Tag: expenses

House Hunting 101 – Lesson 1 – Location

June 10, 2019

House Hunting 101 – Lesson 1 – Location

We’ve been planning toward our next step – home ownership.  We are grateful for the place we are currently renting, but because of the black mold infestation (it’s under control, but we don’t own the house, so can’t remove it) we are actively looking for a place to own.  Somewhere that hopefully, we are smarter about and keep (I still miss my grapefruit trees that had just started fruiting after 7 long years!) forever.

Right now, we are still in the “finish paying off debt” stage, but with end-of-business debt down from over $14K to $800, we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel after a little over 2 years.  (Yippee!!!!)  Next step is to have 6 months of expenses in the bank.  Then we start saving for a home.

We’re being really picky this time so it will be a while, but it is fun to discuss, think, and plan!

We have learned that the primary item isn’t size or neighborhood, but location.  Driving isn’t pleasant for Louis (I don’t like the “wasted time” either, but I use it to dream up stories, interview fake people in my head, and pray.) so we thought about what type of location did we want.  We wanted to minimize driving.  But what are the constants in our life?

Not work… (Although I hope I keep these jobs until I retire – my plan as Operations Manager is to eventually shift to a few hours in the early mornings or two or three days a week and be available the rest of the time remotely.)  Remote is awesome.  I get more done in the mornings (like now, at 5am) and I really can’t stand being gone from my family this long (9.5 hours for my 8 hour day – 1.5 driving).

Not hobbies… because we love beach, tennis, walking, bicycling, surfing, swimming, watching nature, growing things… anything active and we usually make those things happen depending on what is around us or in our own yard.

Not even church… seriously, that’s once a week and most of our lives we spent driving an hour or so one way to the church we were called to.

School was it.

Don’t laugh!  Yes, we homeschool.  I mean St Johns County.  The kids will be going to college at St. Johns River State – Christina and Becky are active now, but based on normal college-bound years, we will be driving to and from that campus for 20 years (if we aren’t blessed by any further editions of Tarts).  We love St Johns County (yes, it’s extremely pricy and super hard to rent or buy land here, but it has been awesome home-schooling here and we love the people!).  St Johns County has a fascinating, amazing array of trade school and college opportunities for our children – I mean, seriously, our teenagers are college-course-takers.  Christina’s credit hours mean she’s entering her sophomore year of college as she enters her junior year of high school!  Several young friends I know have graduated FCTC and entered directly into the job force at 17 & 18 years old.  Two make more than me!  So, educational opportunities are our standard constant that won’t change for quite some time.  Plus St Johns County puts us equidistant from Embry-Riddle in Daytona and University of Florida in Gainesville (the goal schools of the first three).

This means, proximity and ease of driving to and from the campuses of St Johns River College and First Coast Technical College is the “location” part of our choice.  SR 207 out to Hastings, up behind Masters just along the city boundary, over 16 and north along US1 to the old trash road east of Palencia: any open-rural or agricultural property in that range is fair territory.

Both of Louis’ grandmother’s houses are in this range (Wouldn’t one of those be so awesome?  To live in your grandparent’s house!) and the house we currently live in is just off that perfect spot, but close enough that yes, we’d buy this land if we could (build a cozy house in the other corner of the land and knock this rotting thing down, but we love the land!) and I like Wildwood Drive.  While driving Christina to CAP one day, we saw a “for sale” sign in the yard of a beautiful concrete block house off of Lewis Speedway & Woodlawn on a bit of land.  Nice location.  Louis pointed out that one was near CAP, which three more plan on joining.

Anyway, location, location, location: OR or AG in easy driving range of St Johns River & FCTC.

The realization that we will be driving students back and forth from one of two college campuses for 20 years… wow, just wow.  That’s pretty cool.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

School Supplies

School supplies on a budget – our methods

August 31, 2018

School Shopping

Lots of people do school shopping in late July or August, just before school starts.

Since we do school year-round, I’m constantly replacing school supplies by stopping in at my favorite thrift shops and scooping up extra pencils, notebooks, erasers, or expo markers (the most commonly used items in our school).

I do try to take advantage of the school sales that pop up at the end of school supply shopping months.

Take notebooks: one independent writer in our home goes through an average of five single-subject notebooks a year!  (That’s not a lot when you consider that each notebook usually has 70 pages.)  Our history, science, and most upper math courses require a paragraph or page of written work.  Grammar practice is to edit said paragraphs or pages and rewrite them correctly.  So we use a lot of paper.  I prefer to use notebooks because they keep all the papers together and they are easier to carry than loose leaf paper (we often do work in remote locations).  This year I have four independent writers and one still using training paper (the ones from tablets with three-line-spaces).  But my training-writer is writing times tables and measures this year.  She will need one or two notebooks.  I always add one extra for each student because I would rather have extra than to buy them at 4 to 10 times the sale price!  (Most of us homeschool on a budget, don’t we?)

Oh, yes, another trick I learned was to buy college-ruled notebooks because you get extra lines at the bottom.  (Silly, but it also makes you write smaller thus more work ends up on one page.)

We bought 22 notebooks this year!  Staples & Officemax both claimed the “normal” price for a college-ruled store-brand notebook with 70 pages was $2.49.  I know Walmart has them for $1.20 or so and the thrift shops have partially used ones for $0.50. They were on sale for $0.25, usually I can find them for $0.10, but this year if someone had them super cheap, I missed that sale.  Shopping the sales essentially saved us $20.90 just on notebooks.  (The receipts claimed we “Saved” way more, but I base my savings off the cheapest normal price, not the inflated office supply store price.)

Pencils, erasers, markers, rulers, and other assorted small things I usually buy from thrift stores because you can get a lot more used items less expensive than the sale price on new ones.  Rebeccah does Sunday School and likes to buy cute craft stuff for it, which is also less expensive (and a much larger collection for choose from) at the thrift stores.

Backpacks are another thrift store buy.  I generally choose to spend less than five dollars on a backpack.  Someone’s hand-me-down from last year often has a lot of wear left in it.  We use backpacks for school stuff, travel bags (you can only carry what you can fit in your backpack), and overnight bags for Grandma’s house trips.  Even Lucas has a backpack (a cute smaller Cars one we found for a dollar at a thrift store).  He’s funny, when we’re headed to drop off at college, I’ll say “grab your school stuff.”  (Generally, a writing tablet or book)  Lucas puts two books (usually two the bigger girls have been reading – lately a favorite has been Prince Caspian), his crayon box, and his tablet in his backpack and will say “I’m ready for my school!”  His backpack swallows him!

We have learned to use the before-school sales to help keep our expenses low yet still get the items we like to use.  (Filler paper is cheaper than using notebooks, but I’ve learned notebooks are neater and easier.)  The older girls need computer paper for some college assignments and CAP work, so we also tend to buy computer paper during the sales times as they will have some super mail-in rebate offer or something.

The coolest part of shopping for school supplies is the practical math lessons that go along with it!  (I can find lessons in everything!)

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

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