Things are moving along with regard to our new townhouse. We have approximately 5-6 weeks to get ready for our move to the new place. I’m excited and ready to leave the apartment.

I thought it might be helpful to share our to-do list for others that are planning to move. I’m sure many of you have some moving tips of your own to add in the comments. I’m used to moving, but it’s still a bit of an adjustment for my husband.

Things to do before we move

Notify landlord/leasing office of the move date. Our yearly lease was up in September and we’ve been going month-to-month with the apartment complex. We gave a date for moving out, and we have some leeway to extend it if necessary mainly due to apartments being empty.

Notify current employers to take some time off. Since I work from home, this isn’t a huge issue. My husband has plenty of time saved to take off from work, and his manager knows about the move. Once we get a solid schedule, he’ll inform the company. He’ll probably just take a day or two off.

Get a few estimates from truck rental companies. Since this will be a local move, it’s going to be much cheaper than some of my past moves. We got rate quotes from different moving companies to get an idea of how much to set aside. I estimated using the truck for an entire day.

• U-Haul: They charge $19.95 plus $7 for a hand truck and $0.89/mile for a 10′ truck.
• Penske: This was the most expensive company, with a quote of $79.95 plus $10 for a hand truck and $0.99/mile for a 12′ truck.
• Budget: They charge $19.99 plus $15 for a hand truck and $0.89/mile for a 10′ truck.
• Ryder: They charge $54.00 with 500 miles included for a 12′-14′ truck. No estimate for the hand truck.

Go to the post office. I need to go grab a change-of-address package to have our mail sent to the new place. I’ll do this 2 weeks before the move to see if I can get a coupon for the move.

Get started with packing. I usually pick up some boxes from a local grocery store. We’re off to a great start and our goal is to do two boxes/day until we’re done.

Clean apartment to get deposit back. I’m enlisting my sister-in-law to help me clean the apartment from top to bottom. I’m hoping (but not counting on) getting some money back so we can add it to our emergency fund.

Switch our utilities. We have to schedule disconnection of all utility services at our current apartment and have them hooked up at the new place when we move. We’ll also have to open an account with the gas company for the town house. While we’re at it, I’m going to check and see if we can get a better deal on our cable TV.

Closing Thoughts

That’s our plan for now. We’re hoping it will be simple and smooth. Am I forgetting anything major? Do you have advice on how make this move go smooth?

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» One Year Ago This Week (June 11th – June 17th)
» Money Saving Tip: Live Next Door to Someone Who’s Moving
» Getting Ready for Tax Season
» Tax Return Poll Results
» Carnivals – Week of 03/27/06
» Money Poll #6: Tax Preparation
» How to Sell a House in a Down Market
» Tips for Preparing Your Estate Plan

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…

1. Had a moving sale
2. Gave a bunch of stuff to Goodwill
3. Moved a bunch of stuff to storage
4. Minor drywall repair
5. Minor paint touchups throughout the house
6. Washed all windows
7. Had Stanley Steemer clean the carpets ($225 for the whole house). For what it’s worth, you can find exceptional ideas on buying, repairing, restoring, or maintaining carpets online and save money that usually falls underfoot. Cleaners, installers, and professionals offering other flooring options are offering special pricing now in the distressed economy.
8. Repaired a ground fault by replacing the cable from our house to the lamp post
9. Re-painted our mailbox and lamp post
10. Replaced exterior light fixtures on alongside garage door
11. Fertilized the lawn about two weeks before putting it on the market
12. Re-did the mulch beds with fresh pine straw

While this stuff took us a few days to get done, we actually turned a profit in that our moving sale generated more than enough in the way of profits to cover the costs of everything else, plus we had tax savings from the Goodwill donations.

When all was said and done, all three realtors that we interviewed walked through the house and said it was ready to show without doing a thing. And guess what? They were right. We sold our old house for very close to our asking price in under six days. Of course, the market was a heck of a lot better back then than it is now, but still… If you’re thinking of putting your house on the market this spring, be sure to do what you can to spruce it up.

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Preparing for our Moving Sale
» Appealing Our Property Tax Re-Assessment (Followup)
» How to Sell a House in a Down Market
» Staging Your Home for Sale
» Carnivals – Week of 04/21/08
» Moving Sale Results
» Sunday Roundup – Patio Furniture Edition
» Our House is on the Market

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.

(1) Separate out anything that’s easily eBay-able. While you can often make quite a bit more money on eBay as compared to selling things at a garage sale, I really like the speed and ease of selling stuff at a garage sale as opposed to using eBay… No pictures to be taken, no description to be written, and no shipping after the item is sold. Not to mention that you don’t have to wait seven (or whatever) days for the auction to end. That being said, there are certain items that are definitely worth separating out for sale on eBay. For example, you can make a killing on eBay with certain types of small electronics.

(2) Advertise, advertise, advertise. We used a combination of a two day newspaper ad and a series of signs that led people off the main street in our area back to our cul de sac. I’m not sure which was more effective, but I’d recommend doing both… We had great traffic, especially considering it was an unseasonably cold day.

(3) Make sure you have plenty of change on hand. There are plenty of people out there who will want to buy a $0.25 trinket with a $20 bill.

(4) Price your stuff to sell. Remember, you’re moving, and there’s a reason that all this stuff wound up in your ’sell pile.’ No sense in holding out for every last penny when the real goal is to clear stuff out. After all, you’re gonna end up hauling all this stuff away when the sale ends.

(5) As much as possible, price things by category. If you’ve got a ton of shoes to sell, consider pricing them all the same, and then group them all together with a sign indicating the price.

(6) Build in bulk discounts. If you’re already pricing things to sell, and pricing them by category, then why not throw in a bulk discount? If you’re selling kids shoes for a dollar a pair, offer six pairs for five dollars. You’d be amazed at how much more quickly your stuff will sell if you put together package deals.

(7) Check any and all pockets before putting an item out for sale. One of the things that we noticed during our sale was that people had a tendency to pick up purses, backpacks, etc. and seemingly check them for hidden treasures. After rifling through them and not finding anything of value, they promptly set them back down. Don’t mistakenly sell a wad of cash, jewelry, or anything else because you simply didn’t know it was there.

(8) Be prepared to negotiate. People love to get a deal, and often times they’ll claim that paying seven cents on the dollar just isn’t cheap enough… They want it for six cents on the dollar. Obviously, dealing down on your prices has it’s limits, but don’t forget that you want to get rid of this stuff.

(9) Get your kids involved. If it’s a hot day, get a cooler full of cold drinks and let your kids sell ‘em for profit. I had grand plans for this but, as noted above, it ended up being an unseasonably cold day, and nobody was interested in a cold drink.

