Layout:
Home > 5-5-5, mortgage thoughts, vacation/summer plans

5-5-5, mortgage thoughts, vacation/summer plans

May 10th, 2012 at 05:36 am

Weather was much better so I walked home today. That's 8 workouts down, 17 to go on my 5-5-5 fitness goal!

***

Spondulicks' post about Zillow got me thinking about our home value. I think in terms of calculating net worth, I've got my head in the sand.

I call it $160,000 of value. I see that similar units in our condo are listed at $154,000-$159,000. But, actual sales seem to be much lower. It's hard to tell how accurate Zillow is because several sales are listed as "$500" which seem impossible. But the ones that aren't obviously wrong are being sold in the low $100Ks. If, like I say, I can trust the numbers, since some of them are suspect.

It got me a bit morose. We still owe more than $160K, and if the value is even lower, then we're going to be underwater indefinitely.

I thought about what it would mean to try and sell the thing at a loss and rent something comparable in our neighborhood. We currently pay $1780 or so per month if you count mortgage and association dues. Well, that's pretty comparable to rents for 2-bedroom places in our area, which seem to range from $1400 to $2100.

So that makes me feel a bit better. If we could go back in time and wait to buy until after the boom, obviously that's what we'd do. But there would be no way to sell this one and buy a new one without incurring a lot of losses and fees, and renting would be about the same as paying our current mortgage and dues. So I'm comfortable staying in our current place. I really hope values climb before we want to sell someday, though.

***

We've been looking around trying to schedule a couple of trips that are A) pretty cheap and B) can be done in a regular weekend. Because we don't have any vacation time after our parental leave, and we'll be taking reduced salaries for most of the summer due to said leave.

We have $3000 in vacation funds over the next couple of months. I'm setting $2000 aside to try and bring my sisters and nieces out to MN; most of them don't live near a major airport and so fares are very expensive. There IS a chance that some friends would let me borrow their condo for two of the nights my family would stay, which would save a few hundred bucks in hotel costs, but even just the airfare for my 2 sisters and 3 nieces I want to treat looks like it would be $2000 or more for the weekend we want.

Well, I don't know if they'll come if they have to pay part of it. They all have more kids and fewer incomes, and kids close to or in college. So I wouldn't blame them. Plus some of them hardly ever travel, so a plane ride would be a big, huge deal.

But anyway, setting that $2000 aside for now to see if I can get them out here for a visit. That leaves $1000 for us to try and have a bit of traveling fun on our own this year, without taking any days off work.

So one thing I came up with was visiting the farm that does our CSA. It's about 3 hours southeast of us, and one Saturday in June they have a "strawberry social," where you get to visit the farm, meet the workers, see how things are done, and get some strawberries and other treats. We did it the first year we joined the CSA, but it's such a long drive for a day trip that we haven't done it since.

So I looked around for cabins or cottages and found one in Wisconsin, about 2 hours from home and 1 hour from the CSA farm. I called today and they had a cabin available for that weekend for $100 per night, so $200 if we stay Friday and Saturday night and head home Sunday morning. I took it! Also reserved a car share for about $150. That includes gas and insurance, though the mileage is estimated so may end up being higher in the end. But still, looks like we got a weekend trip with fun thing to do for $350-$400!

We've still got another $600, so I've got a call in to a VRBO.com cabin owner to see if she has any availability in July or August. She charges about $165 per night and there may be a housekeeping fee or something, but even if it comes to $200 per night, we could still come close to budget because it would be $400 for 2 nights at the cabin and $150-$200 for the carshare.

For both of these trips, we'd use our own spending money for food and any other incidentals. Since we'll have a kitchen and likely won't be near any interesting restaurants, we'd probably cook most of our meals anyway, or buy cheap stuff like fast food while on the road.

So, this seems like a fun way to still feel like we're traveling this year! We live for vacations, so it would be a weird year if we didn't do anything.

