Another Impasse

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Well, after talking about moving to the mountains, Matt and I are at something of an impasse… again. I’ve been thinking and I’m not sure that we’re going to be able to pull it off. It requires several things we don’t have–like a 4WD vehicle–but more importantly, there’re no jobs for me in the mountains. I’m not a mountain commuter. Mountain roads scare the crud out of me, so driving up and down every day is just plain out of the question. the only way it could work is if I could work in the mountains, but again, that’s not a reality. What a bummer.

Unfortunately, now Matt’s unhappy. He wants me to be able to pursue whatever career I want, but he also wants to live somewhere that’s not terribly warm, where it gets down right cold, which isn’t much help because there’s no place like that in southern California except the mountains (refer to para.1 for the problems with that). We’re also under a tight budget right now. California’s not cheap, at all, so we’re somewhat restricted where we can live.

I want to move to the desert, but I don’t know that getting a job there is all that realistic either. Once we move there, and get settled, and I get a job, we can decide where we’ll ultimately live, but I don’t have any idea where that might be. I think Matt would also enjoy living near the coast, where it’s very temperate, but again, that’s crazy expensive. So, we’re back to square one. Truly, we might have been able to afford it if we weren’t looking to rent a house. But, with my dog, an apartment isn’t ideal, so we have to live somewhere where the rents for houses are reasonable. That’s so few places in southern California, it’s unbelievable.

I’ll let you know where we decide to land, when we know, but for now we’re at a rather pointed impasse. Really, it shouldn’t be this difficult, and it’s frustrating my otherwise cheerful desire to move home. Looking for the silver lining, just have to keep telling myself that.

Kristyn

Moving to the Mountains?

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When Matt and I decided that we were going to move to California, we were both pretty excited. Me, because I’m all about the opportunity to go home and be closer to my family, and, well, because I miss California! Matt, because he’s looking forward to the change in scenery and to experiencing life in a completely new environment. There were a few kinks to work out, however, because Matt really would have liked to live somewhere temperate and cool, somewhat it snows. For Matt, the Mojave desert is hardly ideal, but it’s where I’m from and where I hoped to return. So, we were at a slight impasse, though there were never really any plans to move anywhere but there, and to his credit he never once complained about it.

So I got to thinking, what if we could have our cake and eat it too? That is, what if we could be back in California, close to my family, but also somewhere cool, temperate, and snowy? That’s when it hit me, the mountains! The mountains are gorgeous, temperate in the summers, cool at night, and snowy during the winter. Perfect! Then, I started looking at rentals around Big Bear City and wow was I surprised!! Not only are the mountain houses adorable–I love the gambrel style mountain houses–they’re also remarkably reasonable, if you look in the right places!

So, since Matt was asleep when the idea hit me, and I was talking on the phone to my mom, I ran it by her. We looked at Realtor.com together–which is really one of our favorite things to do while we’re preparing for next year’s move–and found some really cute properties for some really manageable rents. It’s about an hour from where my parents live, but an hour’s not much when compared with the current 1,500 miles separating us, and my parents go to the mountains all the time since they share a time share there with my aunt.

Still, there are a few problems with moving to the mountains that we need to work out, like…

  1. We’re both petrified of heights — No big deal once you’re up there, the topography in Big Bear is flat. Unfortunately, the roads up and down the mountain are windy and high, and rather frightening.
  2. We don’t have a 4WD vehicle — We currently drive a little car, which might be trouble in a climate where it snows all winter. Not sure how we would go about fixing that issue. Matt really wants a Jeep, but they’re a little bit pricey, so I don’t know.
  3. Most of the houses are 2 bedroom/1 bathroom — This is low on the list of problems because it’s not a huge issue for us. We both work from home, and would like to have two separate offices, but we don’t have kids to worry about so 2 bedrooms isn’t the end of the world. Worst comes to worst, we put one of our offices in the bedroom, problem solved!

When we got to thinking about the pros and cons, Matt was still of the opinion that the good outweighs the bad. Of course, he’s never been to the mountains before, and he doesn’t know what the roads going up the mountain are like. Could he drive them? We don’t know, we don’t even know if he could manage to ride while someone else drives them without freaking out — which is usually what I do on mountain roads. But, since we do both work at home, it might not be as much of a problem as it could be if we had to commute to get to work. We’d only have to go down the mountain once or so a week, to see the family, rather than every day. And, sometimes, they’d come to us, so again, not as much of a problem.

Finally, I emailed a friend who lives in the mountains out there (though on a different mountain range, closer to the desert) and asked her opinion about mountain living. Her response was very positive, she said the positives far outweigh the negatives, and that you get use to driving the mountain roads after a while. That’s good news. If she hated it, I might be less inclined to want to move to the mountains. Hearing that she loves it and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else makes me quite sure that we should keep an eye on mountain rentals as the time to move draws closer.

Kristyn

The Great (Moving) Debate

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Matt and I are engaged in a pretty constant struggle debate about the how of moving. What I mean is, we can’t seem to agree 100% about the method of moving our things that sprawling 1,500 miles between Central Texas and Southern California. Overall, I think he’s probably won this particular debate, because every time we discuss it–and we discuss it frequently–I walk away the looser. The thing is, he wants to move our stuff via a moving service, like PODS or ABF U-Pack. I, on the other hand, believe it would be more economical to rent a moving truck from Penske or Ryder and move our things ourselves.

Up to this point, with the clock ever ticking forward to our move, I’ve been fruitless in my efforts to persuade him to do this thing the old fashioned way. He wants to spend that $3,000+ it’ll cost to hire PODS or the like, and his points are so good I can’t seem to counter them with any efficiency. The thing is, I think the reason I’m not winning any of these debates is that even I am not completely convinced that a moving truck is the best method of doing things.