(10) Donate whatever doesn’t sell. While we sold a ton of stuff, we also made a killing by dontaing all the stuff that didn’t sell and taking a tax deduction. In fact, if you’re in a high enough tax bracket, and assuming that you itemize your deductions, you might do just as well (or at least close enough) by donating everything instead of selling it. Just be sure to keep a detailed inventory of what you donate. Then again, having a sale will help you get rid of stuff that would otherwise be hard to haul to a donation center.

Got any ideas of your own? Please feel free to add them in the comments, below.

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Moving Sale Results
» Preparing for our Moving Sale
» Money Saving Tip: Live Next Door to Someone Who’s Moving
» Improving Our Curb Appeal
» Staging Your Home for Sale
» Our House is on the Market
» Ten Days Until Closing
» Help us Choose a Mover

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.

At this point, it was no longer about the money. Rather, I wanted nothing more than to make them bend to my will no matter what it took. After spending a bit over half an hour on the phone with a “Corporate Customer Service” rep, I was hopeful that things had been straightened out. She said all the right things, claimed to have called the reseller and checked with the “Promotions Manager,” and even provided me with her direct line in case things didn’t work out.

Being the anal-retentive guy that I am, I check our account daily to see if the credit would show up. After a week, there was still no credit, but they had added on the Digital Home Protection Plan, but THEY WERE CHARGING US FOR IT. So all that time on the phone with a supposedly higher level CSR had actually made the situation worse!

I promptly picked up the phone and got the CSR’s voice mail. In her message, she promised that she would return my call within 24-72 hours. When she didn’t, I called again. Same result. So I called everyday for the rest of the week. With the same result each and every day.

At this point, I was about to drive out to Englewood, Colorado and punch someone in the face. But instead of doing that, I called EchoStar headquarters again (their number is 303-723-1000, by the way). I re-explained the situation, and asked if they had an even higher level of customer service. This time I got transferred to “Executive Escalations.” As it turns out, these are the people that you want to be talking to when you have a problem with Dish Network.

To make an extremely long story a tiny bit shorter, the Executive Escalations rep manually credited our account for the $49.99 and then promised to send an e-mail to another department to get the credits for our Digital Home Protection Plan. I balked and told her that I’d heard that same thing far too many times already with no results. She then offered to manually process the credits for the Home Protection plan, as well. The only hangup was that the credits wouldn’t show up on our account until the next day. The next morning, I held my breath while I loaded our account page online, and… Voíla! The credits were there and our long journey toward salvation is now (seemingly) complete.

While I’m still pissed at the amount of time that I burned on this, I’m totally relieved to not have to think about this anymore. And I’m sure that it’s a relief for you regular readers knowing that you won’t have to read about it anymore!

To read my thoughts on getting customer service satisfaction (in general), read this:
Solving Customer Service Problems

And if you’re interested in the full backstory (in order), check out these links:
Our Dish Network TV Experience (So Far)
Our Dish Network Experience (Continued)
The Dish Network Runaround
Dish Network Customer Service SUCKS
Dish Network Customer Service STILL Sucks
Solving Dish Network Customer Service Problems

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Dish Network Customer Service Salvation (For Real This Time?)
» Dish Network Technical Problems: This is Getting Ridiculous!
» Dish Network Customer Service: Drat, Foiled Again!
» Dish Network Customer Service STILL Sucks
» From the Archives (September 16th – September 22nd)
» Money Poll #16: Telecommunications Spending
» Dish Network Technical Troubles Solved
» Dish Network Pay-Per-View Followup

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…

$900 to renew our termite contract: To be fair, we knew this one was coming. Our house was treated for termites when it was built, and covered for five years following construction. We ended up buying it just before the original contract was up. Fortuantely, this is a one-time fee, although we have to make a smaller annual payment to maintain the bond. We ended up going with Termidor, which has a lifetime warranty, and any necessary retreatments will be free of charge.

$1500 for exterior work: We dropped a pretty sizable chunk of change on some trim work on the exterior of our house. First off, the frieze boards (just below the soffits in the gables of our roof) were totally infested with carpenter bees. The good news is that it was just superficial damage. The bad news is that it was starting to look like crap, so we just decided to bite the bullet before the problem spread. As it turns out, the builder had just slapped up wood trim and painted the exposed surfaces rather than: (1) priming/painting all saides, (2) wrapping it in aluminum, or (3) using Hardi-Plank (i.e., cement board) or the equivalent. We had it replaced with Hardi-Plank. It ended up being a pretty big job, but we’re glad that we had it done.

We also had a door fram replaced. The base of our garage service door frame was rotted out on both sides. This is something that the inspector picked up on, and the previous owner had repaired. However, the guy that did the work did a pretty crappy job, and we decided to have it re-done (right) ourselves. Note to self: Always ask for money off the purchase price to fix stuff like this rather than letting the owner take care of it. I probably should’ve made a stink about it when I did the final inspection, but I just decided to deal with it.

$750 for tree service: We lost several pines to bark beetles. My neighbor and I dropped three of them ourselves, but there were two others that were to close to the house for comfort. Thus, we ended up hiring someone to take down those two trees, and to pull the others out and grind them up.

Here’s a bit of advice if you’re ever dealing with pine beetles: Get the trees on the ground as soon as possible. The beetles typically get from tree to tree by climbing up them and then gliding from one to the next. So if you can get the affected trees on the ground, you’ve effectively stopped the problem from spreading. Or so says our neighbor who’s a forester.

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Carnivals – Week of 11/13/06
» From the Archives (September 14th – September 20th)
» From the Archives (September 9th – September 15th)
» The Three Worst Reasons to Buy a House
» Hidden Costs of Retiring Overseas
» All About Title Insurance
» Pay Back the Homebuyer Tax Credit?
» Questions to Ask About Your Settlement Statement

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.

Here we go… Broken down into general categories, and then presented chronologically…

General Topics/Articles:
- Staging Your Home for Sale
- The Lengths to Which Mortgage Lenders Will Go
- How to Write a Mortgage Gift Letter
- What’s a Piggyback Mortgage?
- Rules Regarding No-Interest Family Loans
- All About Title Insurance
- The Cost of a Failed House Deal

The Process:
- Help Us Find a Realtor
- Storing our Stuff
- Preparing for our Moving Sale
- Moving Sale Results
- Improving Our Curb Appeal
- Finding a Mortgage
- Our House is on the Market
- First (Lowball) Offer Received
- Roadtrip – Time to Buy a House
- Offer Made, Offer Received
- Counter Offer Made, Another Offer Received
- Bought and Sold in Under Six Days
- Help us Choose a Mover
- Home Inspection Today
- Home Inspection Complete
- The Countdown Begins…
- Ten Days Until Closing
- Final Walkthrough Today
- We’re Homeless…
- Wire Transfers When Closing on a House
- (Another) Final Walkthrough Today
- Homeless No More
- Our Mortgage was Sold
- Pre-Paying our Mortgage

