Two Shelves

My wife and I decided not to exchange gifts this year. We bought a house, new appliances, and have a major renovation underway. We have felt the related cash drain from these expenses and didn't feel adding another trinket would make our lives better. Rather than trinkets, we decided to create our dream closet in the master bedroom. 

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas! Enjoy that extra cookie. Take the last piece of pie. Sleep an extra hour. And most importantly, drink the extra drink. Apparently it's not too tough to find childcare in the winter:

Jobs: What to do next?

Upon my full-time return home, I'm going to need a job of some sort. We simply don't have enough passive income to survive and have a $40k renovation project underway. I'll likely take a few months off between gigs, but have started the mental exercise of what I can do to make money.

The Stock Market: Probability In Action

The stock market moves up and down every minute, day, and week. The movements appear to be random, and there have been books and academic studies proving this to be true. Now, I'm no academic but I am a professional investor. I have a vastly different explanation: divergent opinions on probabilities of outcomes.

Things that go "BUMP" in the night

Last night around midnight my two dogs started barking uncontrollably. While taking breaks to breathe, they tilted their heads listening for the source of the gigantic "THUD" sound across the house. I figured it was well enough to ignore, but the pups kept listening and my wife corroborated their intrigue. My wife was nearly in tears, full of fear, mainly driven by the dogs not accepting the discontinuance of the sound.

Currency Trading

I got into currency trading earlier this year after getting fed up with my employer's policies regarding equity trading. In order to make a stock trade, I must navigate through an hour's worth of requests and approvals through three or four layers of corporate goodness. After getting approval, I cannot re-trade the security for 30 days. I'm all for long-term investing, but being trapped in a loser for 30 days is bogus.

Special Dividends & New Buy

Two of my larger holdings announced special dividends to be paid before year end. I'm VERY excited about getting these payments. I've been a holder of both of these companies for about 3 years (my entire investment career) and am happy as a clam with how I've been treated as a shareholder.

Moved - New House is Now Home

We spent all day Saturday and Sunday moving our stuff into our new house back home. We had to get 2 gigantic moving trucks, which was unexpected. We made a trip Saturday figuring we'd pick up the little that we couldn't fit on Sunday...but BOY WERE WE OPTIMISTIC! We ended up renting another giant truck and filling it nearly to the brim. I bet professional movers could have gotten the stuff in the truck on the first trip, but such is life. It felt amazing to sleep on my own mattress in my new house. Sitting here in the Big City now, I'm sad to be gone. I return Friday night to my wonderful place back home.

Leaks

Walking into the laundry room in the basement, I had always noticed a bad smell. I figured it was some remnant of a former owner or had something to do with being such a water-logged environment. After having the house ozoned, which removes all smells, the smell still lingered. After some investigation, the culprit was a gas pipe with a bit of a leak. Even further snooping led to another gas leak.

The Importance of a Good View

As I've said before, what pushed my wife and I over the edge from wanting to go home "someday" to making the move now is the property at a great price that came up for sale. The place is/was not in good shape, at least aesthetically. The walls had cheap wood paneling. The bathrooms were dirty and outdated. I mean the previous owner left a ton of his old, dirty furniture for us to dispose of. So aesthetics did not make the sale. The bones of the home are great. We like the amount of space, size of the rooms, and overall layout. We will change some walls and room locations, but more for design choices than necessity. The real thing that made us buy now was the view. The entire back of the house is windows. We overlook the local golf course, so the great view will never be taken away. It's not often that properties with this type of view come up for sale, especially at attractive prices. Because the house's overall size and layout fits both our needs and wants, we felt it was worth the endeavor to basically gut the place and make the move back home now. We have spent our first few weekends of ownership ripping stuff out. We move in this weekend and will begin putting the place back together in the coming months. I work in an office with no windows, so the view matters to me.

