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!
The nice spring like weather has been around for the past few days. Today the high is going to be in the 70s(20s in Celsius). It’s nice after a long, cold and dragged winter! However, the weather report says it’s going back to the 40s and 50s (5-10 Celsius) tomorrow and stays that way until the weekend!
Spring is definitely making its way. I am looking forward to warmer days, going outside and walking in the park instead of getting stuck indoor whole day.
Applied for secretarial and clerical jobs at the university, and went to sit for the testing required for the positions. The test for clerical assistant is rather simple, I did quite well. But the test for the secretarial job has too many questions on English, I scored 84%, which is just above average score. So, probably won’t get called for an interview for that position.
Was told they will call those who scored the top three highest for interviews and go down the list until they find the suitable candidate(s). In this economy, the HR department at the university gets hundreds of applications for any advertised position! Well, I may have to think outside of the box, polish my entrepreneur skills instead of looking for employment.
I earned about $800+ (in catalina coupons) at the grocery stores last week, which we can use for buying groceries in future or buying stuffs on sale to re-sale and get the cash back.
The moon belongs to everyone
The best things in life they’re free
Stars belong to everyone
They cling there for you and for me
Flowers in spring
The robins that sings
The sunbeams that shine
They’re yours and they’re mine
Love can come to everyone
Best things in life
They’re free
Moon belongs to everyone
The best things in life
They’re free
Stars belong to everyone
They glitter there for you and for me
They are yours and mine
Flowers in spring
The robins that sing
Sunbeams that shine
They’re yours and they’re mine
Love can come to everyone
Best things in life
They’re free
All of the good things
Every one of the better things
A Catalina deal is a promotion or marketing campaign run by certain manufacturers or stores to give rebate in terms of cash coupons for buying certain amount of specific products. What we have at the Jewel-Osco grocery store last two week was a “Buy $30, get back $15″ Catalina deal by Procter and Gamble, General Mills and Coca-cola.
The trick is, at Jewel Osco: the $30 total is based on normal shelf price, even though the item can be on sale for less than the shelf price. Combine with coupon use, you get really good deal, things for free or even making money by buying this items included in the deal!
Walgreen does the same kind of catalina deal every week, but Walgreen doesn’t allow you to use the Catalina coupons on the same item to get more catalina coupons (it’s called rolling the deal in couponing lingo). But, Jewel Osco not only allow you to roll the Catalina coupons, they also take the catalina coupons from Walgreen! So, I used some of the Walgreen coupons at Jewel Osco stores to buy groceries or roll them into more catalina coupons when they have a good deal.
The deal started last week and ends today, but we were busy with MIL in the hospital, so hadn’t have time to go to the store much. I was there on the first day of the sale and spent about $5 out of pocket and collected $50 worth of cash vouchers.
This kind of deal doesn’t happen too often. It’s buy $30 and get back $15 in Catalina coupons, then you can use the coupons to buy more stuffs and roll into more coupons.
A typical scenario: a box of cereal is normally $4.65, it’s on sale for $2.
You buy 7 boxes of cereals 7x $4.65 = $32.55 (over the $30 threshold for getting back $15)
Sale price is 7 x $2 =$14
minus 7 x $1 coupons
Total paid = $14- $7 (coupons) = $7, you pay $7.00 ( and $0.14 in tax) and get back $15, a net profit of $7.86.
Needless to say, I have been buying cereals to make money.
We obviously won’t need so many boxes of cereals for two person, so we gave them away, donated them to the food pantry and women shelter. We even get tax relief for doing that!
The 8-roll bounty paper towels and Tide detergent are normally $14.99, they are on sale for $10 and $11.47 each. But I am able to get them for $1.50 and $3 each with the coupons and Catalina deal. I offered them for $6 to DH’s relatives, they sold like hot cakes!
Throughout the whole week, I spent about $50 out of pocket getting goods worth about $2000. Kept some of them for own use and resold some of them to T’s relatives and friends, made a net profit of $200!
I could have done much better if I could drive to the store in the morning as the store often ran out of the money making items when T got off work. I need to get going with the driving license and get all geared up for the next Catalina deal coming up in about 2-3 months.
We have been running to the hospital every evening to visit mother in law who had a knee replacement surgery on 01/07/09. She suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, which gave her very severe pain. When medicine and other treatments are not helping her anymore, the doctor recommended knee replacement surgery, with the hope to relieve the pain that she has been experiencing and hopefully allow her to be more active.
She is in a lot of pain and very weak after the surgery. In a knee replacement surgery, the surgeon removes damaged cartilage and bone from the surface of the knee joint and replaces them with a man-made surface of metal and plastic. She will need a few months of physiotherapy sessions to help her to recover and to be able to walk normal again.
We bought 5 hair dryers at the drug store this morning!
The drug store has a One-Day sale today, you can buy a hair dryer for $10.00 and get back $10.00 in cash voucher called Register Reward, which make it FREE.
We have been looking to get a hair dryer, T wanted to just go to the store to buy one, but I have learned about this hair dryer deal few weeks ago and have been holding on to buying one at regular price ($19.99). So we decided to stop by the 24-hour store at 7.15 a.m. There were two left on the shelf, one pink and one blue. We grabbed both.
There is another Walgreen stores opens at 8.00 a.m. which is near our house. We made a quick stop at 8.00 a.m. when T was on his way to work. We found six on the shelf and grabbed three.
Now, we have 2 pink hair dryers and 3 blue hair dryers, which we paid nothing but $3.90 out of pocket for sales tax.
We are going to give one to T’s mother as one of the Christmas gifts, as her hair dryer had gone kaput sometime ago. One for me and one for T. The other two will be giving out as Christmas gifts!
You might wonder is this REAL. Yes, most stores have “loss leaders” to get you into the store to purchase other stuffs, which are marked up pretty high. You have to be a deal hunter who don’t buy anything at full retailed price in order to win.
The grocery stores do the same. They have loss leaders advertised in the ads every week, but almost everything else in the store are marked up. For example, some of the Kellogg’s cereals at regular retailed price can go as high as $4.xx. They are on sale this week 3 for $5, with three $1 coupons, they are 3 for $2!