Moving With Kids:
- Eight Year Olds and Real Estate
- We Bought (and Sold) a House
- The Big Move Approaches

Random Headaches and Other Minutiae:
- SunTrust vs. Bank of America Online Bill Pay Question
- Broadband Internet Woes
- Broadband Internet Crisis Averted
- Broadband Internet Coming Soon(er than Expected)
- Reducing Our Electrical Usage
- Our Dish Network TV Experience (So Far)
- Our Dish Network Experience (Continued)
- Cut Your Own Grass or Use a Lawn Service?
- Our John Deere Model 125 Lawn Tractor
- The Dish Network Runaround
- Our Online Banking Changeover
- Money Saving Tip: Live Next Door to Someone Who’s Moving
- Cell Phone Overages – A Hidden Cost of Moving
- Bank of America’s “Out of State” Check Policy
- Dish Network Customer Service SUCKS
- Paint Recommendations?
- What Would You do With a Bunch of Bricks?
- Dish Network Customer Service STILL Sucks
- Summer Electric Bill Pain
- Termite Control: Sentricon vs. Termidor
- Compact Fluorescent Lightbulb Changeover Complete
- Solving Dish Network Customer Service Problems

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» We’re Homeless…
» The Countdown Begins…
» Roadtrip – Time to Buy a House
» Bought and Sold in Under Six Days
» Our House is on the Market
» Homeless No More
» Ten Days Until Closing
» Help Us Find a Realtor

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.

Of course, I Googled the phone number that they left before calling them back just to be sure that it wasn’t a phishing scheme of some sort. When the number popped up on one of Provident’s contact pages, I gave them a call. Sure enough, they had sold our mortgage — or at least the servicing rights — to Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. This happens all the time, and it’s not a big deal. The terms of your loan remain the same, so you basically just need to start sending the money to someone else.

Here’s a tip for you… If you ever receive notice from a new loan servicer that your mortgage has been transferred to them, call the old servicer to verify that this is true — and don’t rely on contact information provided by the new servicer when doing this. If you naively start redirecting your payments to the new servicer, or try to call the old servicer using a number provided by the new servicer to verify the transfer, you could end up in a world of hurt. It’s possible that a scammer is trying to intercept your mortgage payments, and you might not figure it out until after the original servicer comes after you for non-payment.

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» What Happens to Your Mortgage if Your Bank Fails?
» Pre-Paying our Mortgage
» Escape Your Mortgage Due to a Bank Failure?
» The Best of FCN – Selections from 04/06
» From the Archives (March 31st – April 12th)
» Carnivals – Week of 07/31/06
» Debt Reduction: Share Your Story
» What is a Mortgage Escrow Account?

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.

Prior to our move I went to great pains to ensure that we’d have a smooth banking transition when we moved. I researched the options (SunTrust vs. Bank of America) and decided on Bank of America. I also asked all the right questions… Like “Does it make any difference if we open the account here (prior to our move, which was more convenient) or should we open it on the other end.” The answer was that a Bank of America account is a Bank of America account no matter where you open it.

As it turns out, that’s only partly true. My first tipoff was when I went to deposit a check at the service counter and was told that I would have to re-write the deposit slip using one of their special ‘out-of-state’ deposit slips. It turns out that their system automatically bases the in-state vs. out-of-state determination on where you opened the account, not on where you live. At first blush, this wasn’t a terribly big deal… All I needed to do was use a special form on those (relatively) rare occasions when I deposited a check at a teller window. But upon further questioning, I also learned that such checks (including work reimbursements, which aren’t terribly uncommon) would be subject to a lengthy hold (as much as 7-9 days) simply because they were thought to be out-of-state, even if they weren’t.

The solution to this problem? Amazingly, they can’t simply modify your account. Rather, you have to open a new Bank of America account and shut down the old one. Great. Now instead of changing bank accounts once, I got to do it twice. I actually considered just switching banks out of spite, but Bank of America really does suit our needs, so I took a deep breath and went ahead with the change. The nice thing was that I was able to do this without creating a new online banking login, so I didn’t have to re-enter our online bill pay details, etc. Rather, the new account shows up alongside our old one when we log in. Once the dust settles and we’re sure everything on the old account has cleared we’ll go ahead and close it down. All in all our banking transition was not terribly difficult, but it certainly ended up being a lot more complex than we expected.

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Banks Reducing Overdraft Fees
» Carnivals – Week of 07/17/06
» Opening a Bank of America Home Equity Line of Credit, Part II
» Bank of America to Improve ATM Deposits
» From the Archives (July 8th – July 14th)
» Banks and Fraud: Bank of America Better Than Expected?
» The Cost of Not Answering the Phone
» Our Online Banking Changeover

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.

We use Sprint PCS (mainly for the 20% discount that I get through work) and, unfortunately, we hadn’t upgraded to one of their ‘Fair and Flexible’ plans that come with cheap extra minutes. Thus, instead of paying just ten cents for each extra minute (actually $5 for each additional block of 50 minutes), they stuck us for an extra forty cents per minute — yup, that’s $45.20 in overages, not including taxes. Oh well, that’s water under the bridge at this point, and I’d have to say that the convenience was worth it. But still… If you’re in the midst of moving, this is something to watch out for.

For what it’s worth, we have since switched to a Fair & Flexible Family plan that costs the same as our previous plan, but offers a bit more in the way of shared minutes (550 vs. 500) along with free roaming. We also got a few other perks that we had already collected over time, but which now come standard (free PCS-to-PCS calling, free nights and weekends starting at 7 PM). Oh, and I did e-mail customer care asking for a reprieve on the overages charges — no reply yet.

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» From the Archives (July 1st – July 7th)
» Carnivals – Week of 07/10/06
» Carnivals – Week of 09/11/06
» The Best of FCN – Selections from 07/06
» Great Sprint PCS Service (and a 10% Discount)
» Pay Phones on Their Way Out
» One Year Ago This Week (October 1st – October 7th)
» Internet Access on Your Cell Phone

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.

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Carnivals – Week of 07/10/06
» Carnivals – Week of 08/28/06
» From the Archives (June 17th – June 23rd)
» From the Archives (June 8th – July 5th)
» The Best of FCN — Selections from 06/06
» Roadmap for a Successful Relocation
» Improving Our Curb Appeal
» Insulate Your Garage Door

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.

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Online Banking Poll Results
» From the Archives (June 17th – June 23rd)
» Bank of America’s “Out of State” Check Policy
» Spending Money to Save Money
» One Year Ago This Week (October 22nd – October 28th)
» The Best of FCN — Selections from 06/06
» Online Banking Explosion
» Automating our Finances

Man, I must have good ‘technican karma’ (or something like that)… Yesterday morning we got a call from the Dish Network installer saying that there had been a scheduling conflict for our Friday appointment — could he come a day early? Heck yeah! Now that I have a solid DSL connection, I can work a bit from home so I just hung out in the afternoon while they hooked it up. The install went smoothly, and we now have more channels than you can shake a stick at. Needless to say, the boys were thrilled, and my lovely and talented wife was ecstatic.

