In a little more than a month, Ben and I will be moving.
Again.
No…not out of Denver (that is still two years away), but simply into a smaller, cheaper apartment.
While I'm looking forward to the monthly cost savings this move will provide, just thinking about the actual process of getting from here to there has me wide awake and blogging at 4:30 in the morning.
Like most young people, when I was in my 20s it seemed that I moved every six months. And to be honest, I loved it. It was an adventure; a new place, a new neighborhood. But as I've gotten older, I've come to loathe the whole process. Once I'd moved back to Phoenix from San Francisco, I moved only twice—and one of those moves was simply to a different unit in the same complex—over a span of eight years. I like being settled, but with the arrival of our annual $100/month rent increase notice a few weeks ago, the cost-to-benefit ratio of staying in our current apartment for another two years simply didn't make any sense. Both of us are already stretched financially; we're no longer using that second bedroom, and its Pepto-Bismol stained carpet is a constant reminder that we need to get out of here and into somewhere that's totally free of the bad juju of the past year.
We looked at several other places. We wanted a location about halfway between both our jobs, but it seems everything built in the Englewood/Tech Center area of Denver was designed with ridiculously overpaid urban professionals in mind; a demographic that apparently owns nothing more than a love seat and a twin-size bed and doesn't mind paying an exorbitant amount of money for living in an oversized coat closet.
I'm sorry, but we have stuff. Not an inordinate amount, but even with a bit of extra room that would be available in a separate garage, we need more storage in the unit than what is being offered these days.
Fortunately, we finally found a place that met all our requirements about a mile and a half from our current location. It was built only a few years ago and the rent is what we were hoping to pay. It's not perfect; we're back on the third floor and we'll be giving up our current faux-wood floors for a return to carpet throughout, but it's gotten excellent online reviews (in stark contrast to our current complex), and it's conveniently located adjacent to a light rail stop for my snow day commutes.
In the 28 years Glenn and I have been together we have moved twice. Once when we moved in with each other in a nice place in West Hollywood, only renting, and 20 years ago when we bought this house in Studio City. We also moved a lot more when we were younger. Glenn, his adult days, first lived in Thousand Oaks, hated it, Then he was here in Studio City, briefly, then moved to West Hollywood in 1980. I moved several times but some of my moves we to another city. San Francisco in the summer of '75, Texas, hated it, for two months, and Phoenix in '85 for a short time, it wasn't too bad. We will probably stay in this house. It is paid off and this area is really nice. Hope your move goes easy.
Interestingly, your rent increase arrived the same time mine did here in Sherman Oaks, and my reaction is to still stay, even though the affordability factor is taking its toll on my wallet. But the thought of moving after being in a place for 20 years sends shivers up my spine.
Then I got another increase from DirecTV, seemingly an on-going process with them, but it is still better than the alternatives.
The NFL Sunday package now $240 per year!
Cutting expenses in other areas becomes the mantra.
Good luck on the move, and congratulations on finding a place that suits your needs.
Don't even get me started on DirecTV. They wanted $250 to move our service or $300 to cancel our contract. Guess which we went with?
Their retention department didn't even bother to try and cut us a deal.
I vowed to quit DirecTV about 2 years ago, and within about the last three days of my contract their retention department did give me a call. Patience must apparently be a virtue, but neither Time Warner Cable nor U-Verse have any virtues.