And, Minneapolis is really fun during the warm months, so we'll try to take part in lots of activities to make us not miss traveling. Smile

Plus, we've definitely got AS's mom visiting us in early June (well, she's kind of flaky, so I'll believe it when she actually gets here, though the ticket and hotel room are nonrefundable so I'm not paying for another trip if she doesn't make this one). And we might have some or all of my sisters and nieces out for a weekend. None of NT's family seems equipped to take an international trip this year, so I guess we'll try and save up for a trip to England next year.

So, it should be a pretty fun and busy summer. But I'll sure be glad to get back to having travel funds and vacation time next year!

9 Responses to “5-5-5, mortgage thoughts, vacation/summer plans”

  1. mamasita Says:
    1336642057

    The CSA farm visit sounds fun, especially if you linger by staying overnight nearby. A lot more relaxed for the little ones, if they don't mind being away from home.

  2. ThriftoRama Says:
    1336657537

    The CSA thing is a must. We have belonged to the same one for 7 seasons, and we religiously go to the spring and fall open houses. The kids absolutely adore going to the farm. It's so much fun for them. They get to sit on the tractors, and farmer Brian shows them all the greenhouses and fields. It's always great, and thanks to those events, our farmers have become like part of the family. Ours is a shorter drive, though. only 1 hour, not 3!

  3. Monkey Mama Says:
    1336657582

    With the condo underwater, I'd also think about re-prioritizing debt pay-offs. Maybe it would make sense to pay down the mortgage versus some of the other debts. I suppose the unfortunate thing with the mortgage is that the payment won't go down, so ties up a lot of resources. But I don't know if I could stand to feel so *stuck.* Meaning, emotionally I might give it a higher payoff priority than other things.

    Well, it is a bummer, but you are definitely not alone!!

  4. Monkey Mama Says:
    1336657699

    P.S. Unrelated, but I just saw Chase Sapphire had a CASH reward at 100 points for dollar. Wha???? I swear that was not there last summer. !!! I am hoping to redeem a fat check - maybe a mortgage payment? Big Grin

  5. ceejay74 Says:
    1336661784

    MonkeyMama, I have totally been tempted by that very feeling! It stinks paying down and down and still losing enough equity to stay underwater.

    The main reason I don't is that NT's student loan is at 6.175% interest but our U.S. mortage is 3.25%! I just can't deny that. Of course we also pay PMI on the mortgage and would love to see that gone, but we are so far away from having 20% equity that it seems like a pipe dream to pursue that.

    NT's 6.175% student loan I could knock out in a year and a half easy, maybe a year if I sweat a bit, and then maybe I'll consider paying down the mortgage instead of going for the next student loan. (The other student loans are at 3.25% fixed and 3.8% var.) My mortgage rate is variable, so I know rates are not gonna stay low forever!

  6. ceejay74 Says:
    1336661857

    Oh, and huh? You mean 100 points per dollar no matter how much you spend??

  7. MonkeyMama Says:
    1336663230

    It costs 100 points for $1 value on many of their gift cards. Like, $500 gift card for 50,000 points. I did not see any "cash out" option that didn't cost more points per dollar, last year.

    But *today* it looks like you can redeem 50,000 points for $500 CASH! Whoa! & if you had enough points for $501, you can redeem ANY amount. Does not have to be rounded to the nearedt $50, like usual. So, literally could redeem $501 or $526, or whatever you have the points for. Big Grin

  8. ceejay74 Says:
    1336678528

    Oh I see. I think they did that before, redeem that way for cash I mean. I got $1030 for each of them ($500 for the 50K points, plus $500 for the extra 50K we were able to wrangle, plus $30 for the 3K of points we racked up spending up to $3,000).

  9. Looking Forward Says:
    1336768603

    Your summer vacation plans sound like fun! Staying at little cabins and cottages is neat. Smile

Leave a Reply

(Note: If you were logged in, we could automatically fill in these fields for you.)
*
Will not be published.
   

* Please spell out the number 4.  [ Why? ]

vB Code: You can use these tags: [b] [i] [u] [url] [email]