  It was only on the market for 1 day when we put our offer in on it for the full asking price which was a great deal.

This was November 2, 2011.  Our offer was accepted by the sellers, and while there were a couple of items that we a 'whatever' to (having the pool in the listing, being removed and then being asked if we wanted to buy it separately) we moved forward.
At the end of December we finally had news that the BPO (which is a disinterested 3rd party broker appraisal) which is done by the sellers bank to make sure the offer isn't too low (where they may counter-offer).
BPO came back as roughly the same of what the offer was. Good! Yay! Movement, maybe the bank can just approve it already and we can move on.
Well the bank approved.  Awesome right? Wrong.  There is a second mortgage on the house which also needs to be approved, and the first mortgage isn't going to give much at all to the second one from the original offer.
Ours kicked $1000 towards the second.

The second mortgage was assigned to a collection agency.  And well, they want $11,200 to approve the short sale.
They came to us asking if we would give more money (ie: CASH) to help them get out of their second mortgage.... a mortgage we didn't even know about until February, 3 months into the process.

The sellers moved out of their house and we went to look at it last week.

O M G.  The people were disgusting.  They left the house like they didn't care and got the hell outta dodge.  Items left in rooms, like they picked up in the night and left.  The didn't clean and there was dog hair EVERYWHERE and the carpets were stained and dirty. The appliances were just as dirty, and I cannot believe that they used them like that. The fridge had liquid all left inside, same with the freezer.  The microwave, I opened it and had to close it right away it smelled so bad, there was bread left in the cupboards (which I threw away in case mice decided to move in) and the dishwasher ... I don't know how the dishes got clean.
The best part....they broke the fence to get their shed and hottub out of the backyard.  Like ripped two of the posts out of the concrete in the ground, along with tire tracks in the wet, muddy grass.

I started adding up the money it was going to take to get this house back to what it was like when we put our offer in on it back in November.  The house is 6 years old and looks like it has been lived in for 20.

I needed to take a shower when I got home after being in there.  I was not happy at all.
Not to mention, that living in a small town everybody knows everybody (well, at least so-and-so knows about so-and-so because they heard from someone that somebody did something)and someone who you are friends with tells you that they had no idea they were short selling their home and that how could they be so bad off when they just bought their child a 4wheeler for Christmas?
And your mother stalks the seller on facebook and finds that last year they took 5 vacations, and own 3 Harleys.
Hmmmmmmm......

So, fastforward to February 29.  Our contract with the short sale is at it's last day.  We would either need to extend the offer for another period of time, or let the deal expire.

That morning, I received an automated email message from my realtor for new listings, or changes to one.  A house in the same subdivision, not in the greatest location, with 4 bedrooms, 3.5 baths with an unfinished basement, bigger backyard, nicer kitchen, better flooring, CLEAN, and priced lower than what we offered for the short sale.
I went to look at it, and discussed with J with him seeing pictures, and trying my best to describe the pros, cons, goods and bads of this house we decided to put an offer in on it.
We let the short sale expire and we are now in a ratified contract with the other house.  Oh did I mention, it's a traditional sale???? And that we should be closing no later than March 28?

It's amazing how quickly things can change in the home buying process and I believe it was fate that this other house came up.

This house is smaller, but I don't think that it is necessarily a bad thing.  And there are things that we can still do to this house to make it ours.  Our first thing is to look at having the basement finished and possibly putting in the bathroom and another bedroom.  The two smaller bedrooms upstairs are really small, and we may end up knocking down the wall between them to make it larger, and with the bedroom downstairs, still keep it 4 bedrooms.  All in good time though :)

So there we have it.  Monday I have to get our documents to the loan officer, who by the way is awesome! I asked her a question by email on the day all of this happened while we were still deciding what to do, and I literally had an answer from her in less than a minute.  We also had an updated pre-approval letter within 10 minutes.  She is definitely going to be receiving a nice thank you from us when all of this is finished :)
Friday is inspection day and I hope that with the age of the home and the reputation of the builder that we won't have too much to worry about.

It will also be nice to save $100 from what we were going to pay a month to what we'll pay now.  We qualify for a VA loan due to J's time in Navy and USAA's home insurance yearly premium is amazing (We're getting over $1000 in discounts from them on the yearly premium).
It's all like a dream! A good one finally.