The Frailty of Life

My mom was diagnosed with skin cancer last week. This is her second bout with the ugly monster after surviving cancer-free for over 10 years. She is not coping with the news very well. They took a sample of the questionable spot on her cheek and will remove the rest of the tissue just before Thanksgiving. She will have a 2-inch scar. I don't have much doubt that she'll survive the cancer and the procedure is not too invasive. She and my dad won't be bothered by the scar as they will simply be happy she's alive.

Closing Day Tomorrow

After 5 months of ups and downs in this process, we finally take possession of our new house back home tomorrow! I got the "clear to close" from my bank, set a time at the title agency, and got the HUD form showing how much I need to pay...i.e. this is for real!

Before & After - First House

With my house being under contract, I thought this would be a good time to reflect on the improvements and changes we made during our three years of ownership. I only have a few pictures of the "before", but will describe changes in words and pictures.

Competing Offers

My current house was put on the market last Thursday (Oct. 18) and had about ten showings over the weekend. The Realtor open house was Tuesday and got positive feedback on the quality of the house and the price level - 8/18 Realtors said it was $5k too high, not a big issue! Today I was informed by my Realtor that I'd gotten TWO offers today! We sorted through them, informed each that there was another offer on the table, and settled with one of the buyers for $1k OVER ASKING! Apparently, we priced the house right (maybe too low?) and are glad to be moving on with our lives. We close at the end of the month and hopefully will have our house back home next week.

Door Jam(b)

Expecting to close this week on my new house back home, I was given bad news. The bank's appraiser submitted his report. The value was actually above what I'm paying - HOORAY! The issue is that his quality/liveability rating was a C5, second to worst and 1 notch below what FNMA accepts - meaning the bank could not give me a loan because they couldn't sell it. The report highlighted the fact that there are no kitchen appliances and significant deferred maintenance. I knew about all of these and didn't think of them as a hindrance. His biggest reason to grant the C5 rating vs. a C4 (which would have made my loan approved) was that the front door doesn't lock because it was kicked in. I knew it didn't lock and asked my realtor to get it fixed right after making my offer in June! After a bit of glue and screws, the door is lockable and we should be on for a closing next week.

Punched in the Face

Last night I got a punch in the face reminder of why I'm so committed to moving back home. Traffic was bad, which delayed my bus to the train station. Ever resourceful, I walked to the subway station. After waiting for 15 minutes for a train (they are supposed to run in 6-8 min intervals), I realized that my chance of making the train home was 0% with the next train leaving 90 minutes later and getting me home just before 9pm. Luckily my brother is living in the city until May, so I just crashed with him for the night. If my brother didn't live in the city (which he won't very soon), I would have had a terrible night. Eliminating my 90 minute (if things go well) one-way commute is paramount to my happiness. I'm amazed I haven't gone crazy yet!

Watch List-October

My job gives me a Bloomberg terminal - complete with a whole monitor dedicated to watching each and every tick during the stock market trading day. While I can't buy any stocks our funds would buy, there is still a lot of the world available to me. Lately I've been eyeing INTC, RRGB, and MSFT.

Pay the Loser

So after hearing my offer was accepted by the first mortgage lender and rejected by the second - despite the second not supposed to get anything because the first wasn't made whole - I offered to give the second lender an extra $4 grand. They accepted. Still no word on when we close, but with all of the approvals/acceptances/etc things are looking good on this front.

Acceleration

My plan all along was to move back home. I've been monitoring real estate listings for a few years now - mostly in the off chance that I find a deal too good to pass up. I guess my original plan if I found such a property was to rent it out until I was ready to move home. Well, one day in late May a perfect house came up for sale.

Intro

This will be a tale of my journey to move back home. Like most kids growing up, I "needed to get outta this town"! After spending a few years living in "Big City USA" in pursuit of my dream job, I've gotten burned out by the long hours and constant hubbub. I'm ready to move back home - especially now that I'm married. Family is the most important thing in my life and I'd rather live the life of a miser surrounded by my loving family than a rich guy in the newest trendy tower of "Big City USA." It's time for me to go home.