Showing posts with label the Old Sailor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the Old Sailor. Show all posts

October 6, 2022

Being a Homeowner is not always easy

 

Dear Bloggers,

 

We have lived in our house for almost five years and my wife wants to move back to the little village on the lake were we once started as homeowners. The lack of houses is making the market going wild and it got overheated. Although homeowners that want to sell have to bring their prices down as the energy market has become impossible for many Dutch families. Something to consider for the coming years. So we need to hold our horses for a while until they realize that we are not going to buy that far over budget.




new and old situation


How to budget for a new home so You don’t end up house poor.

Before buying a home, figure out how much house you can truly afford, including a budget for maintenance and repairs.

I have discovered that I was house poor soon after we bought this house in 2018.

When I put 10% down on the 300 -square-meters property with a  111-square-meters house in the city of Sneek, Friesland in the Netherlands, a district on the outside of Sneek, I was surprised to find out what we had to pay, which initially was €162.000 on mortgage.

Above the new situation as the hedge was a fire hazard and the garden was fully out of shape.

Heating the poorly insulated home was also more expensive than we thought it would be. To make ends meet, the budget had to be extended as 52-year-old  we had to take out a home equity line of credit.

“I quickly found that I was spending at least half of my small €46,000 income at the time on being a homeowner,” I never tried this before. “It turned into the home owning me, as opposed to me owning the home.”

While buying a home can be a sound investment, it can also become a financial burden. Here’s how to think about your housing budget so that doesn’t happen to you.

Bovenkant formulier

Getting ready to buy a home? Hire a financial advisor that does all the math for you and sees into the fact that there might be extra costs on remodeling the house. Constructional things can cost a lot of money.




Total renovated the entrance hall and the staircase has been replaced

Onderkant formulier

What does it mean to be house poor?

Someone who is house poor spends so much of their income on homeownership — such as monthly mortgage payments, property taxes, insurance and maintenance — that there’s very little left in the budget for other important expenses.

Being house poor can limit your ability to build up retirement or other savings, pay off debt, travel or enjoy life. Yes been there, done that and got the T shirt.

“I did not have the money for going out with my friends anymore, going to restaurants, or enjoying time as a 50-something-year-old.” It was an extreme time to survive “I was selling all kinds of stuff on Marktplaats, trying to make the heating bill payment.





A total rebuild of the kitchen required a new electrical system due to induction cooking

In fact, 28% of recent home buyers say making their monthly mortgage payments will be among their biggest money stressors for the next two years.

Budget before you buy

Before shopping for a home, it’s important to figure out how much house you can comfortably afford, which may be a different number from the maximum mortgage you can get approved for.

“A reconstruction calculator is definitely a good starting point for helping to determine your housing budget,” says Gerrit who is a certified financial planner. “However, they also require that you have a strong understanding of your cash flow today — what income is coming in, what expenses are going out and what amount you are saving.”



On the top picture you see the new electric system on the lower picture the old one

One rule of thumb is that you shouldn’t spend more than 28% of your gross monthly income on housing-related costs and 36% on total debts, including your mortgage, credit cards and other loans. This is 64% in total

everyone’s situation is different, and the rule doesn’t take into account the need to leave room in your budget for things like furniture, as well as maintenance and repairs. Plan for upkeep and upgrades

The cost of unexpected home repairs and ongoing maintenance can take you, in particular, by surprise. Even a house that was in very good condition on closing day will inevitably need some big-ticket fixes over the years.

I realized just after moving into this new home that the roof had a leak and the draining system needed some work. So I got a roofer over to fix the problem and this took about €4000 out of my budget for remodeling.



The old living room 

41% of people who have purchased a home in the past 12 months say their biggest money worries in the coming two years will be affording home repairs and maintenance.


The new living room

Saving 1% of the property’s value is a good starting point for maintenance expenses per year.

But, you may need to scale up to 2% of the property’s value based on the age and condition of your home, ours is from 1966, repairs you have already made, and the life expectancy of housing components like the roof or furnace.

Bovenkant formulier

Onderkant formulier

Tips to avoid being house poor

Even if you plan properly for a home, it’s possible to become house poor if a job loss or medical emergency leaves you unable to pay your bills.