Still Recovering

Turns out I have bronchitis, which turned into a nasty head cold.  Starting to feel a little better today, but man did it knock me on my butt.

Having to work through it all was not fun either (we are essential personnel at work and if you miss work due to illness it is not looked highly upon.  I had missed a few days in December, so I suffered).

All I know is that I feel like this, work has been stressful lately, and I want to go back on the cruise ship lol.

On tap today, I must go into town.  I need some groceries, and fresh fruits and veggies.  Also need to hit Wally World for some cleaning supplies.  I have a $100 gift card my parents gave me for Christmas that I will use.  Even though our bank account it nicely stocked, why use my own cash when I can use the gift card!

Other than that, I will be continuing to pack and clean here.  A bit of a house update.  We heard that the seller's first mortgage (they have two on their house) was approved by their lender to be sold as a short sale (YAY!) so now we're just waiting on the smaller second mortgage, which (hopefully!) should go through quickly.
We're looking at closing sometime mid-March.

Need to start getting all of the paperwork ready to finish our mortgage process, inspections, and moving truck.
It's going to get crazy busy here soon!

Thanks for the get better comments.  It really does help a lot to have people thinking of you while you're down and out :)

Black Friday

I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving.  I worked, since J wasn't here, and I don't have any family around.  Work did feed us a really nice meal, and our Vice-President (who runs our contact center) served it to us.  Was nice to see that.

I worked until 11pm on Thanksgiving and thought, what the heck, I'll go to walmart just to check out Black Friday.  I've never done it, since I would usually be in bed by then!  I got to walmart, and the parking lot was full, but being the lucky one I am got a spot right near the front.  I went in, grabbed a cart, walked about 20feet inside, turned around and left HAHA.  There were so many people in line to check out that you couldn't even move through.  Driving by some other stores, Kohls, Best Buy, people were lined up around the buildings.  It's ridiculous!
Needless to say, I went right home.  The only thing I was looking for was a small camera for the cruise I'll be going on in January with my parents (they invited me, and since I'm the third person in their suite...and Owner's Suite at that! it was very affordable) I bought a package on bestbuy.com

That was the extent of my Black Friday experience.

Christmas here is going to be really odd.  My parents will be coming down, but without J it will definitely be lonely.  I normally spoil him big time, but I don't have to do that yet.  I am going to send him a package over in Afghanistan, but it will only have small things, since I don't want to overload him with things that he'll have to bring back.

No new updates on the house yet. I hope we will hear something....anything...soon.

Next month, I will start up the debt updates again.  Still waiting on a regular paycheck for J again, since he was off of 30days with no pay.

Until next time!

Back to Deployment

On Monday night, I dropped J off at the airport to start another 6 month deployment in Afghanistan :(

He got there today after a short sleep in Dubai.

I have a bad feeling that this winter is going to go by really really slow.  I have the countdown on the whiteboard again, please hurry up May 21!

So last we left off our offer had been accepted by the sellers for the house.  We're still waiting to hear any news on whether their bank will accept the short sale.  I should no something today, whether it's no news, or an actual update.
We also applied for the mortgage which was pretty painless.  Just have to provide more docs, but we should be approved with no issues (in fact they pretty much said we were approved) Hard work pays off!  J is used to them saying "We'll let you know"
All I know is that I am going to start packing regardless, because I am on my own and I will be moving on my own and we have A LOT of stuff (crap) that I need to start purging.

I will also need to get our plan together for what will be next on the payoff list!  Fun times once again! :)

So, I will be back to my regularly scheduled updates, and payoffs :)

Update

So while J has been home we have done a few things that we normally would have done when we're together (go to Gettysburg, have a nice dinner out, just hang out, etc). We've also been getting him prepared for going back to Afghanistan for another 6 months. Oh, and we're buying a house :))

We had been looking at a few places while J has been home, and one came up.  Our realtor has us on an e-list that sends us properties that fit our criteria as they come up or if changes occur (usually list price).  I got an email late one night for a house that was within our price range, and is exactly where we want to be.  We saw it the next day and immediately knew we wanted to put an offer in on it.  We did, and it was accepted and we are now under contract!
The only thing, is that this is house is a short sale, so now we're in hurry up and wait mode.
I'm not a religious person, but I'm hoping and praying that everything goes smoothly with this process.  We know that it is going to be lengthy, but we're fine with that since J won't be here, and it gives our landlords plenty of heads up. 
I'm happy since I was able to do this with J rather than before where I was doing all the decision making.

