In case you hadn't heard yet:
I'm teaching my first seminar!
If you love my advice and want a little more one on one help, but don't feel like being one of my direct clients, sign up for my seminar!
I'm partnering up with Theatre Puget Sound (TPS) to teach the same seminar with two date options: Saturday, August 18th from 10a-noon and Monday, August 20th from 6:30p-8:30p.
The cost is $40 for TPS members and $60 for non-TPS members.
You'll get some great financial basics and a little extra attention geared specifically towards those who are artists or lower-income earners (aka, all of you out there).
Email me at verhanika@artisticfinancial.com with the date you want to attend. Payment will be collected once TPS has their payment link up and running.
So come join me for some fun with money and some snackies and I'll make your finances easier to deal with and understand in an easily digestible way.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On to today's post.
One thing that makes this so apparent is the "unexpected" costs of home ownership everyone seems to forget about. Unless your Andy and V, then you're totally prepared for it.
Nerd that I am, I made Andy start a spreadsheet with me of all the costs we would incur upon moving in unrelated to closing costs, aka paint, electrical upgrades, new appliances, so we wouldn't be surprised by the massive price tags all this would incur. This is an oft overlooked part of homeownership we were not going to be fooled by. And we aren't...sort of.
We knew from the inspection that a few things had to change with our electrical set up. A lot of the outlets weren't grounded so Andy has to install GFIs and blah, blah, blah. Honestly, that's all I get every time he talks about them. "You got it, babe?" I ask. And his "Yes" is all the permission I need to zone out.
He's also decided he wants to add a whole new circuit to our office. The entire east side of the house, which includes the office and our other bedroom that will be storage for now are on the same circuit. So that's roughly 8 outlets all on the same circuit. For comparison, the west side of the house is on 6 different circuits (I think). So A wants to create a circuit exclusively for our computer equipment to be on so we don't run the risk of tripping a breaker every time we turn on a lamp in our two other rooms.
With this came an additional spreadsheet he created and informed me that the cost of a new circuit would be around $160. Yeah, that was an unexpected expense. We thought off the bat we'd be spending around $2000 in appliances and minor changes, so $160 in the long run isn't a lot, but when you're a PA, that's roughly 10% of your monthly salary.
So now the conversation has started with how we're going to divvy up these expenses. We're paying a lot of the closing costs from our joint savings and a chunk of money Andy got from his grandfather a few years ago. But these other costs we're having to figure out.
And as we move closer to the day when I'm in school and not working as a stage manager, the impending instability of our income is starting to press down on us. Fortunately, the house still saves us money overall, even with these early up-front costs, over renting our apartment.
How do you and your partner/roommate split shared expenses? And did you have any unexpected expenses when you moved into your current home?
No comments:
Post a Comment