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It has been three weeks since we moved into the new apartment. Here is a picture of the exterior. Will take pictures of the interior when all the boxes are unpacked!
The apartment building is a four-plex, 2 lower unit and two upper unit, we are on the lower unit on the left. There is a detached covered garage on the left, one parking lot for each unit. It’s a two bedroom apartment with about 1200 square feet of space. We like the walk-in closet and the abundance of build-in storage in this apartment! We now have plenty of room to store all the stockpile and keep our mess concealed. 
We decided to delay the plan to buy a house, so we could save more money for a bigger downpayment and a newer house.
The Commerce Chamber organized a city wide Garage/Yard Sale that called “Treasure of the attics”. Though we have just moved here two weeks ago and have not totally unpack, we decided to participate in it. Unlike most people who would be selling used furniture or used stuffs, I would be selling the stockpile of unused toiletries and groceries from my strategic shopping.
We asked for permission from our landlady, she gave us green light to have a yard sale, not garage sale. So, we setup a tent on the lawn beside the apartment building. We put out a few folding tables borrowed from the in laws and have the “merchandises” displayed with the price tags printed on white papers.
We did really well, we had our first “customer” at 7.30 a.m, before we even officially “open business”. People strolled in non stop and we made a little over $400 on the first day! We also got to meet many of our new neighbors.
On the second day (Saturday), the first customer didn’t show up until 10.30 a.m! I was wondering whether the signs were there, so I drove out to check. The signs were alright, guess most people slept in a little late on Saturday! Anyway, once we started to have people pulled up, it was non stop. There were a few repeated customers from Friday and a couple of big spender. Despite of the initial setback, we actually did pretty well on the second day too!!
Some people believe nothing is FREE in this world. I used to think the same, not until I learn to play the grocery game!!
Marketing and advertising are BIG in America. Businesses are constantly trying to sell you stuffs that you don’t need and commercially prepared junk food are disguised as “good and wholesome” ! The stores especially the grocery business is very competitive, they spent a lot of money advertising and playing psychological game with the consumers. The same item can be $1 this week, $2 next week and $1.50 another week! In order to win the game, I don’t shop like a typical consumer – buy what you need when you need them, I buy them when they are FREE or almost Free!
How do I do that? The grocery stores have a 12-week cycle in which everything in the store is at its lowest price point. The manufacturers also often run marketing promotions coincides with the cycle. When that happens, that’s the best time to buy that item for an even bigger discount using the manufacturer coupons, store discounts and manufacturers’ promotion that are available.
Let me give you an example:
Marie Callender’s frozen Pasta
Normal Price: $4.00
Store promotion: On sale for $2.50
Coupons available: $0.75 or $1.00
Manufacturer’s promotion : Buy $20 of participating products, get back $10 on your next shopping trip.
Scenario:
Buy 5 packs of frozen Pasta = 5 x $4 =$20 (hit the threshold for manufacturer’s promotion)
Sale price = 5 x $2.50 = $12.50
Minus coupons available, let say you have 2 $0.75 coupons and 3 $1.00 coupons.
$12.50 – 2 x $0.75 – 3 x $1.00 = $8.00
You pay $8.00 + $0.13 sale tax (of course you can pay with coupons you get from buying other products) and get back $10!
They pay you $2.00 to take home five packs of frozen pasta!!
Isn’t it a fun game? I enjoy being paid to take things from the store!
Well, it may not be healthy to eat frozen pasta all the time and no one has a BIG freezer to stock up a year worth of pasta!
But, I have gotten almost “everything” free or close to free by being a strategic shopper, including fresh vegetables, shrimps and Salmom! In the process, also gotten gift cards for Starbucks and different clothing stores that got me new summer clothes and T’s work clothes.
Some of the stuffs that I have gotten free:
It was almost 8.30 p.m when we reached home last night. I was too tired to prepare dinner, so we had frozen pasta meals. We don’t usually eat much of microwave frozen meals. However, we both like the Marie Callender’s Pasta Al Dente (frozen pasta) and Pot Pies.
The frozen meals are about $4 each and often go on sale for about $2 each. However, I picked up about ten of them when they were FREE after coupons during a ConAgra promotion few weeks ago! Would have gotten more if our freezer was not overflowing! We NEED another freezer!
We drove this baby home last night!
After T got off work at 2.00 p.m, we drove down to Oak Park in Chicago. After we got the mechanic to inspect it, T signed the papers and paid the seller with a cashier check. I drove the Toyota Camry and T drove this baby home last night!
It was 50 miles one way to go down to Oak Park. Driving home on highway I-88 was rather stressful and tiring I have not driven much on highways with fast moving commuters. The commuters crowd just got off work and the highways were quite packed, though the traffics was nothing like the kind of bumper to bumper traffics in KL/PJ!
