“Home Ownership” Archive
On this page you will find the search results for the search term that you queried.
I asked for suggestions on how to keep our house warm while saving money. Running the whole house heater is such a waste when all we need in one room warm. Many of you suggested purchasing a space heater but childhood memories of burned fingers turned me off to the idea. Then you said they don’t make space heaters like that anymore.
Oh.
So, I bit the bullet and bought one on sale.
I turned it on full blast and waited for the house to burn down and…
nothing.
I put my hand on the front, thinking surely I’d prove you all wrong and take a photo of my burned hand and…
it was barely warm to the touch.
I kicked the thing over, assuming the carpet would ignite into flames and…
the heater shut off automatically.
Turns out, you were all right. Space heaters have come a LONG way in the last 30+ years. I carefully turned it on, cleared a 10 foot radius around it of anything even remotely flammable, and crawled into bed. I woke up about every 15 minutes fearful the house was on fire but… um, yeah, it wasn’t.
In the morning, the glorious warmth of 65 degrees greeted us. Getting out of bed is much easier when you don’t have to wear a coat to do it.
Thanks for all the help!
I caught a tiny black ant crawling across my kitchen counter last week. My favorite thing to do is bleach my countertops so I knew his search for food there was like trying to find water in the desert. I wiped him away and tossed him in the trash.
A few days later, there were more. I caught about 10 or so scouting my pantry. They didn’t congregate. They weren’t crawling in any specific direction, just searching for good snacks.
Since I cleaned our pantry a few months ago and saw the amount of food I was wasting, I hardly buy anything. Grocery shopping is organized and limited to items on my list. There are no snacks. No chips. No cookies. Nothing but canned goods and tightly sealed bags of baking supplies.
In the past, when I caught the scouting ants, I knew I was in for it. I’d have to throw away food and spray pest killer.
Um. Not this time.
Apparently there is so little food in my house, the ants called it a day and moved out this morning. On to greener pastures and fuller pantries I guess.
Who knew living frugal would annoy the ant population?
No, I’m not talking about Christmas spending, I’m talking about the electric/gas/oil costs of cold weather!!
San Diego had its first cold snap this weekend. Each morning, I woke up and checked the thermometer, shivering as I saw it hovering in the low 60’s – INSIDE my house. We’ve been insulating the house one wall at a time as money permits, but a good portion of our home has no insulation in the walls. Normally, hubby and I throw on sweatpants and a few extra blankets on the bed but that’s not an option this year with a newborn in the house. We have central heating but every time I turn it on, I swear I hear ‘cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching’ rather than the heat fan.
The upsetting part is, we only need one room heated at night. We close the vents to the other rooms but it’s not effective. I’m terrified to run a space heater while we sleep and we don’t have a fireplace.
How do you keep warm without spending a fortune?
My parents purchased five tiny pine trees from the grocery store and planted them in their front yard…30 years ago.
I don’t know if my father didn’t realize how HUGE the trees would get or if he simply didn’t think he’d still be living in the home 30 years later, but they took over the front yard. He was forced to cut them down one by one as snow storms threatened to push them onto the house but two remained.
One of the trees was leaning precariously toward the house and would unlikely survive another winter season. My father is stashing cash for his start-up and couldn’t spend the money on a tree service so my husband and brothers decided they’d take the task on.
Not realizing my husband was planning on flirting with danger, I didn’t activate his disability insurance policy. We’ve been shopping around and haven’t nailed one down yet. Eek. I was out shooting photos and shouting, ‘Please don’t get hurt! We’ve got NO INSURANCE!!!’
Remarkably they got the tree down without injury (this proves there IS a God) and my parents have enough firewood to take them into 2020.
I’m not holding my breath…
Bank of America called this morning. I ran to answer the phone when I saw their number pop up on the caller ID. For some crazy reason, I thought maybe they’d magically approved us for the making homes affordable program.
Ha.
Apparently motherhood makes you totally delusional.
Debra Poindexter (yup, that’s what she said her name was), called to sell me a B of A insurance policy for my home appliances. Sure, she didn’t have a huge chance considering all the appliances in my home are about 20 years old, but the fact that she was selling for B of A killed any chance at all.
Midway through her pitch, I interrupted and said, ‘B of A holds my home mortgage. Considering the horrid level of customer service I’ve had for the past 4 years, there’s a better chance of… well… there’s a better chance of pretty much everything happening before I bought a policy from you folks. Don’t take it personally, but you work for a miserable company.’
Silence.
‘But have a wonderful day. I really wish you personally the best. We won’t go into what I wish for B of A’ I said.
Then she hung up on me.
What?!? I was being nice!
When we purchased our home, we were forced to remodel part of the bathroom due to a shower pan leak. The ‘partial’ remodel turned into a full master bathroom remodel very quickly. My husband tore out the shower pan, then decided to tear out the shower walls since he was working on it anyway. Then he decided to replace the floor since the shower was going to be new and… you get it. He didn’t have to do much convincing to me. The bathroom was in terrible shape and I was excited to replace it.
Obviously, this was before we decided to become debt free.
Midway through the project, my husband asked what I thought about replumbing the whole house. He was concerned about the age of the house (over 50 years) and, in his experience, slab leaks from plumbing failures tend to be very expensive.
I didn’t want to do it. I felt like our credit card had been exercised enough with the remodel. He persisted and I gave in. We have all new plumbing in our home.
Last Wednesday, my mother called. They have a slab leak at their house.
The water crept across the carpeting, into walls, waffled through furniture, and up through bookcases.
My husband has been working to replumb their home and has had to cut open lots, and lots, and lots of holes in the walls and ceilings. I went to visit and felt like I was standing in the middle of a cube of Swiss cheese.
Of course this comes at a bad time for my parents. My father is working diligently to start his own business and money is tight. It would have been nice if they had been able to pick a better time for a home disaster like we were able to do.
Ugh.
I hate saying this…
but hubby was right. He saved us a fortune.
No, he’s not like me. He doesn’t rub it in – but he’s got a sparkly little glint in his eye today.
Site search
About This Site
My Debt
- Original Debt: $97,293.06
- Paid: $1,927.89
- Remaining: $95,365.17
- Emergency Fund: $1100
- Broken Down
- Line of Credit 2: $0.00
- Line of Credit 1: $0.00
- Credit Card 1: $0.00
- Credit Card 2: $245.00
- Credit Card 3: $405.00
- Credit Card 6: $1,785.00
- Credit Card 7: $2,381.17
- Consolidation Loan: $11,000.00
- Credit Card 10: $14,519.00
- Auto Loan 1: $16,093.00
- Credit Card 11: $23,873.00
- Auto Loan 2: $25,064.00
Finance Blogging Buddies
- Beachgirl’s Budget Blog
- Becoming and Staying Debt Free
- Boston Gals Open Wallet
- Debt Free Hispanic
- Debt Kid
- Debt Reduction 101
- Dual Income No Kids
- Everybody Loves Your Money
- Financial Hack
- Free Money Finance
- From the Brink of Bankruptcy
- Generation X Finance
- GRACEful Retirement
- Grad Money Matters
- It’s Your Money
- Josephsangl.com
- Kick Debt’s Butt
- Lazy Man and Money
- Low Income Life
- Make Love Not Debt
- Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge
- Mighty Bargain Hunter
- Money, Matter and More Musings
- My 1st Million at 33
- No Credit Needed
- One Million and Beyond
- Personal Finance Advice
- pfblogs.org
