Halloween was crazy. We had roughly 1300 pieces of candy and they were all gone by 7:30. The kids could start coming in the neighborhood at 6. Wow! We just turned the lights off and went inside after. I have never seen anything so crazy. There were parents walking around asking for candy in addition to their kids! I of course, told them all no, but I was still amazed to see that parents will go trick-or-treating!
We just went to Sam's Club and bought the cheap generic stuff. We got all that candy for roughly $60. Not too bad I guess, but still $60 that was not spent on debts...
Onto the dryer...we bought a dryer box and our handy man installed it for us and it worked! Hallelujah! I was very worried about this. All together it cost us about $190. I guess that is not too bad, but it was certainly an unforeseen expense. I am not too sure how much I enjoy owning a home. We had a fireplace company out the other day to check out our fireplaces (2). It was $199 for them to come clean and inspect the fireplaces! I thought this was a little ridiculous because all they did was vacuum and sweep them out. I think I could have done this on my own. However, the gentleman that did come over told us that our fireplace in the living room had an open vent. So, this apparently means if we use this fireplace, we will spread heat out through the chimney and cause a fire. The only way to fix this is to get a new chimney!! I asked how much that costs and he said a very rough estimate would be $4,500! Needless to say, we will only use one of our fireplaces and pretty much never fix that one. One of the major reasons we bought the home we did was because of the two fireplaces and the coziness it would bring during the winter months. Ugh! It never ends.
Since this is our first time owning a home, we are unsure about the interest on the loan. Will we be able to write this off on taxes? I believe so. But, is this one of the tax breaks that is set to expire come 2013? If so, which president will push to renew this bill? I think the interest on our loan is $700 a month!! If we can write all that off on taxes, we are talking about an $8,400 tax break. This is a big deal to us. We are talking about a significant debt reduction if we can get somewhere around $10,000 back on taxes.
We are getting ready to pay some more on debt soon, so I will post an update when we make those payments. Have a great week everyone!
That's pretty bad if the parents are trick or treating. I also dislike the parents that carry around a three-month old "trick or treating", with pillow cases over pillow cases of candy... that's just a bit rude.
ReplyDeleteSucks about the fireplaces... that's a real bummer. I find it very interesting to read about first-time home ownership, so I am looking forward to the responses/research on how those taxes work.
It was definitely annoying they were trick or treating.
ReplyDeleteI just wrote about the home ownership tax breaks. Hope you enjoy!
Thank you for reading.