So what's new?

Well our son and partner got engaged on the weekend in Boston.  He took her to see the Toronto Blue Jays play the Boston Red Soxs at Fenway Park as she is baseball mad.  She said yes and as they already live together it won't be a long engagement, and I think they will be getting married early 2017.  Her ring is gorgeous, a real "bobby dazzler."  If you haven't heard of that term before click on this link for an explanation.  Thankfully our daughter "helped" guide our son in the right direction regarding the right ring, as he likes the "bigger the better look," and our future daughter-in-law has very small hands.  The ring he got is perfect though.

Still waiting to see our new grand daughter; as she is still inside of her mother's tummy.  Dd doctor took ill and so her C-section was postponed until next week; as long as she doesn't go into labour in between hands.  She is now 39 weeks.  Pain in the butt for everyone as everything was planned out.  However as long as mum and baby are okay that's the main thing.  So we should have a baby this next week now.

Due to all that phaffing about didn't get much of anything done this week.......

Little shocked to see my foot this morning:

I curled my toes over for the photo so you weren't exposed to my nasty toe nails!!  It's still quite bruised and it's been a week and a half now.

Finally, you know how you win some, you lose some?  Well this week we got our next property tax bill in the mail.  Seems it has gone down; yes I said DOWN, by $2 a month!!! 

Then we got our year end report from the Condo board and our condo fees have gone up by $40 a month!  Personally that is a bit much and they have forecast that next year (July 2017) it will be up by another $55 a month.  By then it will have gone up $125 a month since we moved in in 2014.  We will have been in the house two years next week.  After that last increase it will then be only going up a couple of percent per year.  They need to get the reserve fund up to a certain point in a certain amount of time as per law.  I am not impressed!

Off now to try and get as many groceries as possible for as little money as possible.......getting to be a harder and harder challenge nowadays though.

A rather expensive way to end the week...........

We moved into this house in June of 2014.  Since September of 2014 I have been asking our local Township when will we be getting a property tax bill.

What is property tax?

Property tax is a levy based on the assessed value of property.

(photo credit)

If you own a property you have to pay it.  In other countries it is called different things.  To cut a long and boring/annoying story short, we finally got the bill (s) this week, and so they now have to be paid, by January 29th.  The bills are only up to the end of 2015, not sure what is happening yet for 2016, when I go into the Township office this morning I will no doubt find out what's going on.  There is a lot more to this story about why it has taken so long to get the bill and why it has to be paid by the end of the month, but various government departments at Federal, Provincial and local levels will all come out looking bad if I go into detail.  Suffice to say, there are a number of people who are incompetent and should not be in the jobs that they are in!  But trying to get anyone to take ownership of their mistakes is like trying to get blood out of stone.

Our bill is well over $5,000 which is actually less than I thought, as we were not assessed as high as I thought we would have been.  It's still a lot of money, but I was prepared for this.  The day we moved in I put away money each week specifically for the property taxes, as I knew sooner or later we would get a bill.  Mind you even I didn't imagine it would take this long.  Some people had been in their homes 2 + years without a bill, so their tax bill would have been a lot higher.  I only hope everyone had enough common sense to put money away like I did?

However not everyone does that do they; think ahead?  I am one of the strange people out there that do not like owing money.  It has been really bothering me that the taxes were due, but it was out of my control as I had no bill.

I have mentioned this time and time again on my blog, but as part of planning ahead I put money away each week for various things in my "boxes."

I put $20 in my birthday box.

I put $20 in my Christmas box.

I put $50 in my other box.  My other box has been covering wedding's recently, and yes we have another coming up in March.

These boxes are a life saver to me, as Christmas is taken care of more or less with that box.  I always have money in the birthday box, for birthdays, and when you are forking out $300 + for a money envelope for every wedding that too is a life saver.

If that amount of money is too much for you to save each week, how about coming up with even $2 or $5 a week in a box to cover Christmas.  Even then you will have over $100 saved by the end of the year, which will cover all the cost's of extra food and drink at Christmas?

I am going to talk more about Christmas over the next few days as it's never too early to start!

Home of the week and other things.

This week's "Home of the Week," is not bad, but of course pricey at $1.8 million.  For that you get baseboard heaters, which means electric heat, which means EXPENSIVE!!!  At least they haven't taken all the charm out of the house, like last week's and it does have a decent size front and back yard.  Backs onto the Don Valley Parkway, so could be noisy; I'll pass.

I actually like the look of this week's "Condo of the Week."  At $740,000 with monthly maintenance fees of $355 it's not crazy priced like some.  Love the kitchen and the balcony/terrace.  Would make the den a second bedroom.  I would never buy the place, but do like the look of it.

The horse pills I was prescribed are doing a number on my stomach, but will persevere as I am breathing a bit better, and that means a lot; and yes I feel as though I am taking the larger pills!

(image credit)

Another new month is upon us.  Lets hope the weather continues to get better.  We have enjoyed temperatures in the high teens, low 20's centigrade, so very happy with that.  The heating went off yesterday, and here's hoping it doesn't come back on until at least October.  As I have mentioned before our bills in this house are a fraction of what they were in the farmhouse.  Our hydro bill was under $130 for the past two months, and remember I use the dryer now to dry the laundry as we can't hang it out.  Our heating bill for this past month was just over $80, which was a little more than normal?  Not sure why there, but still good.  I will continue to pay $75 a month year round on the gas bill as I find that way I can have a credit for winter months when the heating bill will be higher.

