Looking for some passing amusement? Here are a few simple steps to make yourself absolutely bats-in-the-belfry crazy (if yourself is, well, me).
Go look at real estate you can afford as life is at this moment (carrying two mortgages). Realize you don’t want to live in real estate you can afford to live in as life is at this moment (I never did like the sound of banjos). Realize if you want to look at real estate you actually want to live in, you have to be able to sell your current piece of real estate.
Then, start a list of things that have to be done to sell your house. Wonder if you can make any sort of profit selling it “as is” or improved a little. Price other houses on your street. Find an almost perfectly comparable house, in similar condition, and realize you will take a $30K bath on your house if you sell it like it is.
Then start thinking about how much money you have to put into it, just not to take a bath on selling it (forget making a significant profit).
Let the realization sink in that whether it looks that way on paper or not, you are underwater on your home.
Stop looking at real estate websites and start looking at home repair sites and reading up on local contractors. Consider the loan you have to take out just to sell your house to pay off the mortgage, so that you can take out ANOTHER mortgage and buy another house.
Start thinking about all the luxury apartments going up in Richmond, and wonder why you ever bought a house in the first place.
These are exactly the steps to take if you want to find yourself banging your head against the Wall of Futility.
(Oh, and if you really want to send yourself screaming into the wilderness, just start reading up on how to remove contact paper from sheet rock…there are suggestions to just layer new sheet rock over it, implying that new sheet rock is just easier. Then proceed to fantasize about wrapping the individual who contact papered the bathroom in contact paper, entirely except for one hand, and then handing them the hair dryer and Goo-B-Gone, and wish them the best of luck. That is a free, one-way ticket to Crazy-Town. I like the free part. Frugal is chic these days, you know?)
PS: This really is all in good fun. Read it with that in mind.
Knit 'n Spin 