We need to go to the Department of Motor Vehicle to get a new license plate and add the car onto our current auto policy. I got a quote online this morning, it costs about $150 to add another vehicle. It’s much more reasonable than the AAA auto insurance that T’s parents used to get. It saves us at least $300 half yearly!! It pays to shop around when it comes to getting auto insurance.
Where we used to live is a college town, a small town of 50k populations, half of that are students! We just moved two weeks ago, to an apartment at the next town bordering the college town. Both towns are small and surrounded by farm lands. Many foreign students who are from urbanized cities were shocked when they first arrived. They didn’t expect their university to be surrounded by farm lands and in a semi “rural” setting!
Being in a big farm town does not bother me, the smell of fertilizer and manure in the early spring when the farmers started planting does not bother me either. I love the fact that it’s a small town, but a small town with many facilities due to the presence of the university community. It’s a rather safe community where children can roam around, play in the yard and houses don’t have to be locked all the time!
May be because of the university, there are hospital and specialists clinics all over town. There are more than five grocery stores, departmetal stores and shopping malls a short 10-15 minutes drive from where we live , and tons more within 30 minutes drive. Living in small town that has big town facilities work for me, as of now.
We have a busy week ahead of us!
T is working till 2.00 p.m, we are driving down to Chicago to have a car inspected right after that. We have looked at the car and wanted to purchase it, so we are sending it to the workshop for a final inspection to make sure there is no major mechanical flaw that would be costly to repair! It everything goes well, this is the baby that we are hoping to bring home today!
It’s a 2002 Kia Sedona, a mini van that sits 7 passengers. We plan to take out the last row of seat and use it to haul stuffs for flea market or garage sales. Until I find a job or enrol in a course, selling stuffs at the flea markets or garage sales will be a part time job for me.
Tomorrow, T and I are going to Elton John and Billy Joe’s concert in Wrigley Field in Chicago. T has been rather excited about going to the concert since we got the tickets in January! I don’t care too much for the concert, especially we probably will not be home until after midnight. That also mean we will have a few hours of sleep before getting up on Friday morning to get ready for the Yard Sale. There is a city wide yard sale in our town and I will be putting out things at our lawn and yard!
Three months of neglects, it’s overgrown with weeds!!
Time seems to go by so fast day by day. We are in the process of unpacking after the move last week! Just got the cable and internet hooked up yesterday.
We were looking into buying a house since April but at the same time looking at rental places. This must be the 20th place we have looked at! We have decided to delay the plan to buy when we found this apartment!
It’s a newer apartment (especially compare to the 100 years old house we are living in right now), a two bedroom apartment with the right footage for two adults. It was love at first sight for me, I like the many closets and cabinets throughout the apartment. The rental is quite reasonable. The downside: there is no washer and dryer hook up in the apartment and we have to use the coin operated washer and dryer provided by the landlord. That mean we have to keep our current dryer in storage and sell off the used washer that we got from T’s colleague. I see it as a trade off for a fully equipped kitchen with cabinets and dish washer. The dish washer especially is a boon. I hate to do dishes when the weather is cold! We will be moving at the end of June! Packing will be a headache, it’s amazing how fast stuffs get accumulated!
The lease for our current rental is due end of May, the landlord wants to know whether we are going to renew the lease. We have decided to move out of this one hundred years old house to a newer house that has more modern facilities, and have been looking at other rental properties. Rental for newer apartments is so much more expensive! We are battling whether to continue to pay rental. It doesn’t make much sense to continue to rent when property prices and mortgage rate are at their low. It cost almost the same to rent vs to buy (mortgage plus property tax plus association due)
So, we told the landlord that we would not renew the lease, but would stay on a month to month basis until we find a place to move. T’s cousin is a real estate broker, she has been helpful to get us some listings and show us around. She also got us in touch with a lender to start a pre-approval process, so we know how much loan we are qualified.
We have been looking at a couple of single family homes and townhouses. We are amazed how the prices have dropped in the last six months or so. Many of this houses are bank-owned or in the process of being foreclosed.
We were looking at a 3 split level end unit townhouse on Thursday. They are 2-stall garage at the ground level, one bedroom and bathroom on each level, kitchen, fireplace and living room on the first level, family room on the second level and a full basement!!
Front of the house shows the garage and front door.
Living room and fireplace on the first level.
Kitchen on the first level, comes with cabinet and fully equipped with appliances i.e. refrigerator, oven, stove, dish washer, garbage disposal and microwave oven.
Full bath on the second level. They are 2 full bath and one half bath in this house!
Guess how much is this house listed for? It has been listed since July 2008 and current list price is $129,900. Since it’s a short sale (the bank owns the property), T’s cousin thinks we can offer around 100k. We are sitting on the decision to make an offer, may continue to look at more houses before we do that!
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