Painting the outside of the house

In 2018, when we decided to purchase a home with my wife, I knew we wanted to do things differently. I Thought that we as a couple bought our “dream house” after living so frugally for nine years that we could pay off our debts and save up a 20% down payment. Even so, we took out a smaller mortgage than we could have qualified for. After two years of renovating our house to a home again we ended up in extra costs of about €100.000 We took the electrical wiring down and rewired most of the house. All the draining was renewed and also the water and gas lines. We took the wooden floor out as it was rotten and got a  foam concrete floor with underfloor heating a total new heater with new high efficiency radiator panels upstairs, we placed insulation between the floors and still there is some work left to do in the coming years.


Soon on our house you might see a sign like this

“When you're absolutely sure you want to live somewhere for the long term, buying a home with the proper down payment and an understanding of the true costs of homeownership can be a great experience,” I am having a bit of experience through the years. “I found that with my third round of homeownership.” And we are getting ready to take step four.

 

Someday, sometime and somehow the new adventure will start soon I hope

 

The Old Sailor,

 

June 14, 2018

Moving house and moving town

Dear Bloggers,

My blog has been on pause for a couple of months due to the fact that we have moved to another town in the North of the Netherlands. We finally sold our property and we moved in to a smaller city home which needs more then a bit of work. But our lives became a bit easier for my spouse and we can afford the price of it. The sale went pretty quick and we had only little time to move on and find us a new place to live. So we are still struggling with the refurbishing process.


Let me take you back about 40 years in time. The house I grew up in had a pretty limited square metres, something I notice every time I visited my parents. The living room is very small and the kitchen is pretty tiny as well.Anyway it was tiny but it was very cozy.

I grew up there with my parents and two older sisters and an older brother. There were also periods where kids who were in the middle of divorce troubles at home and they found a loving and caring home at my mother’s place and my dad had a pony stable and they were to us something like “younger brothers or sisters that just lived with us, too. It was cozy at times, to say the least.
Yet, when I look back on it, I don’t have any bad memories of living there. I don’t recall any situation where things were made uncomfortable due to the smallness of the house. There was always somewhere I could go for privacy. There was always enough room to do things together as a family..


The house we lived until last week was much larger, but the story is much the same. I lived here with my wife and we have two children. I don’t have any bad memories of living here, nor is there any situation where things are really uncomfortable. There is always room for privacy. Only problem was that I could not feel at home here as the house was new and had no charisma according to me.

So, why the bigger house? What does this bigger house provide me that the smaller house that I grew up in doesn’t provide for me? Honestly, the biggest benefit of a larger house is that it provides a lot of room for more stuff. This house offers storage attic, a garage with a huge amount of storage, and big rooms with plenty of room for storage-oriented furniture (like bookshelves).
Naturally, when you have storage space, you tend to fill it. We’ve lived in this house since 2003 and, in drips and drabs, we’ve slowly filled up that storage space.
 

Recently, however, I’ve been thinking more and more about the house I grew up in. In some ways, it’s actually not all that different than the house I’d like to retire in, except with perhaps one more nice room to entertain guests in and a slightly larger kitchen. I would even consider moving into the perfect smaller house right now, even with growing children, And I think that we have found the right one.

So, why would I even consider downsizing? For me, it really comes back to two key things.


That connects to the reason, which is that maintaining a larger house takes more time. It takes more time to clean. There are more things that can break and need to be fixed. There are more things that simply need attention. And since my wife got ill a smaller place is easier for all.

Another reason: The property taxes are higher. The insurance is higher. The maintenance costs are higher. Sure, it’s theoretically growing equity at a faster rate, but that doesn’t help with out-of-pocket costs, and I’m not convinced at all that the growth in the value of the house makes up for the much higher insurance costs and maintenance costs and property taxes.

In other words, living in a smaller home means lower housing bills and more free time, both of which sound appealing to me.
Some people view their homes as a status symbol.
Having a big house is not the sign I look for to indicate to myself that I’m successful. I look at other things. Am I engaged in work that I enjoy? Do I have time for leisure and relaxation? Do I have a good relationship with the people closest to me? That, to me, is success.

Because of that, I don’t feel an external need to own a large house. Several years ago, I did, hence the purchase of our current relatively large house. That sense of a house providing an internal or external sense of status has faded greatly in my mind and, with it, the driving desire to own a large home has faded as well.

