So, tonight I got rid of:

• 7 pairs of shoes! (1 for gymshoe recycling, 2 in the trash, 4 to the Salvation Army)
• 6 books (to the local library)
• 1 hat (Salvation Army)
• 4 purses (family and Salvation Army) and 1 laptop bag (family)
• 1 unused swim suit and one pair of lightly used sweats (family)

Additionally, I was holding onto a giant bag of junk mail, receipts, and documents with personal data that needed to be shredded. A friend told me rather than shredding, he puts his junk mail into his bathtub, fills it with water, lets the paper absorb it, then throws the pulp away. Intrigued and eager to avoid time shredding, I modified the process and put the paper into a bucket with some bleach. It’s been sitting overnight in my tub and now looks something like this:

It’s a big mess, and I’m not even sure I can put this into our recycle bin anymore. Terrible. If I had more time, I could probably make my own paper with it, but for now I need to focus on cleaning up my bathroom! Next time I’ll stick with the slow shredding.

The post Decluttering the Apartment appeared first on The Budgeting Babe.

The Michael Jordans

“OK, if the mortgage rate comes in at 3.5% on a $250,000 home, even with taxes and insurance, that would be totally doable, right? ” I asked, then reconsidered. “But if the rate is closer to 6%, it would be tight. Definitely not doable for 6% at $300,000.”

“Wait, which calculator are you using?” asked man-friend. “Because the one I was using this afternoon gave me a different number than the one you used.”

There we were, talking theoretical mortgages, he sitting at his desk with the laptop open, and me, sitting crossed-legged on the bed, on top of a very old plaid comforter, with papers strewn about.  We acknowledged that credit pre-approval would have to be our next step.

“How long do they pre-approve you for?” I asked. “Because if it’s only like 30 days, that affects your credit. I read that once.”

“How can they only approve you for 30 days? It has to be at least 90. And even then, I bet there’s some paperwork you just need to fill out to keep your approval valid,” he responded.

Sigh. It was late, too late for this, and inside our little two-bedroom apartment, our minds were swirling.  Yet we continued on. 

Until, me: “Whatever house we move into, the Michael Jordans are not coming with.”  I say this referring to the artwork I created for him during a particularly rough time in his law school career — five xeroxed color copies of his childhood hero hanging on the wall, inked with inspirational quotes like “I can accept failure; everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.”

Him: “I don’t know. They’ve been there for a long time. What about the grammar wall?” (The grammar wall was something I also created during law school when he was having trouble with legal writing.)

Me: “The grammar wall has to stay here. It’s covering holes in the wall”

We’ve been through a lot in our apartment — from layoffs, unemployment, and job changes, to disappointing LSATS and eventually to law school, to new cars, to new family members, even through surgeries and sickness. We’ve been through fights about nothing and fights about everything. We’ve had kisses and hugs, and happy times, we’ve traveled to new lands, and expanded our horizons. And now it’s time to move on.

We think we can do it. Well, we’re pretty sure, anyway.

The Michael Jordans will probably come with.

The post Can we really do this? Yes, we can, and the Michael Jordans will come with. appeared first on The Budgeting Babe.

We spent this afternoon looking at open houses in the area. Despite my attempts to understand the buying a home process, it’s still quite foggy to me. So while I’m working to get educated on the process, I’ve also been working on understanding the inventory.

Today was quite interesting, as there is an incredibly wide variety of options in the town where we’re looking. Price points range from $200,000 for a single-family home to well over $1 million. Obviously, we have a set price range that is nowhere near the high end; today we looked at homes ranging from $230,000 to $500,000 – some in our price range and some completely outside it. Each house had pros and cons, and since we aren’t serious about buying any of them just yet, we had a nice time learning about why homes are priced the way they are. 

The main reason we were out today was to meet real estate agents. We’re looking at such a specific area, we want someone who really knows this town, lives here, and has the inside track on the local market. I don’t mean any disrespect to my friends who have suggested their realtors to us, but we really want a local expert in our neck of the woods. To that end, we met three really great realtors today, one who worked for a local female-owned company, and another two who worked for smaller shops I hadn’t heard of before.