You see, Matt believes the moving company option is best because it would mean not having to drive the whole way alone. His point amounts to this: If we got a moving truck, one of us would have to drive it while the other drives the car–therefore we would both have to do 100% of the driving. We couldn’t put our car on a dolly and tow it because we have two animals moving with us. There’s no room in the cab of the moving van to put Anakin and Galileo, with two full grown humans, and putting them in the car is just out of the question for a whole lot of reasons, not the least of which is that it’ll be mid-May to early-June, and therefore hotter than blue blazes!

The moving van option is compounded by the fact that I have almost total night blindness. I can’t see a thing in the dark, which means we wouldn’t be able to keep trekking after the sun went down, or start before the sun comes up. That’s a huge issue since he wants to set out from here in the middle of the night to get the most distance across Texas before the sun’s high. And, considering how slowly moving trucks move, we wouldn’t make nearly the distance we really needed to if we only made distance when it was light out.

Which brings me to yet another issue with the moving truck option. They’re slow. If we moved via PODS, our stuff would be moving separately from us. We would be able to drive our car across there with little or no delay, assuming our car doesn’t have any problems. The trip from here to California is about two days driving, if you make good time on both days. That’s one hotel stay. If we move with a moving truck, it could take us three or four days, which means three or four hotel stays, and that could get expensive. Never mind the cost of food across there, too, especially for an extended trip.

So, with all of that in mind, my brain really wants to back the moving truck option while my heart is just screaming how stupid it is. The thing is, it’s cheaper. And, not just a little cheaper, either, at least at the outset. The moving van is between $400 and $700 dollars, while PODS is, oh, about $3,000. But, with a moving truck, there’s gas, which runs about $800 all by itself. Still, when you add the moving truck up, it’s still only about $1,500, half the total cost of PODS or ABF U-Pack. That’s a pretty substantial difference… until you take into account three(ish) nights in a hotel at about $80/night, and food for those extra days. Yet it never quite amounts to what the PODS cost.

That is, until you consider this one point: PODS may cost $3,000 but you have the POD for a month! Whether it takes one day or 31 days, you have the sucker for a month’s time. If you tried to rent a moving truck for a month, the cost would far exceed whatever PODS might cost. Oh, and then there’s the fact that PODS cost includes insurance and gas mileage, and storage of your POD if it’s within that month’s time. Well, in fairness, they’ll store it longer, but it costs an extra $200 or so a month. Still, not bad. Also, we wouldn’t have to worry about PODS breaking down, nor would we have to be concerned with road obstacles like bridges, when the next gas station is coming up, and the like. We also wouldn’t have to do 100% of the driving all on our own, we could share the driving, and move while the sun was down.

For now, the debate rages on, but it’s starting to look like PODS is pretty inevitable. The peace of mind and overall available time of the POD is really hard to overlook, even if it is just a little bit more expensive. While we hash this out, and try and make a decision one way or another, any advice or opinion on the matter would do us a world of good!

Kristyn

Rentals: Pet Discrimination

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Even though we’re not planning to move until mid-May 2012, I’ve spent my share of Saturday mornings looking through the rental listings in the local high desert newspaper. For the most part, I’m trying to stay apprised of the cost of relocation. The better acquainted I am, the more prepared I feel. But, it’s been years since we’ve rented, and I’m a little bit shocked, and quite unprepared, for what I’ve been seeing. Not only are rents quite high, something to be expected in Southern California, but many rentals are either no pets, or charge unreasonable pet deposits and pet rents.

I literally had no idea that pet rent even existed. We’ve been living in the same house for the past seven years, eight years by the time we move next year, and seven years ago no one–or no one I knew of–was charging pet rent. Deposits, yes; pet rent, certainly not. I suppose you could say I’m a little bit baffled and quite upset by the whole thing.

I don’t have children, nor will I ever, but I consider my pets family. You wouldn’t see a rental listing saying “no kids” would you? Not unless it was a 55+ community, no. Likewise, you wouldn’t see landlords asking for kid deposits, or kid rent. So why the discrimination against pets?  My mom has suggested to me that it’s because pets tear things up. I can certainly see that point, pets are a liability for property owners. I get that. What I don’t get is how they don’t see that children are, too.

Kids tear things up as surely as do pets. A dog might pee on the carpet, but a child will flood the bathroom by overflowing the tub, or by stuffing bathroom items down the toilet and flushing them. That actually happened, by the way. My little sister and some daycare kids–mom had a daycare in our home for many years–flushed everything from the bathroom drawer down the toilet; the plumbing was never the same again. Kids put holes in doors and walls, they write on walls, cabinets, and counters with indelible markers, they throw up and spill things on carpets. Still, no one is excluding children from rental properties.

My pets, however, are fair game. By law, landlords can–and do–discriminate against my right to have pets by disallowing them. I can certainly see how an animal can make things difficult in a rental property, but isn’t that what pet deposits are for?  Isn’t that why we’re paying $500+ per pet, and $25+ per pet/per month, to pay for the damage a pet might do? Who pays for the damage a child might do? It’s absorbed by the initial deposit, but the deposit’s the same whether you have kids or not.

All in all, I think we’ll be okay. We’ll just look for a property that allows our pets and if we’re forced to pay pet rent, so be it. I don’t think I’ll ever completely understand, but it seems like a reality of renting, so it’s something we’re going to have to deal with until we can afford our own place. When that day comes, no one will be able to tell us we can’t have our pets! Now if only rents would go down so we could afford the hike that the pet deposit represents, that would be great!!

Kristyn