Renting vs Buying Your Home

Dude who lives upstairs, I hope you read this.  You're really loud, and if you had any sense of your surroundings, you would realize you live above people.  You can't just drop heavy shit on the floor.  You can slide your feet when you walk, not stomp and shake my windows.  It's not that hard to live with common courtesy.  You, the reader, may be wondering why I don't go up there, knock on his door and ask him to cool it, but I'd rather bitch about it than do anything.  I'm not a confrontational person, and I don't want to make him feel bad or whatever for doing something that really isn't that big of a deal, like living in an apartment.  It's okay, but it's annoying when I get startled when this dude drops something on his floor.  If it was really affecting my quality of life more than just being annoyed, then I might say something.  I've lived in this apartment for four years, and I've had a few different neighbors live above us, and I've never really noticed them.  That's how I know it's not the apartment, it's the occupant.

Honestly, living in an apartment isn't bad.  I like that when something breaks, I just have to make a phone call to get it fixed instead of a run to Home Depot.  Sure, I don't really have a yard to play in with my kids, but they're too young for that anyway.  I also don't have to mow my lawn, because the landscapers come on over weekly to do that.  Renters insurance is like, $8 a month.  I don't know what homeowners insurance is like, but that's pretty cheap to me.  I like renting.  I believe someday I will move into a house, but I don't know when.  It's a lot of work, man.  Someday though.  I want to buy a house just so I can play my drums.

I'm afraid of buying a house in a location I won't like.  I mean, I'm sure we would get used to whatever our surrounding are, but here in Nashville, there are some neighborhoods next to other neighborhoods that I wouldn't want to live.  We also don't have any money.  Buying a house seems like such a commitment that I'm scared of.  I'm stuck in this apartment lease on a year by year basis, I'd hate to be tied to a house for 30 years.  That's the rest of my life, yo.  And I'll have to spring for a new hot water heater at a moments notice.  No thanks.

Anyway, that's all I suppose.  I got retweeted by CM Punk today, so that's pretty awesome.  I need to go vacuum now.  Have a nice day.

The Rental Problem

I've talked in the very recent past about the lack of places to easily and affordably rent a video game in this town, and well, just about everywhere else as well.  I thought for about 12 minutes this morning that I had heard the solution, which it very well may be in certain circumstances, I guess.

Without going into detail, just know that here where I work, we have Wii games that we sign out to people when requested.  Anyway, someone came to me and asked if he could get the game that was rented from a Redbox so he could return it.

...eh?

Yes, apparently you can rent video games from Redbox.  I was thrilled!  This is great news!  It totally solves my quandary of where to rent video games from.  I have never used a Redbox for movies before, but I considered it.  Rent video games from them?  I might just have to try that out.

But then I looked up the details.  It's $2 a day.  But is one day enough time to fully enjoy a video game?  Very rarely.  If you only spend one day on a video game, it must not be very good.  No you need a lot of time with a good game. Days at least.  So at $2 a day, if you keep it for five days it'll cost you $10?  Gamefly offers $10 a month, and you can keep that game out for that entire month.  Yet I don't even really want to spend money on that plan. I guess if it's like, a sports game where the demo sucks and you want to play more than one period of hockey or 6 innings of a baseball game using only the Twins and the Yankees.  Then this is a good idea.  But let's say you rent, like, Halo or something?  You're gonna need more time than one day.  If you're like me, you're going to need more than five days.

Maybe I'm just not that committed to gaming, since it's too fucking expensive and I have a hard time finding the time to play anyway.  I thought I had the answer with Redbox, since they rent you movies for a dollar a day, but after thinking about it, it's shitty.   I can see it getting mighty expensive in a hurry.  Forget it.  I'll just play the couple games I got, I guess.

Homo-nership

One of my best good friends just bought a house. I'm really happy for them, and it's really cool and all, but I have wondered for a long time if homeownership is the answer for me.

Now, I know they had a terrible landlord in the house they had been renting, which would drive anyone into changing their situation, but I have not had such a problem in my adult life. Adult life, meaning since, like, 2004. Granted, I have lived in apartment buildings since 2003, which kinda sucks because you can't really play drums in one of those. Well, you can, but I'm not rude. The point being, I have thought about my own homeownership before, and am pretty torn between the two options.

On one hand, you own something. You are a proud owner and get to do whatever you want. If you want a room with black walls and ceiling, with neon yellow carpet and and neon paint splattered on the walls with black lights in every corner, and a disco ball hanging in it, while rave music plays in it constantly, YOU CAN DO THAT. You own the house. You can mess with it all you want. Want new kitchen cabinets? Go buy some and put them in. You want a big 13 foot privacy fence so you can lay out naked in your back yard, go for it...as long as the city allows such a blockade...check with your cities codes people, I guess. You can party in it, shit on the floor, clean it up, and scream at the top of your lungs in YOUR house, if one was so inclined. Paint the outside Smurf blue, for all I care.

On the other hand, you and your family (doesn't have to be anyone else but you, I suppose) are asleep in you're comfy bed one night, and all of a sudden, you're awoken by a thundering rumble. You get out of bed to find out what it is, and it turns out that ice has built up on the edges of you're house, so much so that it has ripped off the fascia of you're roof. On top of that, it's freezing cold in this place. Oh, what's that? The furnace is shot? Oh and you don't have electricity in the back half of the house, where the kitchen is? Guess who has to pay to fix all of that? That's right, you, my friend. All this just happend after you just dropped $900-$2300 on something that can't be refunded, like a trip or youth soccer, or that donation you're alma mater. Have fun.

Now, let's go back to the renter. All these problems described above have just happened to the renter, as well. It's a full moon, I think. Renter picks up the phone and calls Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. landlord or land lady, and fills them in on all that has gone wrong with the house.

"Thanks, come on out and fix it, I appreciate it."

The point, homeownership, while it brings a great sense of accomplishment, and says you are successful at something, and provides you the freedom to do whatever you want with you're dwelling, has it's drawbacks. The key is figuring out if you want to take that risk. You never know, you could also be stuck with a shitty landlord as well, who doesn't come out and fix any of the problems you have just encountered. Now you're sitting you're house, freezing, eating Taco Bell, stepping over a pile of aluminum every time you walk out to the garage. So owning the property could be better. Just depends on your own situation, and what level of bullshit you are willing to put up with. For me, I will most likely own a house someday, but I will look at my options of renting before I just go out and buy one. If you buy a house, it's harder to get out from under that than a lease. But you know, I mean, what could go wrong with our financial situations in the next 10 years?

I'm just sayin' keep that in mind.