I’m having lunch in the near future with a friend who is an awesome real estate agent so I can ask questions about the process. Once I have a better idea of next steps, I can begin investigating more into the three realtors we liked today and go from there.  There’s no rush, since our apartment lease doesn’t end until April 2013; we’re looking at buying something probably within the next three to six  months and spending early 2013 rehabbing and/or prepping the home we eventually will own.

Exciting! Feel free to share links to articles that helped you or described your experience.

The post Sunday Funday with Open Houses appeared first on The Budgeting Babe.

Yesterday I was falling on the side of buying property. I was browsing on Trulia, and noticed that a huge group of single-family homes are now available for less than $200,000 in nearby suburbs. Many of these properties are short sales and foreclosures, and a number have recently dropped significantly in price. If I put down 20 percent on one such house, which I could do, we could be paying less monthly for a mortgage than we do for our rent.  That got me going. I started thinking about reducing my retirement contributions between now and April to give myself a quick infusion of cash for closing costs, home improvements, etc. I mentioned to man-friend that even if he moved elsewhere, I wouldn’t go automatically; he’d need to spend six months to see if it was a good fit, which would give me time to see the place if I bought it. I wouldn’t care about making money on the sale, if I could sell it for the same price as I bought it, that would be fine; it’s just the cost of living. So, yesterday I was humming along with this plan in my head, looking forward to April, when my apartment lease is up.

But then last night as I was talking to my home-owning brother, he asked about taxes, fees, and points, and basically said I needed to factor a whole bunch of other costs into my monthly mortgage bill and into the initial payment. All of which I knew, I was just blissfully sort of ignoring at the moment.

We also started talking about our family trip to Italy, which is supposed to happen in October, and costs for that.

All of which got me thinking, gosh, I probably need about $10K more in savings before I put down that 20 percent. I hate to admit it, but it’s true. I still think temporarily reducing my retirement contribution for a few months to give me more cash towards a home purchase is a good idea. Right now, it would probably take me 10 months to save an extra $10K. If I reduce my retirement funds down to 5 percent (from today’s ten percent), I could get there much quicker. My retirement funds are in a pretty good place for my age, and this plan does not involve taking anything out of the current investment, so I feel OK doing that. Plus I’m not spending that money on anything frivolous, or using it for daily living expenses. The other nice thing about waiting until I have an extra $10K is that it adds a few more months to B’s job hunt, which is a positive.

So that’s where I am today. Oy. I wish things were as simple as when my biggest care in the world was finding a great pair of black pants. When did things change so much?

The post Decisions, Decisions appeared first on The Budgeting Babe.

I don’t even know what the outside temperature is, I just know that it’s cold inside.

In fact, this is what I usually look like in my place when the temperature drops, even though our heater just keeps running:

Graphic Representation of Me Being Cold

I actually don’t mind the winter that much; I like snow and I enjoy being outside when no one else is around. I like the sound of snow crunching under my boots. And I’m the first one to run out for a long walk in the midst of a blizzard, just for fun.

But I cannot stand being cold when I’m supposed to be warm indoors. Toasty is the adjective I’d most like to be inside my own home. And toasty I am not.

This leads to thermostat wars between me and man-friend. I go to sleep first, so I set the thermostat to 68 before I tuck in. Then, after I fall asleep, he turns it down to 65 (!) before he goes to bed. Then, I wake up shivering after he falls asleep and turn it back to 68. He wakes up with a dry throat because the heater’s been running, and, well, we’re back to 65. And so it goes.

I know I’m supposed to be frugal. And I know that our apartment doesn’t have good insulation (actually, we have an open parking space below our floor and no insulation at all from it), so if we leave the heat at 68 it just keeps running and running because it never actually gets to 68 in here. (We’ve done temperature tests and found that the floor is usually around 55 if the top of the walls are around 65.)  And if we did leave it at 68 our heating bill would be out of control, probably $400 for a small apartment.

But that certainly d0esn’t mean I have to be happy about it. Now excuse me while I put on my Uggs to go fold some laundry. Oh, and man-friend just left to go to the gym, so I’m gonna go crank the heat while he’s out. Yipee!