Oh, and by the way… The $5 credit for plugging the boxes into your phone jack really isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be… The sales people are smart enough to build that into their price quotes, so the price you are given up front assumes that you’ll be plugging into a phone jack. If not, you’ll suffer the consequences in the form of a $5 ‘anti-credit.’

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» From the Archives (June 3rd – June 9th)
» Dish Network Customer Service Salvation (At Long Last)
» Dish Network Pay-Per-View Followup
» The Best of FCN — Selections from 06/06
» Dish Network Customer Service Salvation (For Real This Time?)
» Dish Network Technical Problems: This is Getting Ridiculous!
» Dish Network Customer Service STILL Sucks
» Dish Network Technical Troubles Solved

As I’ve noted previously, we don’t have the option of cable TV (or internet) at our new house. Thus, we’ve opted for DSL on the internet side, and Dish Network on the TV side. Yesterday afternoon I stopped by the local Dish reseller to set up service, and here’s a quick rundown of what I learned…

First off, we’re getting the “America’s Top 120″ service package plus local channels on four TVs, two of which will be equipped with Dish DVR (their TiVo equivalent). This requires one dual-tuner box, and a dual-tuner DVR box. This is how the pricing breaks down:

America’s Top 120: $39.99/month
Local Channels: $5.00/month
Dual Tuner Box: $4.99/month
Dual Tuner DVR Box: $5.98/month
Activation: $49.99 one-time charge (credited back on first bill = free)

Grand Total: $55.96/month plus applicable taxes + free installation

In terms of promotions, they are currently offering a $100 rebate for America’s Top 120 (and above) — this comes as a $10 credit off your bill for your first ten months of service. They also said something about receiving a $5/month credit for plugging our setup into a phone jack (presumably so it can phone home with data on what you’ve been watching). I have no idea if this is true, but it would be a nice added bonus. The one thing that I’m not crazy about is the 18 month commitment. However, the previous owners had Dish Network and liked the service, so I’m confident that we’ll get good reception. And they have a 30 day money back guarantee in case we don’t like it and want to cancel. I called Dish (at 1-800-333-DISH) and verified that this is the same deal that they’re offering if you buy from them directly, so I figured I might as well throw some business to the local dealer.

Interestingly, the previous owners of our house had Dish network, and they left behind their receivers. When I asked if we could use those in place of the rented box, they said that I could, but that I would have to pay a $4.99/month programming fee instead of the $4.99/month rental fee — apparently they get their money one way or another! In view of this, I just went ahead and set it up with the newer units provided by Dish. Perhaps I can eBay the old ones?

All in all, this will end up being slightly more expensive than our previous cable deal, but we’re going to end up with more channels plus the DVR. If we had hooked up TiVo along with our cable, we would have had to buy the hardware, and also pay a monthly service fee, making Dish a (slightly) better deal. And besides, cable is no longer an option.

Anyway, our installation is scheduled for Friday between 12:00-5:00. Now I just hope that they can be as prompt as the BellSouth service technician (who arrived three minutes before the start of his four hour service window).

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Dish Network Pay-Per-View Followup
» Dish Network Customer Service Salvation (For Real This Time?)
» Our Dish Network Experience (Continued)
» Dish Network Technical Problems: This is Getting Ridiculous!
» Dish Network Customer Service Salvation (At Long Last)
» Dish Network Customer Service STILL Sucks
» Dish Network Technical Troubles Solved
» From the Archives (June 3rd – June 9th)

Well, I’m off to close on our new house. The final walkthrough was relatively uneventful, although a couple of items that the inspector found were still unattended to. While this was a bit annoying, it’s nothing that can’t be worked out in short order. I’m going to drop by the house on the way to the closing, and if these things still haven’t been put to rest, we’re going to put them in writing. Then it’s a mad dash back home (a bit over 300 miles) so we can turn around and come back for good with all of our stuff on Thursday. Thankfully, it’s a full service move.

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» We’re Homeless…
» Talk About an Allowance!
» Free Booze Helps the Homeless
» Marriage by the Numbers
» From the Archives (January 6th – January 12th)
» One Year Ago This Week (January 7th – January 13th)
» Charities of Choice (2008 Edition)
» Weekly Roundup – Top Ten Edition

The past week has felt like a bit of a tightrope act… As I’ve noted previously, we closed on our current former house last Thursday, and are closing on our new house tomorrow. And while we could afford to carry both houses for awhile if necessary, our intention has been to take the money from our previous house and put it straight into the new one. The problem here is funds availability… Even if the first close went well (it did), we needed to get our hands on the money quickly. As it turns out, banks are now placing relatively lengthy holds on cashier’s checks.

Gone are the days when a cashier’s check was essentially treated like cash — while they’re still written against certified funds, there’s been so much fraud in recent years that most banks subject cashier’s checks to the same funds availability rules as plain old personal checks. What this means is that, if you need to turn the funds around in short order, you’re out of luck.

Given that we had a grand total of six days between closings, with three of these being eaten up by the holiday weekend, we needed a different approach. One possibility would have been a second mortgage, or a bridge loan. In fact, we had already lined up a second mortgage to cover the shortfall if the sale of our house fell through. However, that second mortgage was going to cost us over $500 in closing costs (it’s a long story, don’t get me started). Thus, we wanted to avoid using it if at all possible.

Enter the wire transfer. Wire transfers are a great way to get money from point A to point B with minimal delays. When exectued properly, they’re (nearly) instant and (relatively) inexpensive. A few weeks in advance of the close, we informed the closing attorney that we wanted to receive our funds via wire transfer. He asked us for written wire instructions, which basically consist of the bank name, account holder name(s), ABA wire number*, and account number, and the rest is history. The funds were sitting in our account (and available) within hours after we closed — in fact, it would have been even quicker if the attorney didn’t drag his feet getting to the bank.

Moral of the story: If you’re selling and buying a house on a tight timeline, consider asking for the proceeds of the sale to be delivered to you via wire transfer.

*NOTE: The ABA wire number is generally not the same as the ABA check routing number. Be absolutely sure that you give them the right number or your money will end up in limbo.

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Carnivals – Week of 06/05/06
» Carnivals – Week of 07/31/06
» The Best of FCN — Selections from 05/06
» From the Archives (May 27th – June 2nd)
» Carnivals – Week of 06/19/06
» From the Archives (May 4th – May 31st)
» Roadmap for a Successful Relocation
» Vanguard Changes Transaction Rules

After an uneventful final walkthrough last week on the eve of selling our house, I’m off for the final walkthrough on our new house this morning. The home inspector didn’t turn up too much, so I’m expecting (and hoping for!) an uneventful walkthrough. Once this is taken care of, our next step will be to head to the closing table tomorrow morning.

