Financial Update

I haven't done a financial post in a while.  I figure it's time with the monthly budget for October looming.  Yes, October looms.  Why?  Well, in Washington State property tax is due in April and October.  Typically we get a federal tax refund (oh shush, I know I'm not supposed to but I like getting the refund).  Since we bought the old house in April, our annual homeowner insurance was due in April as well as 50% of our property taxes for the year.  So with our couple thousand dollar federal tax refund, we'd pay our annual homeowner insurance premium and most of our property taxes in April.  Thus, aside for a few annual bills that came due in December, October was the only month where we got hit with a big bill (50% of our annual property taxes).

Then we moved to Big Ass House.  Our property taxes have more than doubled.  Ouch.  Again, we were rescued in April because our tax refund was a couple thousand + the $6,500 tax credit for the existing homeowners who buy a new house.  We used that to pay April property taxes (and toward our kitchen remodel).  But... that leaves us with the October problem x 2 since the taxes have doubled.

Since I know we have these annual bills & they aren't included in our mortgage payment by choice, I have accounted for them in our monthly budget.  When our monthly bill-clearing checking account gets sufficient extra padding from our personal monthly transfers, I transfer money from our checking account into our ING savings account.  Back in August, we had some padding in our joint checking account but I decided to let it sit and not transfer it to savings.  This is because I thought that we might be able to swing paying our property taxes from our checking account and not take the money from savings (even though the money is in savings).  So it's been a little game in my head to see if we could do it.  Technically, we can do it, but things will be very, very tight in our joint checking account in October.  It will be an exercise in frugality and doing without.  I know we're up to the challenge. 

In other property tax news, we WON against the county.  Of course, when I appealed, I knew we had a pretty good case.  See, we got our assessed values back in June/July.  These assessments are based on January 1, 2010 data.  The assessment we received said that the market value of our house was $70,000 more than we paid for it.  Since we bought the house on December 18, 2009 for $70,000 less than the value they said it was, I contested that the market value they gave it was incorrect & they should use the sales price of the house instead since that was a better gauge of market value.  Which is true.  Completely logical argument, and we were set to have a hearing on October 12.  Well, the county sent out an appraiser.  He found that our view was overstated (due to trees, which we're hoping we can convince the people below us to cut down), and he magically sent us an agreement for us to sign that lowers our assessed value to the purchase price of the house. 

FYI: I am a Democrat, and I do believe in paying my share of taxes.  But I don't think I should pay MORE than my share of taxes.  And we may have gotten a deal on the house because of the Hwang situation, but we paid our dues with how many trips to the dump with the crap they left in the house, their neglected maintenance on the house, them shortchanging us on what they verbally told us they would do, etc. 

We're in the process of refinancing.  Yes, it's the second refinance of the year.  We were in a 3.875% 5/1 ARM with Bank of America.  As you know, I hate B of A.  Well, the opportunity came up to refinance to a 3.875% 15 year fixed rate loan with a credit union.  Get rid of B of A as well as get another 10 years locked in at the 3.875% rate with no closing costs?  Terrific deal.  With a 15 year loan, the latest it will be paid off is when Julia is 17 in her senior year of high school.  Yay!  Part of me is thinking we should just stay here the 3 years required (1 year is almost down) to not pay back the tax rebate, and then get a smaller house.  Who knows what will happen.

Part of the refinance was an appraisal.  We got one when we bought the house, and that appraisal basically came in at our purchase price (okay, $5,000 over).  Given that the real estate market has been even bumpier in the past year, I wasn't sure how the appraisal as part of the refinance would pan out.  Yes, we redid the kitchen and redid counters in the bathrooms.  And painted, changed some lighting fixtures, tiled the laundry room. We have put about $30,000 into the house in the past year.  We were thrilled to find out that the appraisal came back at $90,000 over our purchase price!  (Don't let the tax assessor know!)  So I guess we're doing something right with the improvements we have made.

Hopefully, fingers crossed we'll sign papers within the next couple of weeks. 

Our cable bill went up to $50/month.  I don't really watch TV, and my husband only watches a few cable channels.  So we decided to downgrade to the broadcast channel package (with HDTV for the broadcast channels) and a cable box that gives us on demand.  That package should be about $20/month including taxes, so we're saving $30/month.  Yay for a little savings!  I hate spending money on cable.  Yes, we don't have much of an entertainment budget so we could technically afford it, but still...it's irritating to pay that much for TV. 

I guess that's all the financial news to report now.  I'm purposely making October tight on the budget because I don't want to transfer the earmarked money from savings.  Hopefully our property tax bill will go down a little bit in 2011.  We're refinancing to extend the term of the 3.875% mortgage interest rate.  And we downgraded our cable package.  Some small victories!