We still haven't had a house/property tax bill, as we have not been assessed yet.  I did see an MPAC car knocking about the neighbourhood last week, so am guessing they have or will be assessing us shortly.  Now some people have been in their houses up to three years and have not been assessed, so they will have a bloody big tax bill.  We will have been in a year in June, so we will owe a years money plus whatever we owe to get up to date.  I have been putting money away weekly so have more than enough money to pay for the year, plus what we owe to bring us up to date.

I wonder if everyone else has had enough common sense to do that?  The people who haven't paid in say three years, will owe at least $10,000 if not more for the three years, that's a lot of money to come up with.

Sorry if I didn't get to comment on your blog yesterday I was really tired all day, not helped by the coughing and the trips to the bathroom everytime I had something to eat..TMI?  (too much information!)

Home of the week and other things

My reaction to this weeks "Home of the Week," was I'll pass.  Just not my cup of tea at all.........

Where to start with this weeks $3.5 million "Condo of the Week."  I am actually speechless; I will be very interested in your reactions to it!!  Look at photo six to see the monogrammed valance?  Also the mirrored tub/bath????  You can even buy the place furnished...........WHY???  

I am taking part in the 52 week challenge as mentioned here.  Figured out what we are going to do with the money saved at the end of the year.  We need a new desktop computer and printer, so fingers crossed we manage to complete the challenge as that money should cover that.  Now we need to figure out how to make our computer last until then.  We have had it a long time and it's a slow as molasses!!

It has turned cold again and we have had snow.  Got the oil tank filled this past week, we had used half a tank of oil between the middle of November through the middle of January, so it cost us just over $462.00.  The oil went up by 5 cents a litre since the middle of November.  Can't seem to win.  However we got our property tax statement in and at least that didn't go up, so that is a blessing.

Oh and Cindy has her post up with all the Ontario Bloggers that participated here: http://justnorthofwiarton.blogspot.ca/2013/01/ontario-bloggers-day.html

A very blah post today, goes with the weather.....

A bit of good news for a change..........

Back in this post I mentioned we were filing for a re-assessment of the property taxes, as we thought they were assessed to high. Well on Friday we finally got a letter from the board and they have dropped our assessed value of the house by $80,000. What that translates to is about an $18 a month decrease in our taxes. Now that may not seem like a lot its a heck of a lot better than it was. It also means that by 2012 instead of paying well over $425 a month, we should be only paying around $375. So it was well worth doing. We still have to sign the paperwork and mail it in. Now our township can fight this, but fingers crossed they don't.

Also we got our hydro bill in this week and it was just over $30. We had been over billed on the prior two billings, and this was an actual reading. Anyhow, when I called them to talk to them, the guy suggested I use the call in feature and I can call them with a meter reading every month to get a correct bill each month. He gave me the dates to call for the rest of the year, and I wrote that down on the calendar. Its a digital meter so it is easy to read.

Friday was spent cleaning house and doing some tidying up. I love it when the house looks tidy. I was supposed to do some more work on fireplace, but ended up not feeling good. I ended up having a horrible headache, probably a migraine. No idea what brought that on, but it knocked me for six. We ended up with rain so maybe it was a barometric pressure headache? As I am writing this I'm still not feeling good, so that's why it is such a short post, sorry!

Bits and Bobs........oh and Bell Canada AGAIN!!!

Got my combined Bell Canada bill today and honestly every time I get a bill I get more confused by them, not helped by the fact I am calling India. Anyhow, I was under the impression I am paying 5 cents per minute to call Britain, instead I am getting charged 79 cents per minute??? Who on earth pays 79 cents a minute, other than when you are calling Outer Mongolia!!

Then of course there was the dreaded internet charges, and that was another $58+ to make over $80 in charges just for the internet this month, and I am hardly ever on it!!! I am at my wits end with these guys. So overall this bill, which also included the Satellite was close to $190. On a positive side, it is our main form of entertainment, so I guess, its not too, to expensive.

I managed to get the house tidied up a bit on Monday. However I got side tracked by being on the phone for over an hour with Bell Canada. Then the mail woman called in to bring me back a card I had sent out. The envelope was dark blue and I had written the address in black ink, so Canada Post couldn't read it????? So our local post office had re-written ENGLAND in bold black ink and sent it out for me, but again Canada Post sent it back. So the mail woman called into the house and asked me if I wanted to put a white label on the envelope with the address on. So I did that and had a chit chat with her, then she took my card and made sure it went into the mail box for me. Talk about great service, that's what you get for living in the country!!!

Mind you on the flip side, I had to call our local town offices, to see when we were going to be billed for our next lot of property taxes, and to make sure we were on monthly billing. It turns out they go out on the 15th of the month. So I said are we going to get something in the mail, the lady said probably by the end of next week. Talk about leaving it to last minute!!!

I got a letter in the mail on Monday, giving us permission to put in an objection/review of our property tax assessment. There is a procedure to this, and I have completed the first stage. So I have until July 10th, to file the second letter, and to send in all the paperwork. Its costing us around $350 a month in property taxes, which I feel is a bit steep, as that was what we were paying in the city.

In between the showers on Monday I did manage to get the laundry dry. It's forecast for rain on and off all week, so I can see me getting some jobs done around the house this week.