I want to live on my own some day.

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Lately I've been fantasizing about getting to move out and live completely independant. I know it will happen eventually but it may take a few years, and one thing I'm glad about is that my Mom has a house in Georgia that's already paid for and she promised she would leave that house to me to make sure I always have a place to live. I think maybe eventually once I finish college (if I can ever get enrolled) and can learn to drive I want to move back to Georgia and start living there by myself. I won't feel so guilty about leaving my Mom anymore now that my little brother has moved in with us and he has cerebal palsy which means she will have somebody to take care of for the rest of her life. I know this sounds weird but I realized my Mom wants to be with people whom she can take care of and that's why before I wasn't sure I ever wanted to leave her, but now I feel more comfortable about getting to do it eventually.

It'll be so awesome getting a house and property that's offically mine that I can take care of and live in for the rest of my life. It may be a trailer and not a nice house like the one we're living in here in Florida, but it will be all mine and I can fix it up exactly the way I want it. It's already completely paid for so all I have to worry about is maintaining the bills and groceries. It has two bedrooms, one will be my room and the other will be a guest room for when my Mom and sibilings come to visit (my Mom drives up to Georgia every weekend to bring my sibilings down for a visit). It also has a fairly big yard and I'm thinking of some day trying to get a fence put around it to keep out the annoying neighbors and their wondering dogs that tear trash up in the yard. Also I won't be alone, I'm bringing my pets like my cat Willy, my hermit crab Hina, and my new chicken Harpy (yes I have a pet chicken now ). I can bring all my stuff like my DVDs and knicknacks to decorate the house and watch movies, and I can get the internet hooked up to talk to all my friends. I decided I don't want to install cable because there's nothing good on TV that I like to watch anymore, if I want to watch something I'll just use my DVDs.

Plus since I'm very anti-social I'll finally get to just be a hermit and not be forced to socialize with people I don't like, but I will enjoy the company of my close family when they come to visit so that I don't get lonely. I know this is a long ways away but I'm really looking forward to it when that day eventually comes.

Plus from all the bad stuff I hear about the economy and people loosing their houses it'll be really good to have this house which is completely paid for. Nobody will ever be able to take it away from me, unless of course the government decided they want to build a highway through my neighborhood in which case I'm pretty sure they'll have to pay everyone a certain amount of money to find a new house.

Don't forget about paying property taxes and also getting homeowners insurance to cover accidents and damages from storms, etc. And upkeep on it.

Owning a house isn't all it's made out to be.

Frances

Property tax works by the government deciding how much your property is worth and then charging you a yearly tax to keep it. So, even if it's paid for, if you don't pay the property taxes, they can take it and sell it.

They base the tax on several different things, and it can change from time to time too.

Frances

It's usually not all that much, depending on what each person considers much. Depending where it is, city limits or county, and which city or county etc, it's between several hundred and several thousand. It's impossible really to speculate for me because I only know about ours. You could look it up, I'm sure, and make sure that you budget it into your savings the same way as utilities and food, etc.

I dislike property tax, because I think that you should just pay a tax when you buy it and that's that. It's yours then. I do understand that they use the taxes to pay for municipal services etc, so I do get that. Probably the farther out you are from the city, the lower it will be, because you may not have things like city water and sewer, city garbage pickup, fire dept that isn't volunteer, etc. But even in a city limits area, if you pay your taxes, you can still get fined about your property. We were fined $800 over the summer because when my husband was laid off, we couldn't pay our yard man and our grass grew too high. We had no lawn mower, none of our neighbors did, and yard men don't work for free. Our savings went to pay our bills, etc. Having power, water, and gas was much more important than having a manicured lawn, at least it was to us.

I'm not trying to rain on your parade at all. I'm very happy for you that you are getting your own place. We have just had a bad financial year and have some noncovered repairs that are needed here that we have to put off, and bills, etc.

Frances

Well, we have an upper middle class house, but we are out in the middle of nowhere, about 50 miles from the nearest city of any size, but we do live within city limits. It's odd, because we have city water and sewer and garbage pickup, but our fire dept is volunteer. We live in a subdivision, and they claimed that our grass was too high and it was causing a problem, but people have horses, chickens, goats, and across the street is a man with a large property with cattle on it. I feel that it's much more disturbing to be woken up every morning at daybreak by multiple roosters crowing than it is to see one yard that is overgrown for a few months because you know that the owner is not working at the moment. If it bothered them that much, someone could have offered to lend a mower, or a yard man, and we could pay them back as soon as he went back to work. Or in smaller installments. Much better than an $800 fine.

Also, on this house, repairs are more expensive than they would be on something cheaper. Materials cost more, but permits aren't needed and there are no building inspectors, so that lowers the cost of some things.

Also, living away from a large city you are at the mercy of the local retailers. Your choice is to buy their selection and pay their prices, or drive 50 miles to buy it cheaper. Gas is 20-30 cents higher here than it is 50 miles away.

It's a tradeoff I suppose.

Frances

I too am looking forward to the day that I'll have my own place, whenever that may be.

GreySun369, I completely agree with your dream. A house of your own is something wonderful. Yes there is the upkeep, taxes, repairs and all that but hopefully you'll be able to find some paid employment in the area. Plus it's going to be a little while yet so plenty of time to brush up on your cooking etc skills. If you have never lived independently so far you'll be surprised how much time goes into chores like laundry and cleaning, shopping and so on. That's not to put you off moving out, on the contrary, just pointing out the obvious really.