Moving Time!

We're sorry we've been away from this for a bit, but we've been VERY busy. We will be moving this coming week. We're not going far - only a few blocks, but it was necessary. Basically, when the landlords' mortgage company began contacting us to find them because no payments have been made for a bit on the mortgage, we decided it was a good time to look for something else. It seems to be the story around our area - the highest rates of foreclosure in the Central Valley per capita, just too small to show up on the national lists. But of the approximately 9 houses on our street, this puts at least 5 of them in foreclosure. It's a sad state of affairs.

But we are using it as an opportunity. We are moving to a townhouse that is 600 square foot smaller than what we have, and we will be saving a decent amount of money each month. Our monthly savings will allow us to cover the cost of moving in about four to five months, and then we will be saving each month. Yeah! With gas prices and food prices what they are, this is very important for us!

So we give up a single family home and a bit of a yard, but we gain a little piece of mind in terms of cash flow. And we get to stay in the same community, which was important because we wanted to keep Judith in her day care situation that she really enjoys now (which was so hard to find!). It also helps that we keep our same commutes (Robert and I go in opposite directions, and have fairly equal commutes, or as close as we can get).

So far we have given away almost three rooms of furniture to the Diocese and we are almost at 30 boxes of items dropped off at Goodwill, not counting what we've just thrown out. It has been good to get rid of so much stuff, and we're going to try to get rid of more over the coming week.

So here's our schedule:

• Wednesday (tomorrow): the movers from the Diocese come to get everything we are giving to them.
• Friday: We get keys to our new home and I begin the basics of moving (cleaning and getting pictures of the move-in condition) while Judith is at a "bonus" day of day care and Robert is at work.
• This weekend: We are moving as many of our boxes as we can and getting as much set up as possible. Sr. Terry is coming over to help us clean on Sunday. We love you all, but we will not be having phone conversations with people this weekend as we work and work and work.
• Monday: The professional movers come and get all the furniture and heavy boxes from our old home to our new home. Yeah!

Our current lease actually goes through the end of the month, so during next week we will take care of making sure the house is well cleaned and the yard gets final maintenance so we can get our security deposit back. It makes us sad that such a nice home is going to sit vacant and have bugs and rodents take ownership while the yard we've worked so hard on dies off because the owners are just walking away. Our rental payment is more than their monthly mortgage payment, so it's not cash flow from the property that is the problem. But all the homes in our community have crashed in value. When we moved in this home had just been purchased for a little over $600,000. Now it is worth anywhere from $225,000 to $275,000.

Somewhere along the way people forgot that real estate can be a very risky investment, can take huge swings, and does not pay off well over the long haul. They became very greedy and got themselves into a big mess. The Fed and the Banks made it worse by feeding off the frenzy and promoting the notion that you can get something for essentially nothing. Not so. Not then, not now, not ever. A few lucky folks "played it" correctly, but everyone else is taking it on the chin.

This is frustrating to us because when we came out three years ago to look for a place to live we decided that this was all a bubble ready to burst and would do so quickly. It turns out that August, 2005 (when we moved) was the height of the bubble. But being prudent means that we pay higher taxes because we don't have mortgage interest to bring us to the threshold where we can itemize deductions. So our effective tax rate is almost 10% higher each year than the average for our income. And then we have to move houses because other people decide their commitment doesn't matter to them. And we end up with higher taxes and less money for worthwhile spending so the government can bail out institutions and individuals who were greedy, short-sighted and just plain stupid. I happen to know a few people who were totally taken advantage of and essentially scammed in all of this, and that is a true tragedy. But those are not the majority of people caught up in this mess.

Not that we're aggravated or anything...

Anyway, it will be a long week to come. We don't publish too much info on exactly where we live on line, so we'll send separate emails to all we have emails for with our new address. For the time being, our phone number will stay the same. If we find however that our cell phones work in our new place (we get zero coverage in our current home), then we will cancel the land line and only use our cell phones. We'll let you know.

Other than that, Judith is doing well. She is anxious with all the packing. The chaos of it all really started to get to her at the end of last week. She is very concerned about "move home." We just reassuring her that Mommy and Daddy and Judith will all be together and she will still have all of her toys and books and games. And the best part - she'll have STAIRS to walk up and down! Joy of joys! Our child just loves the stairs - it is the cutest thing in the whole world!

Once we get situated we will be able to download and post some photos and videos again. In the meantime, we hope you all are enjoying these last few weeks of the unofficial "summer" before Labor Day moves us squarely back to fall. Around here the kids have already been back in school for more than a week, which is just strange.

Take care of yourselves, and we'll let you know how it all goes later!