Brian-Foley.net

It’s been awhile since my last post. Sorry, been dealing with a stressful situation. Closing the new house! I went through with the closing on Monday morning, even though there were still several issues on the punch-list to be completed. I’m now battling with the builder (M/I Homes) to finish our house to my satisfaction. It’s all a bunch of stupid little things, but I would like to have it completed before I move all our posessions in. I don’t want to have to take even more time off from work to sit around and wait for contractors to do the work they should have already done months before. Hmm, my bloodpressure is rising as I type about it…

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I’ve learned something valuable recently…It never hurts to ask for something. As I’ve been going over our budget lately, seeing where we need to watch our spending. It makes me sick to see how much we spend on cable TV, where Brighthouse bundles everything together and charges a small monthly fortune. So I decided to call them up and ask them if they could do anything to help me out and lower this obscene bill. The CSR put me on hold for a fwe minutes and when he returned, to my surprise, he says “Ok sir, I have given you a special promotional rate for about 8 months that will lower your bill by a little over $10″. He also said when it runs out, jsut call back and they might have some other promotion to offer. It’s not much, but it all adds up over time.

Next on my list was the $20 monthly fee my bank was charging for my checking accounts. After calling up the bank, they quickly offered to change my account which no longer offers the interest on my checking account, which is fine. That interest was a measly 0.10% anyway. Which brings me to my savings accounts at INGDirect. We actually have two accounts there, one Mandie setup for our wedding expenses, and I have one to save for big annual expenses, like auto insurance. Today INGDirect raised the rate from 2.60% to 2.80%! We’re actually getting a higher rate than that as we took advantage of a $50 signup bonus (If you want that bonus, drop me an email and I’ll tell you how to get it).

Last week I received a call from a company representing Brighthouse Networks. They invited me to come to their office and discuss my thoughts on their Digital Phone service that we’ve been using for the past several months. In return they will pay me $65 cash for about an hour and a half of my time. Cool, I’ll probably put that in one of the savings accounts…

Well I just returned from the first walk through of the house with the builder. We made quite a list, basically a lot of stupid things to be corrected. Some things were left off the house because he read his paper work wrong. For example the pool bath door should have blind inserts, he missed that during ordering. The study should have cabinets and a counter top, he missed that also. They ordered the wrong color hinges and doorknobs, so those all have to be replaced. If they really work at it this week, they should be able to finish it all up. We scheduled our followup walk through for this coming Saturday morning. Hopefully by then it will be all completed.

Now that I’ve seen the wood floors completely uncovered, I kind of regret not doing the wood into the kitchen, they perfectly match the cabinets. Even the builder mentioned that some of the neighbors had “snuck” a peek in our house and commented that they couldn’t believe that we didn’t do the wood into the kitchen. Oh well, it’ll be hard enough keeping them clean with the dogs as it is. I’d also freak out anytime something was spilled in the kitchen, so it’s better off being tile.

Don’t tell my boss, but I’m blogging at work right now…Yes, it’s Sunday…I should be home spending quality time with the dogs and doing house chores. This weekend is a little different because of a “glitch” in our day Friday. See, on Friday I was supposed to take Mandie in for a (long overdue) colonoscopy. She spent all day Thursday “prepping” by starving herself and then drinking the magic flushing potion that evening. We went in early Friday to get it over with quickly so that she could come home and have the day to recover and EAT. As it turns out, her blood pressure was too high, very high. So I returned home to get the blood pressure medicine that she was told to gradually stop taking. The doctor wanted to see if taking the medicine would help to lower the blood pressure so that he could do the procedure. It didn’t lower enough, in fact they wheeled her across the street to the hospital emergency room, where we spent the rest of day. They gave her some medicine to try to help control the blood pressure, and wanted to keep her there overnight so that she (might) be able to see a cardiologist on Saturday morning. They also gave her the option to go home, relax and schedule an appointment with a cardiologist on Monday. Since we’ve spent soo much time in the hospitals lately, we took option number two. Maybe if she sees enough doctors, one of them will finally figure out what the problem is. We’re starting to wonder if it might be from the medication she’s been taking.

We’re getting really close to our house being completed finally. The walk-through is scheduled for this next Tuesday, and when we stopped by the house yesterday the building super-intendant was there fixing a bunch of little things getting it all ready. I had a pleasant conversation with the guy who does all the trim work on the houses, he was kind enough to point out some things that were missing that I didn’t even realize were missing. He was asking were we had gotten out wood floors from, as he had never seen such nice looking floors in any of the other houses he’s been working on. I had to tell him the whole story of how I had gotten them upgraded. Nice comments like that makes me feel better about spending the extra money on the upgrade. Thursday night I went to Lowes and opened a line of credit that I immediately maxed out on appliances! I had to buy the refridgerator, oven, washer, and dryer. I bought them all from the same place as the Lowes extended warranty will cover all the appliance that I buy from them, which makes it much more cheaper than other places I researched. I tried to beat them up on their already low prices by asking for a builders discount. They wouldn’t give it to me, but the salesman was nice enough to inform me that when we forward our address with the post office, they give a 10% off coupon, which I could bring in to get a price adjustment. NICE, that will be a little under $600 back. Another nice discount that I wasn’t expecting was a $300 rebate from GE for purchasing 4 GE Profile appliances. I think I made out pretty good for all stainless steel appliances, delivered and installed, with 5 years of extended service.