Finding the Right Balance

So let’s say I was actually in the market to buy a smaller house. My intent would be to buy this new house, sell our current house, and pocket the difference in value, then enjoy the lower bills and lower time investment. Makes sense, right?


The first problem that pops up is finding the right size. I’m obviously open to a smaller house, but how small?

The challenge that’s left, then, is to deal with the stuff we’ve accumulated over the years in our current home. The boxes in our closets. The furniture in rarely-used rooms. The loft and the shelves in the garage full of all kinds of items.
 
What do we do with all of that stuff?
Closets need to be emptied out and organized. This actually includes a lot of different categories of things, so let’s look at each of those categories.We need to shred old papers. We have several boxes of old papers that simply need to be shredded. At this point, electric bills from 2009 serve no real purpose, especially since we have digital copies of those things. They simply need to be shredded and properly disposed of, which is itself a sizable task.
We need to honestly evaluate our lesser-used items. Almost every closet in our home is full of items that we rarely use. This is a tricky problem because it’s so easy to envision uses for those items, but the honest reality is that we rarely – if ever – use those things.

The challenge, then, is to break through the visions of using the items to the reality that we don’t actually use those items, and that can be trickier than it sounds.

We need to smartly organize the stuff we’re keeping. An unorganized space means that stuff takes up more space than it otherwise would and/or some things are not easily accessible. A well-organized space means everything takes up minimal space while still being easily accessible. Our closets and other storage spaces tend toward the former, unfortunately.


Once we figure out what items we’re actually holding onto, some serious reorganization of our closets and storage spaces need to occur. Things like temporary shelves, wire racks, clearly-labeled boxes, and so on are definitely in order. Think of it as a proving ground of sorts for the concept of having a smaller home.


The idea of moving – and losing such close access to those things – is something that none of them enjoy. I personally don’t have anything that ties me to this location nearly as much, but my family’s needs are pretty important to me.

Second, there is no additional reason to move beyond the time and money savings from a reduced house footprint. We have no reason to move for work. We have no reason to move for school. We have no reason to move for social reason. We have only a real reason to move for improved access to help for my wife. Our new and current location is pretty good in all of those regards.



While I think a smaller home would definitely hit a somewhat sweeter spot, when I compare our home to some of the much larger ones that are in some of the newer housing developments nearby, our home seems pretty modest by comparison. Our energy bills are what I would consider quite reasonable (especially compared to what we paid when we first moved in) and our property taxes and insurance rates aren’t going to improve drastically unless we move much further away from nearby cities.

Finally, it’s honestly going to be a lot of work and we’re already pretty time-strapped. This is more of a “resistance” thing than a real reason for not moving, but without a compelling reason to move forward on it, this kind of “resistance” is powerful at holding a person back from making a move.
So, if the decision is essentially made for us to downsize, what’s the benefit of even thinking about it like this?


Well, first of all, no one’s life is guaranteed to ever be the same forever. Over time, many of those factors that work against moving into a smaller home are going to shift and move us toward a smaller home. When our children grow older and leave the nest, many of the factors that encourage us to stay in this house are going to shift and encourage us to downsize. It’s also good to have a smart plan in place if we ever need to downsize for financial reasons or for other personal reasons.

No we have moved and I look back to my younger self, and we bought a smaller house, I’ve sat down and bought
something just a bit smaller with a totally different layout.

 



That house would cost less. It would have lower property taxes and lower insurance. It would also require less time and effort for maintenance. And I wouldn’t actually lose any genuinely useful living space.

Would I listen? Probably not. What I would hope for instead is that I would give more careful thought about my home purchase and what we really needed, which in the end is the purpose of this post.


If you’re considering a home purchase, give some thought to a home on the smaller end of the spectrum. A smaller home will save you money and save you time and it’ll likely not reduce the living space you use every day.


Good luck it will be your choice anyway



The Old Sailor,

February 12, 2017

Men and Women are not that different

Dear Bloggers,

It took me a little while to write a story again as there have been a lot of things going lately in my life and this can make it pretty hard to sit down for a while and relax and get the brain going on and find a suitable subject to spread my thoughts on the net. This time I made the choice about the friendships between the guys and girls, well according to me there are not that many differences although I think that most women are a bit more tactful in their answers and men have more often a stronger opinion about difficult issues.


