On the heels of our mortgage refinance, I thought I’d put together a rundown of all the things we did two years ago to get our old house ready for sale. What follows is a rundown of all the ‘major’ stuff that we did just prior to putting our house on the market… [more]

Just over a year ago we sold our house and moved from one state to another. As part of this process, we held a huge and rather successful moving sale. What follows is a list of tips that contributed to the success of our sale. The main caveat here is that we generally run our sales with the intention of clearing stuff out, as opposed to maximizing profit. [more]

Phew! After three and a half long months we finally have closure… Dish Network has finally relented and credited us back for the supposedly “free” installation. In case you haven’t been following along, we’ve been in a long and drawn out fight with both Dish Network and the local reseller over a $49.99 bill credit that we should have received but didn’t. We also weren’t receiving the Digital Home Protection Plan, which was supposed to be free After repeated attempts to fix the problem, both with the reseller as well as by going through regular customer service reps at Dish, we finally took our fight to the corporate level. [more]

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve had a crash course in the hidden costs of home ownership. Here’s a taste of what we’ve been dealing with… [more]

This one has been a long time coming, but… I finally got around to creating a ‘roadmap’ of sorts for everything that we went through this past spring/summer as we prepared for our move, and then actually relocated. So… If you’re interested in learning more about what you can expect when moving, decisions that have to be made, etc., then look no further. And be sure to read the comments as well as the posts, as a lot of people pitched in with tips, tricks, and suggestions that ultimately made the process a lot easier for us. [more]

About a week ago we returned home to an urgent sounding phone message from our mortgage lender, Provident Funding Associates, saying that we needed to call them. Having been through this before, I knew exactly what they were going to say — they sold our mortgage. [more]

Pop quiz time…

Question: When is an in-state check an out-of-state check?

Answer: When you have a Bank of America account and you move. [more]

After six years of regular cell phone usage without going over our allotted minutes, it finally happened… During the month of May, when we spent an awful lot of time conversing with two realtors, two closing attorneys, our mortgage broker, as well as numerous friends and family members regarding our move, we racked up 113 minutes in overages. [more]

While I say this somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I have a killer (and easy) money saving tip for you… Live next to someone who’s moving. Our best friends and next door neighbors in our old neighborhood made a killing when we moved out. First off, we gave them priority when it came to picking through the stuff that we were selling during our moving sale. They got a screaming deal on a nice computer hutch, as well as a number of other prime items for a song. And while we did our best to run our food supply down prior to the move, there were a number of perishables that we couldn’t take with us that were still left at the very end. So what did we do? Simple, we invited the neighbors over to take what they wanted. In terms of lawn care, we were moving from a neighborhood full of tall fescue lawns to a house with a bermuda lawn — thus, the neighbors got the better part of a big bag of tall fescue grass seed. And when move out day finally rolled around, I decided that I didn’t want to mess with hauling gas for the mower and trimmer. Thus, the neighbors got a few gallons of gas, complete with the gas can.

For more information on moving, check out my Roadmap for a Successful Relocation.

Well, I spent the better part of yesterday evening working to get our online banking changed over from our old bank (US Bank) to our new bank (Bank of America). In short, I want to consolidate all of our bill paying at Bank of America and start phasing out our US Bank checking account. What this means is migrating over the e-Bill information for three Citi MasterCards (Driver’s Edge, Dividend Platinum, and the AT&T Universal Card), one Chase Visa, an AmEx card, and our Sam’s Club Credit account. It’s actually pretty easy to do (discontinue e-Bills at one bank, set them up at the other), but the changeover isn’t instantaneous. Thus, I’ll have to be extra careful to watch the cards that we’re actively using to be sure that we don’t miss any bills. Next up, I need to change our address for all of these accounts — and many more when you consider things like banking, insurance, retirement accounts, etc.

For more information on moving, check out my Roadmap for a Successful Relocation.