Tag: realestate

We Live in an Awesome House that We Almost Certainly Can’t Afford

Dave Johnson3 Comments

3190729

Fun Fact: If you type “rhododendron” as “rotodendrum,” or “rodadentron,” spell check just basically looks at you and says, “You really should have paid more attention in school.” I had to Google that sucker.

______________________________

You people better buckle up, because I’m about to get real with myself on a number of levels with this post. Come to think of it, I guess I had better buckle up too…

We live in a rad house that we purchased a year ago this past June. We’ve had 3 homes go on the market in our gated community this year, and each has been listed (and sold) for $1-$1.5 million bucks. At the same time we’re kind of “out there” in the country, so it’s a really nice quiet community mostly filled with hard-working blue collar Contractors and Boeing Engineers who have built a hell of a good life for themselves and their families.

Our house wasn’t a million dollars for sure, but we do get million dollar views. We have views of both the Cascades and the Olympics, and I tend to post buttloads of these photos on my Instagram Account.

I mean, just look at this view I get to experience from my back yard:

houseviews.png

(Ignore the  ratty lawn in the middle one. I hadn’t mowed yet this year.)

Now I know what you’re thinking right now; you’re thinking, “Awesome, d*ck. Great of you to post on your blog about your awesome view and house. Maybe for tomorrow’s post you can show us your killer sports car. JERK.”

BUT IT GETS EVEN BETTER! The absolute BEST part of my house?

I don’t think I can afford it.Read More »

That One Time We Bought a House that We Couldn’t Afford

Dave JohnsonLeave a comment

190626

The truth of the matter is that if we are being honest, we knew we purchased too much home before they could tack the “SOLD!” tag onto the sign in front of the new home. However in practical terms it took us about 7 months to fully comprehend.

Starting Credit Card Debt (01.01.19): $126,310.77
Current Credit Card Debt: $109,570.87
Total Paid Off: $16,739.90
Income Going to Savings: 2%

My wife and I bought a house in June of 2018. We actually bought our 3rd home to be exact. Now before you think I’m some well-to-do, let me tell you a bit about my first two houses…

Our first home was a very modest rambler that was located just a stone’s throw from a Federal Correctional Institution, or in other words… a prison. It was close enough to our home that we could hear the prisoners playing softball on warm summer evenings, and I often took advantage of the way the yard lights illuminated my darkened house to navigate to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Long before “Orange is the New Black” made prisons chic and hip, people would often asked us, “Aren’t you worried about living that close to a prison? What if someone breaks out?”

My response was always that if someone was going to break out, they sure as hell weren’t going head to the modest rambler a few blocks away and hang out for a month. At most they were going to steal one of our cars to get as far away as possible as quickly as possible.

When we moved into that home, we had a nice retired couple living on one side of us and a young family on the other. Across from us were some well maintained and relatively new duplex apartments, and all of this combined to make our dead-end street a pretty great place for a first home.

Within 3 years however, the retired couple moved to Arizona and sold their home to a rental agency. That agency in turn rented the home to a man who (get this) worked on race cars that he raced at the local race track on weekends. Apparently when you work on race cars, it requires that you rev them up to deafening volumes at all hours of the morning and night, usually while blaring Megadeth or Iron Maiden.

Within a month of this happening, the married couple with the kids on the other side got a divorce, and things went really sideways for the dad. The mom moved out, leaving the teenage kids behind, and the dad began drinking heavily. I know this because he offered to drink with me at least 5 times a week. His 15 year-old son held parties almost every weekend, usually with dad partaking, and we had the pleasure of catching young men standing on his roof peeing on to our roof next door on more than one occasion.

Yup… you read that correctly.Read More »

Living the Lake Life Lavishly… for Two Days

Dave JohnsonLeave a comment

I could not be more focused on digging out of my financial situation right now, and these types of stories are exactly why. I want to get to a point in my life where not only am I financially secure, but I’m actually so secure that I can share with my friends and family.

Starting Credit Card Debt (01.01.19): $126,310.77
Current Credit Card Debt: $109,045.60
Total Paid Off: $17,265.17
Income Going to Savings: 2%

We had the pleasure of being invited to a house this weekend for a 2 day get-together of several families celebrating the end of our lacrosse season. The house itself was modest to say the least, but the lakeside location was not.

We spent hours on the lake yanking kids around on innertubes, grilling hot dogs in the backyard as we watched the wake lazily lap the dock, chasing frogs, and drinking (far too much) beer as we watched the sun set over the distant pines.

As the weekend progressed and I began to ask a friend about the dude graciously let us borrow his pad for the weekend, I found out it’s not even his main home.

“He’s got several properties,” I was told, “He’s a single guy, so he doesn’t worry too much about keeping them spotless, which is why this place is in need of a coat of paint. It’s also why it’s perfect for 15 lacrosse boys to goof around in without worrying about them wrecking the place. This is really just kind of like one of his bachelor pads, so he often lets us use it to take our boat out.”

Several properties? One of his bachelor pads? Of course my next question had to be, “What does he do for a living?”Read More »