Saturday, April 14, 2012

Still loving California... but stil homeless.

When we bought this foreclosure, we knew it would be a long while before we actually got to move in. We could have bought a brand new, hot-off-the-presses house and have our stuff already settled and organized. Instead, we chose a little money pit of a house and it's taking forever. We have a projected closing date of Tuesday, possibly Wednesday, before we can move in. Then, we have to have the house patched and painted, rip out carpet, wreck tile, and have new floors installed in the whole house before we can even think about moving anything in. Phew.

The military only pays for 10 days of hotels once you PCS, and our 10 days were up yesterday. In an amazing stroke of luck/fate/divine intervention, we met a fellow pilot out at Beale who just moved into a house half a mile away from Rawlings and who happened to leave for a week's vacation this morning. He offered to let us stay in his house for the week while we wait to close! Amazing. Beyond feeling extremely grateful for his generosity, I can't tell you how GOOD it feels to be in a house and not a hotel room. I love my husband, I love spending time with him, but I find myself getting antsy and frustrated when I'm 2 feet away from any person 24/7. Plus, it's the end of our restaurant fest that we've had going on since we got here. I also love eating out, but man I was getting sick of it. I just got back from the grocery store and I can't wait for a home cooked meal this evening!

While I don't mean to make this a blog post about finances, I will say this: California is expensive. California is even more expensive on one income. California on one income is even more expensive when you are trying to gut a house. Gutting a house in California on one income is very expensive when you expect to eat three meals a day.

My newest project, while waiting to destroy all the floors in my house (yippee, DIY!), is to figure out how to make a reasonable budget for grocery shopping and stick to it. In Del Rio, I tried to stay under $400/month, which I was usually able to do no problem, because we had lots of leftovers and I made a lot of my own stuff (chicken stock, bread, etc.). Everything in California is more expensive, but we're on a single income, so I can't raise that number. Because I am trying as hard as humanly possible to never set food inside a Walmart again, I'm also going to need to get into couponing and Costco-ing.

Oh, and I also need to get a job.

Does anyone have any tips for me on how to get started? With the budgeting thing, not the job thing. :)

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