Women surprise themselves regularly about the fact that men can settle a big fight with a beer, a men's night which consists watching football, poker, a game night or going out to the pub, important events are superficially informed towards the other guys, and so we can still go on.


Men are amazed about the women; why every single event needs to be told in detail as it can be done in two minutes? Why are women being so difficult in this and remain stuck in that one remark made by that one friend? Why must everything be so over analyzed?

Are there real differences between the friendships between men and women, or is it most based on prejudices and stereotypes? To me one thing is clearly. Men do more physically and talk less. Women find talking just more important than sharing their hobbies. The emphasis is on friendship between women therefore more based on intimacy and openness, while men believe more in things as status and physical fitness being more important.



This would be a confirmation of the stereotypes: by itself being men and talkative women.

But is this so, is there really so much duality? There are hundreds of studies on gender differences put together in a meta-analysis, and there were still be some other results coming forward! They looked at the differences in language and feelings and guess what? Men and women were not as different as we previously were thinking. The conclusion is that men and women normally are psychologically seen the same. This rule has some exceptions, but these exceptions are not important in terms of friendships. What is particularly relevant for friendships is how easy intimate and frank a person with another person speaks. And about this fact, there were precisely these supposed men and women differences. But there appears to intimacy and frankness there is only a very small gender difference. Women were found "showing a little something more" of themselves than men.



How is it possible that friendships between the two sexes still are as different as the needs for intimacy and frankness on both sides is present? The answer is simply that we focus too much on the differences between them, and they will be made much bigger in mind. With the result that the idea that we have on men friendships and women friendships would be different from the reality. Conclusion: We are brought up to think in stereotypes. Silly isn’t it?


Mostly studies that are done about these subjects are build up with questions in which people are asked how they would describe their friendships. And because this is such a general question, we can not but give a general description, or fall back on the idea that we have about it. And that idea is influenced by stereotypes.

The idea that there is a totally different between those friendships is a myth. It is often culturally rooted and we get to hear things now and learned at once from childhood. It is in fact a story that we tell each other about how it works and how it should be. And because we tell it, it occasionally will be true. Conclusion again: Yes we are brought up to think in stereotypes.





"If people define situations as real, these situations have real consequences." The only differences in male and female friendships because we believe that they exist. Furthermore, we are all like friends alike. This is what the American sociologist William Thomas said already in 1928.


In the end we are physically different but mentally quite the same.

The Old Sailor,

April 26, 2015

Morning fog

Dear Bloggers,

Last Friday, the sun was shining like it is almost summer. After the morning fog was covering the world with his coat and at half past nine it all cleared away, the blue skies and a mild burning sun appeared. And that remains throughout the day. And while the temperatures can rise to nearly 20 degrees. I am having the day off, so it is all very good. I have plunged myself in full force in a new hobby project and I have been busy sanding some panels. Our young dog is playing in the garden and tries to get my attention with occasional mischief. I enjoy the sun on my pale skin and think that life can be so beautiful and if it would be financial possible, I would only occasionally work for a few days.


Full stop is not needed, but it would be nice if you could organize your own time, for example, only the winter period to do some work. But that will only be a dream, I am afraid. So enjoy all of the few precious moments I have. After a few hours I make a cup of tea for me and my wife and we chat a bit about the daily stuff and I am going outside for an other hour and then we're going to do a little shopping in a local supermarket.

I miss the days when I was at sea and feel that there is a change of weather coming. That's something you read in the sky and feel the slowly becoming colder air around you. It's pretty soft spring weather but I do not think it will remain. After dinner we watch some television and every half an hour my head is nodding and my eyes are closed. Tired but satisfied we crawl under the covers and I have to go to work in the morning and then again tomorrow afternoon I will go on with my hobby project.


But when I step through the front door of our house the next morning it is pouring rain. Spring has clearly ceased it's introduction today. A drizzling rain seeps this morning in a gray suited sky. At such a gray day, I'll grab everything to make myself feel better. Travel to the South. The South: leave this swampy land, if possible, I would flee. But unfortunately, I can't because we are financial unable to pay for this kind of debauchery.

