Sense to Save

Quick mentions

Bob is giving away a Wii in celebration of his two years of blogging, and I definitely want a chance to win! We’ve thought about getting a Wii and a Wii Fit maybe, but it’s a lot of money and I just don’t know. 

I had a post in the Carnival of Personal Finance earlier this week. Check it out!

Finally, Small Notebook has a perfectly timed post about moving. We have three weeks until moving day and I’m anxious to get rid of stuff and get packed.

Edited to add: An experienced mover, my pal Ashley has some more great tips to make moving a little easier.

Have a great weekend!

Our moving decision

After heavily weighing the pros and cons, Shane and I decided to go ahead and move to the different apartment.  We really hope we won’t be regretting this decision later, but for now we think it’s mostly a good idea. Thanks, everyone, for weighing in with your opinions on my previous post!

My pal Ashley moved to her current apartment with the intention of testing out the area to see if she’d like to buy there someday. Turns out, she discovered that she doesn’t want to buy there after all. 

The same thing could happen to us. We might want to move back to this side of the river. Or, we could finally find a chuch we want to join, make some more friends, and actually get involved with the community.

Frankly, I’m sick of not having a washer/dryer. I’ve been using coin machines in basements or laundromats for almost six years and I don’t think I can make it to seven. We’re now spending at least $50 per month to laundry, and with the way Johnny goes through his outfits and mucks up mine, that’s probably going to keep going up.

And, as Doodlebug’s Mommy pointed out, I’d finally be able to give cloth diapers a try. This could save us megabucks in the long haul if it works out. 

Even though Shane’s commute will be 20 minutes longer each way, he won’t be missing out on 40 minutes of family time. Johnny and I usually aren’t awake when he leaves in the morning. Maybe eventually we’ll be up to see him off, but ya know what, I have a 5-month-old and if I can steal a little extra sleep right now I’m gunna!

Also, the public transit runs more frequently in this new area. So actually, if he has to work a little later than normal, he still might get home sooner than if we lived in our current place, as busses here are much less frequent after 5:45.

It’s a slightly walkable area, I guess. More busy roads than here, but they have sidewalks. We’d be less than a half of a mile from restaurants and some shopping. Just a short car trip to several libraries and lots of parks.

The move will be good for us. We’ve got about three weeks before moving day!

Should we rent this apartment? Or stay put?

We have until tomorrow to tell our current landlord our intentions to stay for another year, go month-to-month (extra $50 per month), or move out by June 30. We’re running out of time and still don’t know what to do!

We looked at an apartment yesterday and we think we either want to move there or stay put. Other apartments in the area we’re seeking are out of our price range, don’t fit our qualifications or aren’t available. We have at least another year to a year and a half before we think we could consider buying a house.

I’m going to hash out some pros and cons and maybe you can toss in some things for us to consider. I’ve bolded the points that carry the most weight.

PRO move:

• Rent is $45 cheaper per month
• Unit comes with a washer/dryer (right now, we have coin-op machines in the basement)
• Is about 100 square feet bigger, with slightly larger bedrooms, a bigger livingroom, and a separate dining room which we do not currently have
• Electric bill might be lower if we don’t have to run the AC as much, since it’s a lower-level apartment
• It would be a good opportunity to go through our possessions and get rid of things we don’t need
• We would be living in the area we think we might want to buy, and we could try it out without making a huge commitment
• We wouldn’t have to climb so many stairs each day
• We would have lots of new things in the area to explore

CON move:

• Shane’s commute to work would be longer by as much as 20 minutes each way
• It’s a basement-level apartment, so we’d walk down about 5 steps.
• It’s fairly dim inside even during the day
• We are taking a risk with having upstairs neighbors (noise), and a different property management company
• Slightly less storage space. No coat closet, smaller linen closet, no storage space under our furnace and hot water tank like we have now
• It’s not as walkable as where we are now
• Traffic stinks in this area 
• Moving is a big hassle. Costly, lots of organizing and unpacking, things to buy for a new place, many companies to contact with our  new address…

We’re going back and forth on whether to stay or go. As I pointed out to Shane earlier, the place we lived in before this was pretty awful by our current standards. It was TINY, no dishwasher, no on-site laundry facilities, only a window AC, a noisy train was right behind it, it smelled weird, the stairs were steep. It was fine when we were there,  but when I look back on it, I think wow…that place was pretty lousy. But, we can put up with a lot for a year and I wonder if the benefits to moving would outweigh the drawbacks.