Monday, October 15, 2007

Doing the Math

This is a quick post that is a "pre-requisite" to some other posts I want to write, so here you go.

Fact #1:
- K's new salary is more than double the post-doc one (20% more than double in fact, counting his signing bonus)

Supposition #1:
- We should be able to have much more money to live now. [Wrong]

Fact #2:
- Our new house cost almost twice as much the price we sold the old one for.

Supposition #2:
The new mortgage should be double the old one. [It is not]

Fact #3:
Because we had some debt from building this house [nice slide show in post] in Brazil last year and buying a much needed second car we were only able to pay 5% down on this house, so... the morgage is more than TRIPLE the previous one.

Conclusion:
We have almost the same money left over after the mortgage, taxes, and benefits (retirement plan, life and health insurance) are discounted. So, we have to keep on living on a tight budget... same old, same old. And it will be tough to renovate the house on said budget. That's one of the reasons why I "was" (still am sometimes) impatient the other day... This has some other ramifications I will discuss in coming posts.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I shouldn't be "complaining" about money today, but this post had been planned in my mind a long time ago -- today I spent the day assembling two dressers that we bought at IKEA for our bedroom. We don't have much $ left, but we just couldn't live with the chaos anymore.

We're also removing the carpet in the bathrooms (they were carpeted because the original vinyl tiles underneath have asbestos in them :( ) and replacing it with cheap vinyl tiles so we can have semi-decent bathrooms until we can afford a full renovation (ceramic tile floors, replacing the ceramic tiles on the wall, new vanity, hopefully, a new tub as well, and glass doors on the stall baths).

All this sudden activity is because my parents-in-law are coming to spend the night and see the house on Thursday and most probably K2 (second BIL) and his family will come visit us during the weekend. I love to prepare for family visits even though it's a bit stressful trying to get all the planned things done. I've been taking photos of the renovation, I just hope to find some time to post them since there's just way too much stuff to do around here.

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