At moments like this I miss the time I did spontaneous actions together with my wife and we woke up drunk in a strange world of pleasure stung with the first sun rays on our naked bodies. When I walk the dog during the afternoon in this rainy weather, on the field on the way home. I am walking slowly and in my thoughts I'll see a man that looks like an old sailor It is a gray-haired man with a weathered face, a beard and a body that has been build by hard labour. In my mind I named him immediately. "The Old Sailor" And as I would soon discover: there I was not far wrong. "If I were you, I'd better get home, there's coming a decent bit of rain," he said when he saw me. He just had the words out, it started raining again. "Come, I live around here," he invited me. I hesitated. Finally, I knew him, but on the other hand he was a stranger that I just met. But he seemed to have no mischief and did not want to harm me, so I took his invitation.


Once in his house I got the feeling of being in a museum. Hung everywhere and all around me there were the most exotic objects. Our dog, sniffed curiously around. The old man seemed to find it all okay. He made a cup of tea for me and soon we were both sitting down, he began to tell about his life. He had sailed a large part of his life, but had to go ashore when his health deteriorated. He looked sad. "For me, no sailors funeral and a watery grave ..." he said softly. I felt sorry for him, but did not know how to comfort him.


So I pointed hesitantly at a small statue that stood nearby and asked where it came from. That was a good hunch: the face of the man brightened, and he began to tell. It already stopped raining when he finished his story. For me it's time to go home. 'Please come along, "he said when I left the house. I would definitely do. The old man was a fascinating storyteller and behind the other objects in the house were trapped many more stories. Further, he didn't see anyone else at all. In his existence had never been a place for family, friends and all that he had met, The ones he knew were sailors.


In the days and weeks that followed, it became a ritual: walking the dog, ring the bell at the old man, and once we were seated I would designate an object to the tea. Then the Captain was (as I now called him Captain) an hour or more on his soapbox. When I come home and slide in my chair behind a cup of coffee, I think what a strange sensation I have met myself but older. A future that is uncertain but not far from the truth. I have more of these kind of imaginings and then I dream away about times long gone or something else it is vague. Like this story now I can not quite explain.


Numb I sit at the table and my wife asks what is wrong with you, are you okay? I nod, and fight my tears. The next morning I wake up with a strange feeling as if "the Captain" that night has died in his sleep.

I'm ready for a little boat, I think and search on the Internet and find a particular boat. In the port arrived I almost fell off the scaffolding of laughter. The boat that belonged to the ad I knew very well. Regularly I had told people around me joked that that thing I would have for peanuts from his owner. I would take the ugly duckling from his hands, to give it a much needed face lift. And if it was meant to be, it was now mine. For a moment I had the idea that "the Captain" gave me a wink from above.


I had no clue at all of maintaining a boat or how to fix an engine. So I had the little boat thoroughly inspected by someone who had the knowledge and had a look at. Of the money I had saved up for this kind of project, I bought all the necessary stuff. I hit the chores: I sawed, hammered and painted, and had the time of my life. The other occupants of the port came curiously watching what I was doing. Some pointed meaningfully to their foreheads. Others gave me advice on how I could build and fix things they had obviously had the biggest fun about the hideous boat and that strange bird belonged to it. But that did not bother me and I enjoyed everything I did very much.


Once I was sure the boat would stay afloat, I got my license for sailing a boat. Now I brought a sleeping bag and some other stuff on board and proud I started the engine. Together with my wife, I went on board, and I headed for the coast. My boat was obviously not meant to travel at sea, but I ventured a short distance offshore.


My heart was beating like a buzzing beehive and the sailor in me woke up as i was struck by lightning. The sun danced in the air. I peered through my binoculars and saw the coastline gradually disappear The serenity of the open sea brought me back to the moments I have known from the time that I sailed around around our planet. I watched around me as we disappeared on the horizon and were rolling on the waves. The Captain was back home? 

 

I turned the boat around and sailed slowly back in the direction where we came from.

When I get closer to the port I all of a sudden wake up from my dreams, I realize that I've been sitting here behind the computer daydreaming and all of this again has been coming up in that silly brain of mine. Yet these are the happiest and finest thoughts I have and they are often around the corner if the weather is bad and the world is gray. It's a beautiful world in my dreams.

The Old Sailor,

Talking and Writing

Dear Bloggers,   Why is it that some folks (such as myself and my daughter) talk so much? This visit, I am learning how I process throug...