Monthly Archives: May 2020

Getting Started

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So I’ve made good progress on most of the things I mentioned in my last entry. I actually completed one of those things, if you count “walk 100 miles in a week,” as I managed to get in about 105 miles between the 27th and the 3rd. I did not attempt a repeat of that this week – I haven’t even taken my walk yet today. I think I’ll end up at around 75 miles, which is plenty. I did the 100-mile week just to see if I could.

On the house front, I’m happy to say that State Farm finally came through for me on a home insurance claim! They’ve made things as difficult as possible, but they are going to pay to replace my roof (minus my deductible), and I’ve got a contractor signed up to do the work. Actually sent the signed contract back to him this morning. State Farm started things off by telling me that the replacement value of the roof was just over $9,000 and that the depreciated value was just over $5,000 and then said they were sending me a check for $2,600 – which has to be endorsed by me AND by Chase Manhattan, because they hold the mortgage. I started to lose my mind when all that happened, but after a few chats with the claims agent, I managed to deduce that they’ll send me ANOTHER check (again, to be endorsed by Chase…sigh) either after the work is done or (hopefully) when I send them a copy of the contract to do the work.

If they decide to wait until after the work is done, I need to figure out how to pay the contractor out of my pocket while waiting for the insurance (not sure how I’ll do that), or convince him to wait for it. He and I have discussed that, and he’ll probably be okay waiting if necessary.

He may not have to, though, because I’ve started the process of refinancing the mortgage and pulling out some money for the other projects. This process began as complete fiasco. I initially put in an application with Chase because they’ve had my mortgage for close to 20 years, they’ve been spamming me for the last three with offers to lower my interest rate, and I figured it’d be a piece of cake. And it was at first. Did the online application, gave them all of the relevant information, said that I wanted to lower my rate and pull out some money for home improvements. All good. Got a call back from a banker and everything was pleasant.

Until he mentioned that, because of COVID-19, anyone who wanted to pull money out during a refi had to show that they had 18 months of mortgage payments in reserve, and 12 months of those had to be liquid reserves. You following me on this? In order for me to pull out $20,000 in a refi, I had to have about $14,000 in liquidity. I was like, “Dude. If I had fourteen grand lying around, why would I be asking to borrow twenty?”

So he offered to lower that amount by adding two points on the loan, and rolling those into the loan. You following this? Because they’re so concerned that I’m going to either lose my job or die because of COVID, they insist that I have enough cash on hand to pay my mortgage for a full year, but if I DON’T have that, they’ll be happy to give me a BIGGER loan and only hold me to having enough to pay for nine months.

So I said, “Screw you,” and went to Quicken Loans. Fired up a RocketMortgage application, took 2.5 percent off of my existing interest rate and pulled out $25,000. Changed from a 30-year mortgage to a 15 and lowered my payment to boot. That took a morning. Now I’m just going through the follow-up stuff with my loan agent and he thinks we’ll close within a couple of weeks.

That will make things interesting with the State Farm checks…

Anyway, I also settled on a contractor to replace my deck, and I’m waiting for him to send me a contract for that. Going to tear the whole thing down, replace it with a few modifications, and extend it about 8 feet so that it takes up almost the entirety of the back wall of the house. Since I do have enough in savings to cover that work, I’m hoping he can get started as early as this week.

I might use the same guy for the retaining wall, as he’s given me a pretty attractive estimate for that work. Going to see how he does on the deck before I make that decision. I also need to call one other hardscaper who lives in my neighborhood and see what he’d charge me for that work.

So things are moving forward and I’m excited about the upcoming changes at home. Here’s hoping I survive the pandemic long enough to enjoy them!

Another Month Gone!

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Welcome to May! April was, to be honest, a very strange month. It had a little bit of everything, both good and bad. I can’t say that I’ll miss it, but parts of it were pretty nice. I don’t remember exactly when we started working from home, but I’m pretty sure that it was before April – which means that I’ve spent all month at home (with a few trips to the grocery or liquor store).

And I’ve really enjoyed working from home. Being completely honest…I don’t want to go back to the office. It’s nice to be able to take long walks in the morning, get home, have a leisurely cup of coffee on the deck while catching up on the news (maybe even eat breakfast!), then take a shower….and still sit down to work a full thirty minutes earlier than I would have if I’d have gone to the office.

On the other side of the day, it’s nice to put in a full day, then shut down the computer, take another long walk, then have a leisurely drink on the deck, cook dinner, watch some television, and get to bed before 9:00.

I love that kind of a schedule!

