I haven't written in a while mainly because I got bored with writing. As usual, my bipolar tendancies of not being consistent seemed to take over. I got tired of the daily blogging life, even after 19 posts. A lot has transpired since my last posting however.
There is a lot of work that goes into moving and that's what my girlfriend and I are about to do next month. Costing over $7000 for packing material and hiring a moving company to load and unload a truck full of our personal belongings, that's quite a bit of money to spend, but overall I think the cost would be the same everywhere I look, so I decided to stay with one company and not search out several quotes. I have found a great consultant in Nationwide Vanlines and would highly recommend them for any of your moving needs on the east coast. They are located in Florida. I found them through realtor.com when we found a home quite close to my parent's home in Hudson, Florida.
The house we are moving into was on the market to be sold, as well as being rented. The stipulation is that they house would be taken off the market while we were renting it and didn't want to go through what we are experiencing right now with having to move early because the landlords decided to want us out so they could sell the property. Anyway, it is a great house, great view of the gulf of mexico across the street. If there was a hurricane directly to the west of Hudson, we would get hit pretty hard, although we are kinda high off the ground. Not sure if we are high enough for any flood waters that might overtake the house though. It is a 3 story building. Deck outside of our bedroom, nice and big. Will be great, lots of privacy with trees on either side of the deck in the front of the house.
We have been going through all of our stuff and getting rid of old belongings. My girlfriend has to box a lot of her boxes into ones that have tops to them, but it shouldn't be too much longer before we finish the packing. She has lots of clothes and we just ordered spacebags from spacebag.com and those items should help eleviate some of the bulkiness of her clothes. She had a lot, I mean a lot. We just bought a Dyson vacuum which will be great for the carpet in our new house in Florida. Carpeted bedroom and living room and dining room areas. Also in the inlaw apartment too.
We hope to perhaps buy this home in the future. We aren't quite there yet for being able to use our credit to get a mortgage, but we hope that by the end of 2011 most of my debts will drop off my credit report and I will regain control of my life and be able to apply for a mortgage again. By the end of 2012 my credit should be restored to normal from before 2004 when it went awry. I am hoping and praying that the credit reports that I am receiving are telling the truth when it comes to dropping off. They are supposed to by law after 7 years of nonpayment drop off your credit report and if they don't you can force them to. I just don't want to go through the hassle of dealing with that for another year. Fighting for my rights once again to regain control of my life. I really hate that I screwed it up. I never predicted that I would be in this kind of a mess. But that's what drugs and an underlying illness can do to you if you aren't prepared. I would say I was half prepared, because I had in place some insurance protection for my income and the potential loss of my ability to work.
When we move to Florida there are some changes I would like to implement in my life. Seeings how it will be a new year I want to make some new year's resolutions. More on that in a future post.
I hope that we won't have to move from this location for a while. At least give us 2 years. Enough to catch up with our credit so that we can potentially buy it from the landlords. They would like to sell it to us but right now is not the best time for them to market the property because they will be losing money. I think that with my income and my girlfriend's potential income from opening a restaurant will allow us to put a hefty downpayment on the property. I am hoping we won't have a mortgage payment anywhere near what our rent will be. If we have to move again to purchase a house with a pool in a community, I am all for it. However, my girlfriend has reservations because she wants to stay near water if we live in Florida. I just will not want to pay $1200/month for a mortgage and then an additional $500 a month just for home owner's insurance. That's what it would cost as we found out from the realtor. The cost for fire, wind and water insurance is about $2000/yr for each separate protection. That's crazy high. I would rather like to stay but I want to stay away from a high mortgage. I want to be able to afford it on my income alone. But we have to consider the taxes and upkeep for the property (which isn't a ton, and it was built in 1998, so that is newer than this house in NH). I make $2500/month but that will soon be lowered in 2015 when I lose my disability income of $600 a month. So as long as my girlfriend has a job or the restaurant does real well, we should be able to manage owning the property. I have saved quite a bit of money that I want only as an emergency and downpayment on a house, but I do want to put some aside just as savings so that I won't stress financially. I have a fixed income and I don't ever want to put myself in the position of not having enough money to make ends meet ever again. I do worry overly too much but that is another symptom of my mental condition.
