Today I’m starting a new and wholly intermittently published series called “wee we wins.” We’ll highlight ways we’ve increased the spread between income and expenses — whether by making or saving money — that on their own don’t amount to much, but in the aggregate still don’t do. Oh, who am I kidding. I just wanted an excuse to engage in 12-year-old-boy humor. I make no apologies.
We’ll start off with a we win that you, Dear Reader, may think is not so wee. But having already decided that blog post #2 in this series will focus on the most wee of we wins, I’m starting with the outer edges of wee.
Home on the range
When The Missus and I decided to move out West, we had to find a place to live. Because Maslow. We decided to rent.
The Missus and I planned a long weekend trip to the new city to find the place for us. Once on the trip, we discovered that not only was the local property market hot, but that that heat extended to the rental market, too.
We’d thought that our housing expenses out West would be less than in the Midwest. Well, it ain’t necessarily so. Rents in the two cities were on par with eachother. And, apparently because it’s such a seller’s market in our new city, there seemed less concern by landlords for the cleanliness/state of repair of their rental properties. The places we saw were, at best, in the “meh” category. Some were borderline unihabitable.
As the end of the long weekend drew alarmingly near, we’d still not found “the place.” And we neither planned, nor wanted, to make a second trip out West, figuring that we’d have equally questionable prospects of finding “the place” on any subsequent trip.
Finding ourselves a bit over a barrel, The Missus and I settled on the place we’d try to rent. The house was far from ideal. “Quirky” would be a generous descriptor for some of the features of the house. “Stupid” would be more accurate. Worse, the monthly rent for it was a few hundred dollars above our target rent range.
The landlords accepted our rent application and later sent us a copy of the lease to review and sign. On it was the monthly rental amount.
How looooow can you go?
Having by then become a question-everything type of guy, I took a shot in the dark and asked the landlords if they’d consider a lower monthly rent amount if we prepaid the entire year’s rent up front. I figured that thems that don’t ask don’t get.
The landlords replied that they were willing to discount the rent by $200/month. Wow! This was way more than we’d expected. Frankly, any decrease would have made us happy.
The new effective monthly rent was much closer to the high end of our original range (which, I’ve since discovered was a bit unrealistic). The decrease brought us close to the bottom edge of the true range. It also took some of the sting out of out having to rent the Stupid House.
We’ve since moved to a place that’s not only a great fit for us, but one for which both the monthly rent and utility expenses are even lower. For what it’s worth, I did ask our new landlord for a rent discount. The request was politely, but firmly, declined. Regardless, our monthly housing costs are about $400/month lower than what would have been the case had we not asked the stupid house landlords for a discount and had we stayed in that house.
And that’s a wee we win! Oh, and we’re so very happy to be out of the Stupid House, too.
