Online Surveys September 28, 2008

Hello everyone!  Yes, I still exist.  I know I vanished for a while, but with being in transition with the move and all, it’s been hard to find a good time to blog.  Things should stabilize again once I’ve moved into my new home.

Anyways, back to the subject of this post.  Today I decided to join MySurvey.  I have been a member of erewards and your2cents for the past few months, and have decided to expand my online survey participation, particularly since I have not found a new job just yet.  I really like erewards, it’s set up so that my “cash” rewards are dispersed as payment on one of my student loans through Upromise, and they send me surveys fairly regularly.  I’m not a big fan of your2cents, I almost never qualify for the surveys they send me, and it’s rare if they send me surveys at all.  It takes $10 to get a reward check, and after about 4 months, I’m at $2.  If MySurvey pans out, I’ll probably drop your2cents as soon as I can cash out.

Part of why I do these surveys is not just for my own debt snowflaking, but also for my retired parents. My hope is that if some of these online survey systems work for me, I can set my mom up with one to help supplement her fixed income.  To ensure they aren’t scams or to difficult to use, I’ve been trying them out first.

Food and Shopping: Today I was both good and bad. September 8, 2008

Good things I did today:

- went to a cardio-kickboxing class

- ate a sensible breakfast and lunch

- spent some much-needed quality time with my sister

- bought a new suit (I’ve been meaning to do this for months, and it was getting down to crunch time) As an added bonus, I got it 30% off at Banana Republic’s 30th Anniversary sale!

- bought a new purse (for less than $30 at Kohl’s) — this was also on my to do list

- showed my sister how to sell her used books on Amazon.com

- got a new pair of dress pants on clearance at BR for only $38.49 (also on my to do list)

- found a cute pair of jeans at the GAP, but decided to wait to purchase until they were on sale

- found a cute skirt at Kohl’s, but decided to wait for a better sale price

- shopped most of the day, but only made 1 unnecessary purchase

- burned some calories walking around the mall

-caught up on laundry, email, blog, and Facebook

 

Bad things I did today:

- ate a cookie dough blizzard (17 points – yikes!)

- ate an Arby’s roast beef & curly fries for dinner (I don’t even want to know how many weight watchers points that is!)

- bought a shirt (NOT on sale) that I totally DID NOT need at the GAP

- forgot to call and schedule an important appointment

- did not spend any time job hunting

 

To be fair, I was ambushed by the Arby’s — I’m staying at my sister’s house this week, and my brother-in-law had an extremely crappy day at work, so he blew his diet and brought home Arby’s for all of us.  I felt it would be rude to refuse to eat it, and that it would also make him feel worse if I pointed out how bad it was calorie-wise, so I did some sympathy eating.  Of course this was after I had gotten a blizzard (a major no-no food) at the mall and promised myself I would eat nothing but salad for dinner to make up for it . . . .

We bought our first house! September 8, 2008

The sellers counter-offered at $261,000 which was better than we thought we’d do, so we accepted the deal and signed the papers on Saturday.  The only bummer is that we don’t close on the house until Oct. 30, which means we are living in a hotel a month longer than we thought.  At the same time, it’s good because you pay fewer closing costs at the end of the month.  My sister has volunteered to let us stay at her cabin for part of the time, which is good, although it’s about 5 hours away, so we’ll have to see if we can work that out.

Next steps: applying for the loan, scheduling the inspection of the property

Making the offer September 5, 2008

After looking at several more houses, we ultimately decided to make an offer on a detached condo.  It was listed at $274,600, however, given the way the market is and that there were several condos for sale in the same complex, we decided to offer $250,000.  After consulting with friends and family we were advised that in the current market, you can usually bid about 10% below the asking price, and settle around 5% below.  We are hoping to end up paying less than $265,000.

I really hope it works out — I love this condo! It has a HUGE master suite with a jetted tub, dual vanity and walk-in closet. It also has a really nice layout and fabulous tile in the main entry. Cross your fingers for me!

House Hunting with a Realtor Day 2 September 3, 2008

Yesterday we looked at a second set of condos.  Though they were the same price and square footage, they were not nearly as nice as the ones we had viewed on Monday. They only had a living room, rather than both a living and family room, and they only had one-car garages. Because of the way they were laid out, they just seemed smaller than the other condos.  We also drove around and looked at some neighborhoods — we had checked out some houses online and wanted to see them from the outside before making an appointment to tour the inside.  I really like 2 of them, 1 is ok, but it’s cheaper and in a slightly more convenient location.

I’m noticing a trend there, the more convenient the location, the less nice the houses become. We will look at those 3 single family homes this afternoon. I’m hoping we can decide between them and the condo today, and make an offer on Thursday.  (Our goal is to be done house hunting before Sunday, because C has to go to California for a week for work, and we don’t want to put things on hold another week).  Also, hopefully the sooner we buy a house, the sooner we can close and move in.

In other good news, one of our cars arrived yesterday!  It was 3 days early, which was awesome because that’s 3 fewer days of renting a car. Though we don’t have a place to live yet, it’s nice to drive our own car.  We shipped our other car a month after this one, so we will be sharing a vehicle until October, but since I don’t have a job yet, that should be pretty easy (and much more economical).

House-hunting with a Realtor Day 1 September 2, 2008

Today we met our realtor face-to-face for the first time.  We had sent her a list of houses, and she made appointments for us to view them.  We looked at 2 detached condos and 2 single family homes.  We really liked both of the condos, mostly liked one of the homes, and really didn’t like the fourth home. 

Though we’d rather have a home than a condo, the condos had wonderful layouts, 2-car garages, lots of space, and great amenities (laminate flooring, jetted tub, huge master suite). The house we liked was good, except it only had a 1-car garage, and the bathrooms were very small and had virtually no counter space. It did have a huge yard (the condos only had patios) but a yard isn’t high on our priority list. The carpet also really needed replacing, although we can probably get that reflected in the price.

We have another set of condos to look at tomorrow (mainly for the sake of comparison, we don’t like them quite as much), and we may take a second look at today’s condos.  We are strong considering putting in an offer on one of them.  We also went on-line and pulled up another list of single family homes.  Though we may have found the condo of our dreams, we want to make sure we cover all our bases.

We made it to the new state! September 1, 2008

We left Hawaii around 2:45 p.m. Hawaii time on Friday and, 3 flights later, arrived in Virginia at 10:30 a.m. Eastern.  Flying overnight in combination with a 6 hour time change and 2 layovers is exhausting.  We spent most of Saturday afternoon and this morning asleep.

However, this afternoon/evening we were house-hunting maniacs.  We meet with our realtor tomorrow for our first “official” house hunting trip, but we spent last night and today driving around looking at locations/neighborhoods.  It was a little shocking. Houses that look nice on the web usually look nice in person, but their neighborhoods don’t always match.  A number of “nice” houses in our price range were on a “nice” street, surrounded by a number of really sketchy neighborhoods. That helped us narrow down our search quite a bit.

We did find one house I absolutely LOVE, but it’s $20,000 above our price range, and judging by what other houses in the neighborhood are going for, I think they’ve already come wayyy down in price. However, we’ll see how things go.  If they are in that much of hurry to sell it, we might just score a deal.