Moving Update

Well, since my "FUNK" post we have had a lot of changes/answers on the moving front.  I have been really tired and a little stressed out still so sorry to those who I owe phone calls/e-mails.  Soon I will be in southern md (somd) with little to do -- expect phone calls in excess then!

Anyway, here are our updates....

1)  We took the house off of the market.

It did not sell but last Wednesday I figured I might as well try posting an ad on craig's list to see if anyone was interested in renting it.  Less than 24 hours later I had a signed lease for the "full asking price".  He was only one of 2 people who wanted to sign a 12 month lease within 24 hours of posting the ad. 

Yeah!  This is much better than an empty house sitting on the market for who knows how long only to lose 100K when we sell it.

We did have to pull a large chunk of money out of our 401K to pay for a down payment on a second house.  This is of course not ideal but we really had no other option.  If we took money out of "stocks" we would have been taxed a lot.  The 401K is tax and interest free and we have 15 years to pay it back.  Pretty good place to borrow money from although we would of course prefer that the money still be there and growing but nothing else we could do.

We will be making payments for the loan against the 401K in addition to our 2 house payments.  Yikes -- at least the rent covers pretty much all the costs of carrying the WI house.  Our hope is that we can sell the house in 3-4 years when the market has improved and not lose as much (or any money for that matter) so it will make the loan against the 401K worth it.

2) Maryland house...

We close on the Maryland house on Friday.  Everything is set up so this process should be fairly painless.  We have already purchased 5 ceiling fans, picked out paint for the kids rooms, ordered blinds, and arranged to have garage door openers installed (yeah -- this is not included -- nice).  Victor is planning on spending Friday night in our new house so he can install fans and paint the kids rooms before we (and all of our stuff arrives).

3) Movers...

Someone is coming tomorrow to access how long it will take 2-3 men to pack up all of our belongings!  The movers are scheduled to be here on the 18th and 19th so we should be in our new house around the 20th.

Overall, I am very thankful that a lot of the things I was worried about are lining up.  I have lots more emotions about actually moving but will save those for a different post.  Off to check on the pumpkin pie and pumpkin apple muffins Erik and I made tonight (with a real pumpkin we baked this afternoon).  Good night!