To be sure, April also had some downsides. The most glaringly obvious one to me is that I’ve developed some serious anxiety about being around other people. It doesn’t take a trained psychologist to figure out why: I had some chest pains after going out a month ago, I associated them with COVID-19, I couldn’t really call anyone (other than an ambulance) for help, and it freaked me out. Since then, I’ve experienced some degree of chest pain every time I’ve gone out to a store or have had someone come to my house (delivering packages or coming to give me home improvement estimates).

The good part of that is that it’s been so consistent that I know beyond any doubt that it’s psychological – and knowing that has allowed me to block it out and rebound back to normal pretty quickly the last couple of times that I’ve gone out. This is a big plus, because I’m really NOT “that guy.” I don’t get wrapped up in my health. I don’t worry about it. So worrying about it as I have been – to the point of having anxiety attacks about it…well, THAT bothers me more than the actual worry does. When I start stressing over something I really can’t control, that’s when I start to just give up.

On to more pleasant things. I’ve decided to get serious about fixing up this old house (and landscape) over the next however long it takes. Big-ticket items that I’m looking at getting fixed now are the roof, the retaining wall in the back yard, the deck, all of the floors, the half-bath, and – maybe – the kitchen. Lots of work, lots of money, lots of time – but these are things that need to be addressed and I’ve put them off for too long.

The roof has been leaking for a while, and I’ve had the insurance company out again in the hopes of convincing them that it just needs to be replaced. I showed them damage inside the garage – the ceiling and walls – and in the foyer (front wall and floor). At least this time around, the guy they sent out admitted that he saw holes in the roof. The last one wouldn’t admit to any damage at all. What I’m hoping is that the new guy won’t give me $1000 and tell me to patch the holes. The roof is over 30 years old. It needs to be replaced. If I can’t get insurance to cover it, two things are going to happen. First, I’ll be getting a new insurance company. Second, I’ll be refinancing the house and pulling some money out of equity.

It’s obviously important to have a good roof over my head, and it’s made more important by the fact that I simply cannot replace my floors until I can control the leaking coming in to the front hall of the house. When I replaced the front door a couple of months ago, I pulled up most of the hall floor because it was so water damaged it was like walking on wet towels after a storm. Since doing so, I’ve had a literal towel next to my front wall to keep the water from pooling at the foot of the stairs after every rain storm. I’m not spending a penny on new flooring until I know that it will stay dry.

Heading to the back yard, my retaining walls need to be replaced (as pictured in the post entitled “Solutions”). This is somewhat vital because my upper lawn has been slowly washing away as the retaining walls fail. The level of the upper lawn has dropped about 8 inches over the last twenty years. One casualty of this slow slippage has been the deck.

The deck has pulled away from the house by a couple of inches, and has begun to list to one side as the earth underneath it erodes away at different rates. While it’s still standing – and fairly stable – it doesn’t take a genius to see that it’s not going to be either of those things for more than a year or so down the road. I had a contractor out this morning (the second in as many days) taking a look so that I can get estimates on repairing it vs. replacing it vs. a bit of both.

Both contractors are also giving me estimates on repairing/replacing the retaining walls, and I plan to get at least one – probably two – more estimates for both of those projects.

The half-bath project is something that I’ll be doing on my own. At first, I was just going to re-seat the toilet, as it has been leaking (I’ve turned off the water to it), but I’ve decided to go ahead and gut the room and use it as a learning experience. New floor (which will stretch out into the laundry room in front of the half bath) will let me get an idea of how I want to handle flooring for the rest of the house. A new sink will give me an idea of what sort of effort and expense will go into replacing the cabinets in the kitchen. Lighting, painting…it’s just a good project to let me get my hands dirty with home improvement – and if I completely screw it up, it’s in an enclosed area so nobody has to see it, and it’s small enough that it should be fairly inexpensive to get a pro to fix my mistakes should that become necessary.

Through thinking about all of these projects – and I’ve thought a lot about them – I’ve come to the inevitable conclusion that I’m not retiring next year as I’d hoped to do. For one thing, it’s going to be expensive and take time. For another, my 401(k) has been CRUSHED this year – I’ve already lost over $100,000, and I don’t have any reason to believe that that’s going to rebound anytime soon. So I’m just going to hunker down, do my job, try to enjoy it, and hope that I live another 10 years so that I can enjoy a funded retirement when I’m 65. By then, I should have the house paid off (or very close), even if I have to refi, it will be worth a lot more than it is now, and I can decide if I still want to move to the woods or if I’ll be happy just living where I am.

Lots of questions, yeah – but I’ve got sort of a plan, and that makes me happy.

It has been a beautiful day today, and this weekend should be more of the same. Looking forward to getting in some good walking to finish out the week (shooting for over 100 miles for the week), and to beginning to tackle that half-bath project. Should be fun!