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Final Walkthrough Today
» Homeless No More
» Roadmap for a Successful Relocation
» New Nickel Enters Circulation
» Money Madness: Final Four Time!
» Home Inspection Today
» One Year Ago Today…
» Stamp Prices Increased Today – Use Enough Postage

Everything went exactly as planned and, as of just before lunch today, we’re homeless… But we have a pocketful of cash! By this time next week, the situation will be reversed — we’ll once again have a house to call home, but we’ll be back to our usual selves in terms of cash on hand.

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Talk About an Allowance!
» Free Booze Helps the Homeless
» Marriage by the Numbers
» From the Archives (January 6th – January 12th)
» One Year Ago This Week (January 7th – January 13th)
» Charities of Choice (2008 Edition)
» Homeless No More
» Weekly Roundup – Top Ten Edition

This afternoon the people that are buying our house will be doing their final walkthrough. Assuming that all goes as planned, we’ll then be closing tomorrow at 11AM CDT, at which point we’ll be homeless (but flush). A word to the wise… A day in advance of your final walkthrough, be sure to run back over any items that you had to fix following the home inspection. We didn’t have much in the way of repairs (two very minor things), but the garage door opener sensitivity adjustment somehow got out of whack again, and I needed to fine tune it. Had I just left it alone and assumed that all was well we would have almost certainly received a call tonight telling us to repair or replace it.

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» (Another) Final Walkthrough Today
» Homeless No More
» Roadmap for a Successful Relocation
» New Nickel Enters Circulation
» Money Madness: Final Four Time!
» Home Inspection Today
» One Year Ago Today…
» Stamp Prices Increased Today – Use Enough Postage

After learning that we wouldn’t be able to get ‘traditional’ broadband internet (i.e., cable or DSL) at our new house, I was thrilled to death when I heard from BellSouth would be hooking us up in early July. After all, that meant just a month on dialup before we’d be back to full speed. Well, Friday night BellSouth e-mailed with even better news… Our DSL is now scheduled to be turned on along with our phone service on July 2nd. So now I don’t even have to bother buying a modem and finding a decent dialup provider to bridge the gap. Woohoo!

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Money Poll #13: TV Service
» Money Poll #11: Internet Access
» Internet Outage
» Internet Access Poll Results
» Broadband Internet Crisis Averted
» Broadband Internet Woes
» Roadmap for a Successful Relocation
» Our Dish Network TV Experience (So Far)

Just ten days ’til we officially sell our current house, and the buyers have now dropped all contingencies (we asked for a ten day ‘all clear’ as part of the contract). Thus, if they back out for any reason, they’ll forfeit their earnest money. In other words, we can now breathe a sigh of relief, as the earnest money is close to two months of our current mortgage. So even if the sale falls through at this point, we should be able to re-sell it without losing much (if anything) given the pace of the current market in our area. Knock, knock, knock (that sound is just me knocking on wood).

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» How to Make Money in the Stock Market (Revisited)
» Wire Transfers When Closing on a House
» Double Your Pleasure With Citi Credit Protector
» More Thoughts About Refinancing Our Mortgage
» IRS Service Centers Closing
» Locking in Our Interest Rate
» Beware the “No-Cost” Mortgage Refinance
» TIAA-CREF Sure is Slow

Earlier this week I mentioned that we won’t be able to get either DSL or cable internet at our new house. Just a few days after throwing me into a tizzy about how we’ll feed our broadband addiction, however, BellSouth has seemingly come to our rescue… Even though they had told us (both online and over the phone) that we will be unable to get DSL at our house, we received an e-mail a few days later confirming our request to move our phone service and stating that they expect to activate DSL service at our house in early July. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’m not complaining. My best guess is that we’re the first on the street to request DSL, and that was enough to get them to make it available. Regardless, we’ll just need to make it through the month of June with dialup, and then we’ll have be home free.

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Money Poll #13: TV Service
» Money Poll #11: Internet Access
» Internet Access Poll Results
» Broadband Internet Coming Soon(er than Expected)
» Our Dish Network TV Experience (So Far)
» Roadmap for a Successful Relocation
» Broadband Internet Woes
» Internet Outage

This weekend I started the process of setting up the utilities at our new house. Thus far, almost everything but the highspeed internet has gone smoothly. When I scheduled the switchover for our phone service, however, I learned that DSL isn’t available at our new house. This admittedly caught me a bit off guard. While our new house is in a country-ish area, it’s not far from town, and there’s a BellSouth switching station barely two miles down the road. Anyway, I wasn’t too worried about the lack of DSL when I first learned of it… After all, while we had planned on doing our TV service through Dish Network, we could always subscribe to cable TV instead, and get our internet that way. Surprise! Charter Communications (the cable company in the area) doesn’t currently service our neighborhood, so we can’t get cable either.

To be perfectly honest, this is something that we could have looked into in more detail prior to purchasing, as opposed to relying on word of mouth. The reason we didn’t is that it wasn’t a big enough deal to sway our ultimate decision. That being said, I’d still like to work out some way of getting a reasonably fast, always on internet connection.

The way I see it, we have two options. The first is to use dialup for the time being, and to simply wait for traditional broadband (cable or DSL) to become available in our neighborhood. The downside here is that we use the internet fairly heavily, and we don’t want the phone tied up all the time. Thus, we might have to add a second phone line until broadband becomes available. The other option is to sign up for satellite broadband through HughesNet (formerly DirecWay) or the like. The main differences here are price and convenience. While satellite would give us what we want right now, using dialup until traditional broadband becomes available is by far the cheaper option.

Here’s the deal on HughesNet… There are two ways of setting up service: upfront purchase or their ‘promotional’ purchase. In the former case, you pay $599.98 for the equipment and installation, and then commit to 15 months at $59.99/month. Under the promotional scenario, you pay $99.99 for equipment and installation, and then commit to 15 months at $99.99/month (at which time the price drops to the regular monthly rate — currently $59.99/month). That’s right… Their promotion actually costs more than the regular price (but it gives you a break up front). The service that you get in return from HughesNet is 700 Kbps downstream and 128 Kbps upstream.

Obviously, this is pricey — for the sake of comparison, BellSouth’s DSL Ultra (they also have faster and slower options) provides speeds of up to 1.5 Mbps downstream and 256 Kbps upstream for just $32.95/month, and without the crazy equipment/installation prices.

Does anyone out there have experience (positive or negative) with satellite internet? Are there other satellite internet vendors that I should consider (or at least check out)? Or do you have any other suggestions as to how we might work around this hiccup?