When my girlfriend had her restaurant before she was able to generate about $100000 in income in the first year. I an hoping that we can invest $75,000 of that amount into a home of our choosing - perhaps the one in Florida, as a downpayment so that we would have a mortgage of about $200,000. I could kick in about $25,000 and that would leave me with a hefty amount still in savings.
My girlfriend wants to eventually buy the house next door to us. Bob's house. We want to be snow birds and live up in NH in the summer and in FL in the winter. We could have vacations along the eastern coast and throughout the Bahamas region with cruises in the future. We really love to travel and see new things. If Bob's house goes up for sale in 5 years let's say, then we might have the time to be able to afford another property if the restaurant does well. Our focus should be to maintain Florida as our home state and find a house that will do us good 1/2 of the year. We don't have to buy the house we are moving into because it will be expensive, the insurances alone! It would be crazy to have two mortgages totaling $600,000. I just don't see that happening. It would be great if it were possible. I think we are going to dream about be able to do this for real, so I am up for the challenge. I just know that there would be 1/2 a year worth's of no income in one property when we aren't even there. What if it gets vandalized? I am not worried about Bob's house, this neighborhood we live in now is quite a good quite family neighborhood. The one in Florida has a lot of houses that look run down on our way to our house, it is close to a marina, and there are two other nice houses across the street from us, so we have a little niche of greatness at the end of the peninsula that we are moving to in Hudson, FL.
I would like to own one house outright, preferably in Florida and it doesn't have to be an expensive home although I would like cathedral ceilings and perhaps a pool in the yard too. It would be nice to be on the water, but they are quite expensive. Unless we find a river similar to the one in Manchester, NH where we live now. I would like to spend perhaps $150,000 on a property in Florida....carry a small mortgage of $75,000 and then if the restaurant does well, buy Bob's house for about $250,000 and carry a mortgage of $200,000. So a total of $275,000 wouldn't be unreasonable. We could rent out Bob's house every two years to help pay for the mortgage and only come up to New England every two years instead of every year. Hire a real estate company to manage the property or perhaps Steve, my girlfriend's stepfather and save some money this way, kick them out each at the end of the first year but still have a lease. Or better yet, rent it out for about 3 years and then take it over for the next year or so and do it that way, so as to keep renters coming and not have a reputation of kicking out renters and have the neighborhood talk about it to them...increasing the chance that the rent won't be paid when we try to kick them out. We just gotta do it right and make sure they know that at the end of the lease or close to it, that they will have to move. If we do this, it might be prudent to put the house in my girlfriend's name in NH and just my name in Florida, that way we can just say that we are moving back into the property, so the law will be on our side, when it comes to evicting them for reasons of needing to move back in the home.
The other thing my girlfriend wanted to do and we both discussed this was perhaps own a flower shop down the road in NH close to Manchester, NH where we want to have our second home. We have already had practice with that type of business and although it starts out pretty slow, we just have to find a small outlet building where we only have to pay $1500/month in rent to afford the business. We have so much stuff in storage that I personally don't want to bring out the cooler and drag it to Florida so that we have one for the restaurant just because we have one now. I would rather pay the $1200 in rent each year to the storage company and take our chances in the future when we know better what we want to do. It would be hard to compete against Chaliflours in Manchester, although we don't have to set up shop in this city, but we have surrounding ones as well. Two businesses are better than one, and the restaurant could carry the second business until it got settled after 2 years of business and then grow from there. Or maybe have another restaurant up here, that is what I think would happen in the future. My girlfriend could get her restaurant back up and running in Concord, NH and we can take the chance of publicity in the paper and endure the wrath they may inflict once they get wind of my girlfriend owning another restaurant in Concord. We would just have Halloween decorations and some Christmas decorations taken out of storage to make the spot look festive is all. That seems more reasonable, cuz I know she loves the restaurant business and knows it too well to give it up as her passion.
So many thoughts, so many directions we can carve our future path - but who knows what will lie ahead. I am just glad that I have a girlfriend, that we love each other, and that we will never leave each other. My main goal is to make her happy and in turn it will make me happier. That might very well be the secret to my life becoming greater, is to make her happy.
Wish us luck in this move! Taking a dog, 5 cats and a bird in our cars will be a challenge when we drive to Florida, but I think we will do all right.
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