The post The heat is … off? appeared first on The Budgeting Babe.

I have a pretty good storage system set up for my work clothes, seasonal clothes (jackets, boots, scarves, gloves), travel gear and casual shoes — that is, all the items I moved into this apartment with. But over the years I’ve become much more active, and I’ve found that athletes and gym rats have our own brand of clutter — too many gym shoes to count, bike gear, tote bags from races and for the gym, weights, wraps for various body parts that might become injured, ice packs, watches, iPods, outdoor activewear, special sunglasses, swimsuits, goggles, swim caps, flip flops, little bottles of shower supplies – the list is endless. Everywhere I look, my sports stuff has moved in, taken over, and cluttered up every possible surface, nook, and cranny of my apartment.

Especially my closet, which looks like this:

Closet, Before

As you can see, my gym shoes and gym bags were practically exploding out of the doors. Not only does it look bad, but every inch of floor is valuable in my world and those shoes were taking up way too much space!

The solution: A few clear storage bins from Target to help organize my sports clutter and use more vertical space, as opposed to spreading out all over the floor. I know what you’re thinking — throw some of it out! — and I regularly do donate bags to GoodWill and what you see here is all regularly used. That’s why it’s all over the floor.

Here’s the after photo. Same closet, same stuff, four new storage bins:

Closet, after

The bins cost $33.00 total, for four, at Target. And as a bonus, I can close my closet doors now. Sweet.

The post A quick closet makeover appeared first on The Budgeting Babe.

I think a lot of people assume when they run out of space, they need more. A bigger apartment, a condo with a dining room, a starter home, a McMansion, and more. It’s true that most days I daydream about having tons more space – a basement, a yard, in-home laundy, storage closets, a pantry … sigh. But we’ve been in the same apartment for about six years now because the rent is cheap and it’s allowing me to save, and because we’re still a one-income household until my man-friend (and roommate) graduates and hopefully finds a job. (Sidenote: can we think of a better word for “domestic partner” now that apparently everyone is shacking up?) It wouldn’t be smart to buy a house until we both are gainfully employed, no matter how enticing the market.

So tonight, the purging of a few cluttered spaces began. Purging is an effective reminder about how little you actually need to live. And for me, an interesting look into the making of poor decisions. For instance, today I found a small set of wooden puzzles with no directions sitting on a shelf, untouched since probably the day after we opened it. A Polaroid mini camera with “sticky photos” that was all the rage in 1990-something and promptly forgotten about. VHS copies of “The Man in the Moon,” “Ever After,” “The Basketball Diaries,” “Jerry Maguire,” and more. Ah, life in the 90’s. Hanging around my apartment in 2010, taking up space that I don’t have, going unnoticed every day.

And while purging is a nice way to rid my place of extra baggage I don’t want to pay rent to store, it more importantly makes me think about purchases I might make in the future. When I’m shopping, I’m prone to buy the latest, greatest thing – ooh! Look at that “As seen on TV” turbie towel! And on sale two for one! – I need to think twice about how often I’ll actually use that purchase and what will happen to it when I’m done. Can I pass it along? Can I recycle it? Or, like the wooden puzzles, if I lose the directions, will the whole piece be worthless?

I’m reminded of a trip I took to Neah Bay in Washington State a few years ago. We visited a history museum of the Makah Tribe, where we stepped into a reconstructed version of an old family home. The Makah lived in the Pacific Northwest much longer than our modern civilization has. But, the guide pointed out, there’s virtually no trace of the village today. It’s not because the civilization wasn’t complex, or was short-lived. The materials they built with degraded naturally; they weren’t designed to outlast their society. Of course, I’m not advocating that we should all live in crude shelters. It just makes me wonder what will happen to all the “stuff” I own that was once cool … the Polaroid camera sat perfectly preserved nearly 10 years after its purchase, neatly tucked into a wicker basket. Sure I’m giving to GoodWill in hopes that it will brighten a child’s day, but what happens after that?