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Money Poll #11: Internet Access
» Internet Access Poll Results
» Broadband Internet Crisis Averted
» Broadband Internet Coming Soon(er than Expected)
» Money Poll #13: TV Service
» Our Dish Network TV Experience (So Far)
» Internet Outage
» Roadmap for a Successful Relocation

I’ve narrowed our choice of new banks after the move down to SunTrust and Bank of America, but now I need your help. One of the critical features that I’m looking for has to do with automating our online bill payments. Ever since we signed up with our currrent bank (US Bank), we’ve been able to have their bill pay service fetch our credit card bills and pay them automatically. BUT… The auto-payments could only be for the minimum amount due. If I wanted to pay in full (which I always do), I had to manually go in and schedule the payment. Not a huge deal, but it’s been somewhat inconvenient.

As it turns out, US Bank has just upgraded their online bill pay service such that you can now choose to have it automatically pay the minimum amount due or the full outstanding balance, but we’re moving and they don’t have any local branches on the other end. So here’s my question to all of you SunTrust and/or Bank of America account holders out there…

When you login in and go to set up an automatic online bill payment, do they give you the option of setting it up to pay the bill in full every month as opposed to having it just make the minimum monthly payment? I know that some (most?) banks do allow for this, but this is a real deal breaker for me and I don’t want to be disappointed. If one bank can do it and the other can’t, then our decision has been made. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to tell based on their online banking demos, and to be honest I trust y’all more than I trust a random customer service rep.

On the off chance that both banks can do what I want, I’d also like to hear general opinions on these banks (especially about what you don’t like about them) from current or past customers.

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Bank of America’s “Out of State” Check Policy
» From the Archives (April 29th – May 5th)
» Our Online Banking Changeover
» Spending Money to Save Money
» Roadmap for a Successful Relocation
» Bank of America to Improve ATM Deposits
» Bank of America Online Banking Annoyance
» Watch Out for Online Bill Pay Errors

Assuming that all goes as planned, we have to be out of our house no later than one month from today, at this exact moment. Everything is currently on schedule, and looking good. We heard the other day that our mortgage was approved (we ended up going with the broker that we’ve worked with previously), we’ve scheduled the movers (we’re going with Graebel Van Lines), and we’re looking forward to the madness — after all, every bit of craziness just means that we’re a step closer to getting settled on the other end.

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Roadmap for a Successful Relocation
» Got me a Safe Deposit Box
» U.S. Economy Officially in Recession
» Weekend Roundup – Countdown to Vacation Edition
» Fuel Prices on the Rise; $4/Gallon in the Near Future?
» Borrowing From Big Banks – A Moral Issue?
» Financial Peace Through Planning
» A Peek Inside Vanguard’s Portfolio Watch

Yesterday afternoon I set aside a bit of time to arrange for a homeowner’s insurance policy on our new house, as well as to transfer our other policies from from our current insurance agent to one on the other end of our move. We’ve used State Farm Insurance for years and, given that we’re actually moving back to an area in which we used to live, I thought I’d give our old State Farm agent a call. It’s not like we had a close relationship with the guy, but we’d never had any problems. While his office is actually a bit out of the way (eight or so miles from our new house, when it seems like there’s a State Farm agent on just about every corner), I figured that we might as well give him our business…

Well, when I called his office I was greeted by a voice mail system that announced, among other things, that their office is closed for lunch. No problem, I thought, it’s not lunch time. I’ll just hit ‘zero’ and get to the receptionist. Well, much to my surprise, I was then greeted by a second round of voice mail announcing that they were out of the office all day, and would be gone the following day (today), as well. What the heck? An insurance agent that shuts down his entire office on a seemingly random Wednesday and Thursday? That’s definitely not what we’re looking for when it comes to customer service. Yes, I’m sure he probably has a good reason for being away. But that doesn’t excuse the absence of all other office staff. In short,

So what’s a guy to do? Simple. Hop on over to the State Farm web site, do a quick search, and pick one of the bajillion other agents that are out there. As it turns out, there’s one just two miles down the road from where we’ll be living. And they actually answered the phone. Their reward? A brand new homeowner’s policy, as well as the right to re-issue several other policies that need to be changed up due to the fact that we’ll be moving in from out of state.

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» The Best of FCN – Selections from 04/06
» Carnivals – Week of 05/01/06
» One Year Ago This Week (April 22nd – April 28th)
» The Answering System Cheat Sheet
» Finally… Customer Service That Rocks
» From the Archives (April 13th – May 3rd)
» One Year Ago This Week (October 1st – October 7th)
» Internet Access on Your Cell Phone

I’m pleased to report that our home inspection is now complete, and the inspector only found two tiny problems… First off, our garage door opener wasn’t properly adjusted, so it didn’t reverse properly upon contact with a blockage (or a kid — yikes!). Second, the drain plug in one of our sinks didn’t close properly. All in all, it took me about twenty minutes to fix both things, and the inspection contingency is now a thing of the past. We should be in the clear until closing as long as the buyers don’t do something stupid like try to back out of the deal.

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Home Inspection Today
» Final Walkthrough Today
» Getting a Home Inspection
» Buying a New Car, Part III
» Roadmap for a Successful Relocation
» Bought and Sold in Under Six Days
» The Cost of a Failed House Deal
» Q&A: Earnest Money

This morning around 9AM the people that are buying our house will be having it inspected. It’s a pretty new house (just under four years), and we’ve kept it in great shape, so hopefully all will go well. Once we’ve made it past the inspection we can breathe a sigh of relief, as the only remaining contingency will be final loan approval for the buyers, and their finances are solid — they’re putting down 20%, they’re pre-approved, and they’ve already locked in a pretty good rate. While the deal could still fall through for some bizarre reason, the inspection is really the last major unknown on the way to the closing table.

Update: Our home inspection is complete, and the news is good.

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Home Inspection Complete
» Final Walkthrough Today
» Getting a Home Inspection
» Buying a New Car, Part III
» Roadmap for a Successful Relocation
» Bought and Sold in Under Six Days
» The Cost of a Failed House Deal
» Home Depot Rebate Comes Through (and Quick!)

Now that we’ve sold our current house and bought a new one (or have at least gone under contract at both ends), we need to start thinking about actually moving. We have a bit of time but, since summer is the high season for movers, we need to start thinking about getting estimates and actually getting on their schedule. With that in mind, I was hoping that y’all could provide some recommendations as to especially good (or bad) moving companies. I should note here that we’re looking for a full service, interstate move — pack, load, haul, and unload at the other end. So… Got any suggestions as to who to contact, or how to go about choosing amongst the various options?

