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HOA Dues

November 14th, 2008 at 02:49 pm

Well, I looked and it looks like our health insurance will release 2009 numbers in the next 2 weeks.

I cringe at the thought. Some years have been as bad as 40% increase. So, yeah, the health insurance will make or break the budget next year (as usual). I won't get my 2009 compensation until January. So if it goes up astronomically then I am just in limbo until I find out if I got enough raise to cover it.

Fun fun!

Of course, I will be on vacation when it comes out and my birthday is beginning of December. I told dh I couldn't bare to look during vacation (could ruin it) so I will look after my birthday. !! (Lord knows if I can contain myself, but I will try).

Ugh. Just HATE this time of year.

I also have to read all the fine print. For this year the $3k family deductible/HSA plan was by far the BEST. Least out of pocket, most coverage, one of the cheapest premiums.

It's almost too good to be true. So I wonder if they are trying to get everyone on that plan and then change the rules around or something. So I will be reading a lot of fine print in the meantime. Making sure this is still the best plan...

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I also got the HOA 2009 operating budget.

The amazing thing is our HOA fees have never gone up. In fact, they have gone DOWN! We bought in 2001, and the fees went down on one occasion.

Anyway, fast forward to our heavily foreclosed neighborhood in 2008. Dh & I had discussed it. We knew it was coming. We knew we'd have to start shouldering the burden for all the unpaid dues.

So, they are certainly going up. I just have NO IDEA how much. They said monthly we will pay $97, at an increase of $11/month.

Huh?

We pay $69 now.

So lord knows what that means. It wasn't very clear. They broke out the costs by type and there were 3 that added up to $97. But I think maybe they just had a typo with the increases per month, by type. I guess I will probably get the bill end of December - when we will know for sure. I'll hope it only goes up $11/month. vs. almost $30/month (or almost 50% increase). Something just didn't quite add up.

Anyway, yeah, they sent a letter how they had tried so hard to keep dues low and they just couldn't do it anymore with so many houses sitting in foreclosure and unable to collect dues. It's just crazy.

I would say, once things settle down it could be a long time before they raise dues again. BUT who knows when things will settle down.

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I saw a giant "$10/hour; hiring today; In& Out Burger" sign by the corner of my house the other day. Minimum wage here is $8. I made a mental note that $10/hour wasn't bad, but it was a strange place for a sign. (Not a lot of traffic but the higher end homes over here. Beyond that all we got is farm land. Just one development, a school, and a lot of empty space).

But, I don't know. They could have targeted school traffic, or figured our foreclosing neihgbors maybe needed a $10/hour job. (Don't think it will cut it for their mortgages though!!!)

Anyway, Jeffrey posted in the forums that 500 PEOPLE showed up for 50 In & Out positions in West Sacramento. Holy Cow!!!!!!! It never occurred to me there would be a huge line for those jobs!!

Kind of scary. To know the locals are so desperate for $10/hour jobs.

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Well, not much planned for the weekend. I have to finish the carpet cleaning. It's been kind of an exhausting week, so put it on the back burner.

& my parents are coming for a visit. Yippee!!!!

Will do some light house keeping in prep for Thanksgiving. Simple like clear the formal dining room and clean the bathrooms.

We can clean up the kitchen a bit next week. I am not going to go overboard.

I am taking the week of Thanksgiving off work. As usual. We are shipping off BM to grandma's house for a few days. I have mixed feelings about this, but I admit it will be WAY more relaxing with him gone. LM is mostly easy. BM is so high energy. Too much, even for me. I am high energy, but old. LOL.

Anyway, we are going to work on LM's room. Which is primarily why we wanted BM out of our hair. (LM actually has school that week so he will be out of our hair too). His room is a mess. I will have to show some before and after pictures. Dh and I have gone round and round on it. The lower half of the wall is brown, and there was a border dividing the white top and brown bottom. Border has been ripped off in places. It is long overdue to fix it up a bit. Make it look decent anyway.

We have painting supplies AND the original white paint. I think we should just go over the brown with a coat or 2 of our "free" white and see what we get. If nothing else, we can test a spot and see how it looks. Right?????? Dh is very uncooperative. I'd rather paint half the room with the white we already have, rather than paint half the room with white or primer and THEN have to paint the entire room another color. Dh doesn't want to do anything, so you'd think he'd be on board, but he is just difficult.

Yeah, this weekend I might drag out the paint and do a test spot. We won't know what we will do until we see how it looks.

Of course if we have all the walls taped off and the paint supplies out, might as well go out and paint it a solid color.

Anyway, this weekend, dh is also s'posed to go over some light fixture issues with my dad, who is much more electrically inclined.

It will be nice if we get some of those fixed. The light in the bathroom upstairs strobes. The one downstairs isn't much better.

& all this means by end of November we may have new drapes, clean carpet, fixed light fixtures (& we have a few bulbs to replace as well), have cleaned up LM's room and remove the baby theme. We also cleaned out the garage and the living room (it had a lot of boxes and such - as well as a giant TV box we just tossed). So, the house is looking up a bit.

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