The next time you’re tempted to buy a non-essential purchase, think about where it will sit in your home. Is this something you want to pay rent for? Is this worth your valuable space? What will happen to it after you’re done? Here’s to hoping all our purges get smaller – and we get a little more use out of our space!

The post Are you paying for your useless baggage? appeared first on The Budgeting Babe.

Bags of “gently used” and slightly frumpy work shirts that I wouldn’t dare wear anymore even if I had no clean laundry… gone.

The black soap dish and toothbrush holder from when I thought it would be cool to have black accents in my Pepto-pink tiled apartment bathroom… gone.

Winter 08-09: Remove, recycle and move on.
* * *
Can you think of a better time than this winter’s deep freeze to spend hours decluttering your home? Really, when it’s zero outside (or BELOW zero), and you’re going stir crazy at home, is there anything better than throwing some old s**t out to feel like you’ve accomplished something? I think not. Spring cleaning may be a time for renewal, but winter clean-out is time to deal with your demons.

As you may have gathered, I’ve spent some down time during the last seven weeks decluttering and organizing my stuff. When I started, I was unhappy with the clutter in my apartment and the fact that I seemed to have no space, especially in my closet-sized bathroom. On a frustrated whim, I started cleaning Oprah-style in that tiny room… I pulled everything out of it – which took up an entire hallway AND the dining room of my place. I was shocked by the excess. I threw out garbage, set aside a pile for the Salvation Army and kept only the supplies I need right now. Did I really need ten bottles of hair product? Three kinds of hot rollers? An entire drawer of travel-sized moisturizers? Absolutely not.

I’ve never consciously decluttered anything other than my closet because it always happened naturally for me. From the time I was 18 until I was 25, I moved about once per year. Moving is a natural declutter – boxes are heavy so whatever you take better be worth it. But now that I’ve lived in my apartment for five years, I’ve accumulated some stuff. Too much.

So I took advantage of this winter’s harsh weather to take action. After I finished the bathroom, I went room to room to see what I could trash, recycle or donate, and what I could move to my parents’ garage (seasonal stuff). The end result? I’m happy again with my apartment and I have a better idea of my unnecessary spending/shopping/storing patterns.

How does decluttering relate to your finances and the economy? Good question! Here are several reasons why you might want to consider cleaning out, uncluttering and reorganizing your place that have everything to do with finance:

1) You hate your place, but you’re stuck there. I thought I’d be out of my cramped apartment in April 2009 and moving into my first condo. That’s no longer happening due to the crazy financial crisis. I need to stay put. Getting rid of some stuff opened up new space in my apartment and enabled me to see the space in a way that had been blocked for a while.

2) You’re trying to curb spending. Two factors help out here. First, decluttering takes hours and hours, and doesn’t cost a thing. Second, once you see how much stuff you already have, you might realize you no longer need to go to the store.

3) It’s below zero outside, and there’s no good TV on. What are you waiting for? That point sells itself. See above points for good-for-your-wallet benefits.

4) Lots of people need your old stuff right now. If you’ve got a blender taking up cabinet space because you received a new one for X-mas, I bet there’s an out-of-work family that could really use a blender. Same goes for your old coats, blankets and work clothes. Some charities will even pick it up for you on your doorstep.

How do you do it? I’ll leave the DIY tips to the experts. Here are a few to check out:

O Magazine/Oprah’s Web site: Learn to conquer clutter

Real Simple Magazine: Lots of good clutter-ridding tips

The Nest: Get Rid of Clutter!

It’s not an easy process, but I can report that having done it, I’m happier with my apartment and feel I can breathe again now that I’ve cleaned out my mess. Everything has a home, from random Halloween costumes to travel kits to scarves to my tax paperwork.

Let me know if you guys have any good tips on how you’re spending the winter frugally.

The post Spending Winter Frugally: While Decluttering is Good For Your Wallet appeared first on The Budgeting Babe.

“The relentless slide in home prices has left nearly one in six U.S. homeowners owing more on a mortgage than the home is worth, raising the possibility of a rise in defaults — the very misfortune that touched off the credit crisis last year.”

Read it here.

The post 1 in 6 Homeowners "Under Water" appeared first on The Budgeting Babe.