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Buying a Used Piano
» Roadmap for a Successful Relocation
» Save Money by Questioning Your Purchases
» Favorite Mutual Fund Company?
» Should We Get Rid of 401(k) Plans?
» How to Plan a Wedding Without Breaking Your Budget
» DollarSavingsDirect Review and Account Opening Process
» Don’t Forget to Cancel Your Amazon Prime Membership

Last night we learned that: (1) the sellers of our new house had officially signed the contract (they had previously given verbal consent, but it’s not a done deal until they sign), and (2) the buyers of our current house accepted the terms of our counter offer. In other words, we bought and sold (or at least went under contract at both ends) in less than six days while out of town with four kids in a hotel. Whew! I’m off to the inspection of our new house this morning, and then we have to make the drive back home. More details to follow.

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Help us Choose a Mover
» One Year Ago This Week (April 8th – April 14th)
» The Best of FCN – Selections from 04/06
» From the Archives (March 31st – April 12th)
» Weekly Roundup – 01/26/07
» How to Make Money in the Stock Market, Re-Revisited
» Debt Reduction: Share Your Story
» One Year Ago This Week (April 15th – April 21st)

Things are heating up in The Great House Hunt… The offer that we made on Saturday was basically accepted, although they wanted to tweak the timing a bit, so they sent us a counter offer on Sunday afternoon. We were happy with nearly everything, so we made just one tiny modification and sent it back to them that evening. Last night (Monday) we heard that they were going to accept, and that they would be signing the contract today. Thus, we’re staying here an extra day for the inspection (we managed to schedule one for tomorrow morning, and I want to be present for it).

In other news, the WBBTWFLs (would-be bidders that were formerly lowballers) dropped out, as they were unwilling to come up much above their first ‘realistic’ offer. However, our realtor had good news to offer along with the bad… She had received another offer from someone with solid financing, a respectable amount of earnest money, a willingness to close on our desired date, and they’re going to give us a week after closing to hand over possession (this will help us with the move). In terms of price, they offered 98% of what we’re asking, so it’s definitely strong. Once again, they asked for our kids’ Rainbow playset (along with the washer and dryer as well as the refrigerator). We’ve formulated a counter offer of their price plus the refrigerator, but not the washer/dryer or the playset. So now we wait.

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Offer Made, Offer Received
» First (Lowball) Offer Received
» Roadmap for a Successful Relocation
» Get Cheap Car Rentals From Priceline (or Hotwire)
» Bought and Sold in Under Six Days
» Online Banking Poll Results
» The Best Dollar(s) that I’ve Ever Spent
» BellSouth’s Sneaky DSL Price Drop

After a marathon run through eleven houses yesterday (we already know the area, so we were able to get right down to brass tacks), we finally found what we’re looking for… It was the second to last house that we saw, and it has pretty much everything that we’re looking for (including a forest in the backyard).

We ended up making an offer last night. While we have yet to hear anything back from the owners, we’re quite hopeful. In other news, the lowballers came back with a much stronger offer. They’re now pre-approved, and they: (1) increased their offer considerably, (2) dropped the request for the ‘forbidden’ items (our refrigerator and the Rainbow play system), and (3) put down $2500 in earnest money instead of just $500. All this without us having given an inch. As it turns out, we won’t need the refrigerator if we get the house we’re trying to buy. Not only are the current owners leaving their fridge, but they also have black appliances, which would make our big white fridge look pretty out of place. While we’re going to leave it out of the negotiations for the time being, our fridge could become a bargaining chip as soon as we’ve agreed to terms on the new house. Anyway, they’re now close enough to the ballpark that we’ll engage them with a counter offer, so we’ll see how it goes from here.

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Counter Offer Made, Another Offer Received
» First (Lowball) Offer Received
» Roadmap for a Successful Relocation
» Online Banking Poll Results
» The Best Dollar(s) that I’ve Ever Spent
» BellSouth’s Sneaky DSL Price Drop
» Washington Mutual 12 Month CD Offer
» Amazon.com Paperless Rebates Rock (So Far)

Just a quick note to let y’all know that we’re headed out of town to begin our search for a new house. We have a number of promising candidates in mind, we’re pre-approved for a mortgage in our price range, and we already know the area. Thus, it’s quite possible that we’ll have a contract before we return. I don’t know what sort of internet access I’ll have, but I’ll be sure to post an update upon our return (at the latest). Have a great weekend.

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Real-World Gas Mileage for a Honda CR-V
» On the Road
» Online Banking Poll Results
» On the Road Again (Literally)
» Roadmap for a Successful Relocation
» Weekly Roundup – 04/07/06
» Air Conditioning Repairs
» House Approves Tax Stimulus Package

Well, our house hit the multiple listing service (MLS) the night before last, and three families came to look at it yesterday. Last night our realtor called to say that we had received a lowball offer from the first people that looked at it. On top of an insultingly low offer (especially considering the house has barely even been on the market), they’re not pre-approved, they’ll need 100% financing if they can even qualify, and they asked for a couple of things that we explicitly said weren’t included, and aren’t negotiable (including our kids’ Rainbow play structure). And they only put down $500 earnest money. We didn’t even dignify it with a counteroffer. Rather, we responded (through our realtor) that they should get pre-approved and then come back with a realistic offer. On the bright side, we’ve had a considerable amount of interest already, which suggests that it’s not wildly overpriced.

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Counter Offer Made, Another Offer Received
» One Year Ago This Week (April 1st – April 7th)
» Offer Made, Offer Received
» Roadmap for a Successful Relocation
» Haven’t Received Your Tax Stimulus Rebate Yet?
» Money Poll #8: Tax Refunds
» Using ‘ItsDeductible’ to Figure the Value of Donations
» BellSouth’s Sneaky DSL Price Drop

As of last night, we have a realtor and a ‘For Sale’ sign in our front yard. Our house is completely ready for showing, and it’ll hit the MLS before the weekend. So now we wait… As far as choosing the realtor went, we interviewed three different people, two of which we really liked, and one of which we didn’t. While we initially thought that two would be enough, their price estimates were pretty divergent, so we opted for a third interviewee. Her suggested price fell right between the other two, roughly where we thought it should be, and we really liked her style. Thus, we ended up signing on with her. We’re headed out of town this weekend to check out properties on the other end, so hopefully there’ll be a few showings while we’re away.

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Twelve Tips for Preparing Your House for Sale
» How to Sell a House in a Down Market
» Home Values, Appraisals, and Fraud
» Appealing Our Property Tax Re-Assessment
» Real Estate Sign of the Times
» Storing our Stuff
» The Three Worst Reasons to Buy a House
» Accounting for Your Home’s Value in Quicken (or the Like)

Okay, I’ve previously asked for your help in finding a realtor. We still haven’t settled on who we’re going to work with, but we’re close (more on that soon). Now we’re looking for a mortgage. When we bought our current house, the builder guaranteed that they would match the best terms that we could come up with on the open market, and they also offered a number of incentives. Thus, we ended up financing through them. We then refinanced about about a year later when rates plummeted. When we did the refi, we worked with a discount mortgage broker that we found through Bankrate.com. In short, we had a good experience, and we got a good deal. I intend to go back to that same broker to see what they can offer this time around, but I’m also interested in hearing any and all suggestions as to how we should go about tracking down the best mortgage deal in the land. With that said, I’m just going to throw this open for discussion…

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» From the Archives (March 31st – April 12th)
» Getting a Good Deal on a New Home
» Reaching the Mortgage Crossover Point
» Beware the “No-Cost” Mortgage Refinance
» Pay Down Your Mortgage With ‘Found’ Money
» Mortgage Refinance Complete
» Mortgage Fees: What’s Legit and What Isn’t
» What’s a Piggyback Mortgage?

