Six years ago, when we started building our current home, we planned to be buried out of it, after marrying off all of our kids here. We had 3 kids at the time, and didn’t know how many we were going to end up with, having decided early on in our marriage to let God decide how big our family would be.
Now, 4 kids later, we find that due to rising real estate taxes and lower income, we can’t afford the place anymore. Wait, that’s not entirely true. We were able to pay down the mortgage a few months ago, and that lowered that portion of our payments. But we can’t do anything about the real estate taxes.
We pay almost $12,000 a year in taxes, and over $7,000 of that goes to the South-Western City Schools. I’ve detailed elsewhere my feelings on SWCS and their spending, so there’s no point in rehashing that. But I’m irked that we have to leave what we’ve built here, because of poor financial management practices on the part of the school board. What torques me off even more is that I really have no way of sending that message to the board. We homeschool, so it’s not like we’re pulling our kids out of the district. And the taxes are still going to get paid, no matter who owns the place. So short of sending a letter to the superintendent (which I know won’t do any good at all, and probably won’t even get a response), there’s nothing I can really do to change things.
On the brighter side, we’ve been able to find a couple of houses that we can afford, and that we can live in. One is in West Jefferson, and it’s just a neat old house. We drive by it on a regular basis, and have said, “Boy if that house ever goes on the market, we’d like to take a look at it.” Well, it did, and we did. It’s not a perfect house, but the main structure is over 100 years old. It’s on a big lot, with several huge walnut trees. It’s an OK house for us.
We looked at another one today, and it seems like it will be better for us. It’s closer to one of Erica’s friends, such that we would probably let her get away with riding her bike a little over 3 miles to her friend’s house. Bigger lot than in West Jeff, too, but no mature trees. Out in the country. Neighbors who own airplanes and helicopters!
We’re probably going to make an offer on one of them soon. They’re both good houses for us.
But I’m going to miss RobRoy.
Share your thoughts!