Now, on to the mortgage! haha

Have good thoughts for us that all goes well! :)

Quick Update

Sorry for  the lack of posting here, things were a little hectic in the countdown to J's return and then when he did return it's been fun catching up :)

I promise to get back into the swing of things here soon.

I'd like to start posting more about house hunting and what I'm doing to save money.  Plus we have the new goals to look forward to when J goes back to Afghanistan (paying off the Canadian cards and the car....and the Jeep, which is AWESOME by the way :P )

At it's first Jeep Show in MD

Still reading all of my blogroll, so I am keeping up with that at least :)

Until then!

Happy Thankgiving!

To my fellow Canadians and Happy Columbus Day to my American friends :)

Plan for today is to eat turkey leftovers (we had our turkey dinner last night, and it was yummy!)

Tomorrow we head to Buffalo (my parents and I) to have some fun at Seneca Casino.  I haven't been to a casino in a while, so it will be nice to have some fun, and I already budgeted for it.  Wednesday I return home.  At least my landlord will be happy to know that we are not moving out as soon as we hd thought since the house deal fell through.

11 Days until J comes home!  Cannot wait :))
I have so many things planned out to do and to not do while he is home for 30 days.  We have to pack in as much as we can lol.  Trips to Gettysburg, dinner there, his birthday (early), Capitals game, and absolutely nothing (where he can play video games all day if he wants...it's his vice, and I don't mind).

I love October :)

House Hunting

So things have been a little hectic around here lately.  As stated the other day, J is coming home in 12 days and the house hunting continued.

On Wednesday I went and looked at a home that had just come on the market.  They had only posted a picture of the front of the home, but no inside pictures, so I thought why not go have a look.  I did, and fell in love.  It needed a bit of updating but nothing that would detract from living there.

They are asking $258,000.  We put an offer of $245,000 plus closing costs (3%).  I didn't hear anything and then my real estate agent calls and says they are missing one of the pages of the contract.  So I have it faxed again.  I don't hear anything until Friday, and he says that "she wants to clean up the offer and get back to us" What the heck does THAT mean?!?!?!?!

She comes back after my realtor asks exactly the same question I said.  The seller says "come back with your best offer".  She thinks because she's had a few showings that she's going to get multiple offers.  I had to think about what I wanted to offer and to talk to J.  J wanted to say forget it, it's not worth it.  We came back at  $250,000 with 2% closing.  This was yesterday at 1:30pm and was to be a verbal take it or leave it offer.
My realtor called and called and called today. FINALLY,they came back with something.  Not yes, or no, but $258,000 with 2%. Are your freaking KIDDING me??? The seller didn't even come with a counter to begin with, and now she does???

FORGET IT. Offer withdrawn. We can buy a brand new home with all of the updates for the same price just up the road in West Virginia.  The house is not worth what she's asking.
Oh, and we were still the only offer.
I hope it sits for 100days. I know, I'm evil.

So, 5 days for nothing, and we did most of the work.
I'm starting to hate the house buying process.

Payday and Payoffs August Edition

So yet another payday for J and I and more credit cards have been paid off.

My Navy Federal Visa and Mastercard are PIF!
The Home Depot card is PIF!

We also reduced J's Navy Federal Visa and Mastercard by $800

I'm getting ready for Irene to hit.  It shouldn't be so bad here, but I have things like water, batteries and propane just in case.

And now for the news that I posted about last.
We didn't put an offer on the house, because after having 2 extra days to think about it, there were more cons than pros for the house.  If I could pick the actual house up and move it to the county we live in now, it would have been perfect.

So..... with more news with that, J is going to go back to Afghanistan for 5 more months.  He will come home for 30 days and then go back.  This will eliminate my Canadian credit cards, our car payment, and a larger down payment (or funds for renovation/fixes) when we do buy a home.  And...for J, he will get to buy some of the fun things he has been dreaming about for a long time.  He would deserve it, as he's making the bigger sacrifice by going back. 
With eliminating my Canadian cards and the car, I would have an extra $1700 every 4 weeks to help with expenses, and hopefully in the next year, a baby :)

The updated numbers will be coming in next week.

I will be going to Gettysburg with a couple of friends for history, (a little) shopping and a nice dinner.
Have a great weekend! If Irene is in your path, stay safe :)