Now that we’ve had a successful moving sale and have hauled a bunch of stuff to storage, it’s time to focus on things like improving our curb appeal… To this end, I’ve replaced the lights on either side of our garage door, and have also repainted our mailbox. After not quite four years in the elements, the brass finish on the cheapo lights that the builder installed had worn off and the lights were looking downright crappy. Similarly, the mailbox post had gotten a bit rusty, and the paint had faded a bit.

All in all, it cost me about thirty bucks for the lights, and less than ten bucks for a wire brush, a new set of numbers, and some Rust-Oleum. Swapping the lights took a total of about 20 minutes, whereas I worked off an on for the better part of the morning on the mailbox (spray, wait for it to dry, spray again, and so on). I’ve also fertilized the lawn and trimmed the shrubs, so things are really starting to shape up. Still on the list as far as the exterior goes: washing down the porch pillars and garage door (they’re white), cleaning the windows and screens, and possibly repainting the front door. Other than that, we’re in good shape… It’s a brick house, so there’s no need to paint it, and we re-caulked all of the windows last year. As I keep telling my wife, we’ll have “curb appeal out the wazoo” in no time at all.

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Carnivals – Week of 04/03/06
» One Year Ago This Week (March 25th – March 31st)
» From the Archives (March 31st – April 12th)
» How to Sell a House in a Down Market
» Sunday Roundup – Patio Furniture Edition
» Roadmap for a Successful Relocation
» One Year Ago This Week (July 23rd – July 29th)
» Erroneous Medical Bill Update

Well, the moving sale is done, and we survived… Although we had advertised an 8:00 AM start, people descended on us almost immediately when we started moving stuff out into the driveway around 6:30 AM. And by the time 8:00 AM rolled around, my pockets were already bulging with money. We kept the sale running until around 1:00 PM, at which time we hauled the last of our stuff back into the garage and closed up shop. When the dust settled, we had gotten rid of the bulk of what we were trying to sell, and we had taken in exactly $545. When you deduct the cost of advertising ($32.55 for a two day newspaper ad and $16.33 for signage) we ended up making $496.12. Not too shabby, and definitely worth the time that we spent. The leftovers, which amounted to two full loads in my Honda CR-V, went to charity. Thus, we’ll also be able to take a tax deduction on the unsold items.

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Preparing for our Moving Sale
» Money Saving Tip: Live Next Door to Someone Who’s Moving
» Carnivals – Week of 04/03/06
» Using ‘ItsDeductible’ to Figure the Value of Donations
» Money Poll #2: Coupons
» Weekly Roundup – 03/31/06
» Twelve Tips for Preparing Your House for Sale
» Carnivals – Week of 03/27/06

I mentioned the other day that we’ve rented a storage unit and have started clearing extraneous stuff out of our house before putting it on the market. Well, the next step is nearly upon us… The dreaded moving sale! Last weekend we (and when I say ‘we’ I mainly mean my lovely and talented wife) started going through the house room by room and hauling stuff down to the garage. After seeing just how much crap we have, we actually debated about scrapping the sale entirely, and just donating everything to charity — after all, that would save us the pain of pricing it all. But we ultimately rallied (here again, ‘we’ should be interpreted as my lovely and talented wife) and now have a garage full of stuff that is mostly priced. The sale is tomorrow (Saturday) and, while we still have a ways to go and a few more corners of the house to clear out, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel…

Our investments thus far: $32.55 for a two day (Friday/Saturday) ad in the local paper, and a good bit of time.

Stay tuned for a post-sale followup.

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Moving Sale Results
» Carnivals – Week of 03/27/06
» Money Saving Tip: Live Next Door to Someone Who’s Moving
» Improving Our Curb Appeal
» Storing our Stuff
» From the Archives (June 8th – July 5th)
» Weekly Roundup – 03/31/06
» Roadmap for a Successful Relocation

As many of you know, we’re preparing to put our house on the market. A big part of our preparation involves clearing out excess stuff to make our house look as spacious as possible. While we’re planning on having a moving sale, there are a number of things that we want out of the house in the short term, but don’t actually want to part with. Thus, we’ve rented a storage room at the local Stor-N-Lok. For $69/month we get a 5 x 10 ft. storage room to do with what we please. I have no idea if this is a good or bad deal, but it’s convenient to our house and we’ll only need it for a couple of months, so I’m not particularly concerned. But here’s a money saving tip if you do ending renting a storage room… Bring a padlock. We didn’t, so we ended up buying one from the front office. It would’ve been considerably cheaper to make a Wal-Mart run to pick up a lock, but we didn’t realize that we needed one — not sure why this didn’t cross our minds, we just figured they’d have locking doors, I guess. Regardless, I wasn’t about to make a special trip to Wal-Mart and brave the throngs of humanity just to save a couple bucks on something like this. Now we just have to get our stuff over there.

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Preparing for our Moving Sale
» One Year Ago This Week (March 18th – March 24th)
» Improving Our Curb Appeal
» Weekly Roundup – 04/28/06
» Clear Out Your Stuff & Get a Tax Break
» From the Mouths of Babes: Made in China
» Eight Great iPhone Apps for Managing Your Money
» Recent eBay Results

I’ve recently been presented with a major career opportunity, and it’s starting to look like we’ll be moving this summer. This means that we’ll have to sell our current house and buy a new one. The main problem with this is that we’ve never sold a house before, so we’re not completely sure how best to choose a realtor. And before you suggest that we sell it on our own, we’ll be on a short timeline, and crazy busy before we go, meaning that FSBO is out of the question. So that brings us to issue of the day… What’s the best way to find a realtor? (In this case, a seller’s agent.)

Do you have any suggestions as to:
– How best to identify candidates?
– What we should ask them during our initial meeting?
– What (specific) criteria we should use to select the best one?
– Any other things that we should be doing (or considering)?

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

Follow me on Twitter!

---
Related Articles at fivecentnickel.com:

» Finding a Mortgage
» Our House is on the Market
» First (Lowball) Offer Received
» One Year Ago This Week (March 11th – March 17th)
» Safe Deposit Box: A Confession
» Storing our Stuff
» Why I’d Hire This Real Estate Agent
» Weekly Roundup – 04/07/06