One would think that a guy with his MBA from a Top 25 school working at a Fortune 500 company could afford to live in a suburb of Chicago.....WRONG. I ran the numbers last night and I am officially baffled how any young person fresh out of college affords to buy a house in this city. Let me lay out the details so you can understand my issue. First, the location of the house: approximately 1 1/2 hour from downtown Chicago and approx 30 minutes away from my office. Next the quality of the house: The houses we are looking at are the cheapest in the neighborhoods so don't think its some palatial estate. Simple 3 bedroom 2 bath with 2 car garage....that's our search criteria. And lastly...onto the financials: If you take my net monthly salary and subtract the following:
Monthly Mortgage Payment
Real Estate Property Taxes
Home Owners Insurance
then my bills...
Avg bills when we lived in the condo (incl gas, elec, phone, water, cable, visa, etc)
Derek student loans
Mel student loans
Car Insurance
The costs are split 40% come from house (the first 3) and then 60% (from the living expenses).
Do all that math and we are negative $1,100 for the month. That assumes we take all non retirement savings and put down a 20% down payment. Another assumption is that Melissa isn't working and therefore no childcare cost (if she was working, childcare is $850/month) but it would be offset by her wage (sub or fulltime? unknown now).
What gets us... is knowing how much we could buy a house for in other markets...
Thats it from "Depressed in the Midwest"
Friday, June 8, 2007
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Lonely Commuter.....
This week is my first full week without my little girl with me in the mornings. It is weird and eerily quiet for my walk to the bus stop and the ride to work. Whats weird to think about is that this is the first time since she was born that I haven't had to wake her up in the morning, get her dressed and fed and then take her to either her first caregiver' house (Angela), or to her daycare (Motorola or Enchanted Care). The cycle even continued when we came here to Singapore and we would share a daily bus ride together to her school and then I would continue on to my office. This routine has been a constant for 3 1/2 years and now its not there. I definitely miss it because it was our time to bond and talk about stuff. Its amazing how much you can love a 3 1/2 year old...
Monday, June 4, 2007
Thailand
Thailand came and went. We stayed at a great resort...JW Marriott Phuket Resort and Spa. We got in late Wednesday night and went straight to bed. We woke up Thursday morning to rain. (For a minute we thought we were in Singapore!) The breakfast buffet was awesome. We stuffed ourselves there so we wouldn't have to get lunch. After breakfast, we all headed down to the Kids Club. We left Delaney and Lauren (our friends, Tracey, Sam, Lauren, and Sami came with us) in there while we explored. After exploring Derek and Sam played a ton of ping-pong. We decided to go into Phuket town around 2pm. Not much there...lots of local people and tons of motorbikes. Most people don't have cars. When we headed to town, we saw as many as 4 people on a motorbike. Pretty crazy! We went to some shops...one guy was selling 5 DVDs for 500 baht (about 3 dollars each US). Thought about buying some, but then thought better of it. We went to a restaurant for dinner, but left. It seemed pretty shady. It was on a bay, but there was no water. Check out the pics, you'll see what I mean. We ended up back at the resort for a very tasty Italian dinner.
On Friday, the Turks went on a little adventure to some other islands and we stayed at the resort. We went to the pool until it started raining. We went to the room, and then it stopped raining! We washed Delaney's hair while there so she could get the ever-famous beach braids. She loves them! She sat entirely still for the entire hour it took them to do her hair. She said after that it hurt and she had little tears in her eyes. She never once complained while they were doing it. I was very impressed by her. She still has them in as of Monday evening, and still loves them! She went to the Kids Club later in the afternoon while Derek and I had Thai massages on the beach. They were only 400 baht/hour which is under 15 dollars! They were quite nice. We ate dinner at a deli at the resort, headed to the beach at night for pictures, and went to bed.
Unfortunately, Delaney had other plans Friday night. At about 3 am, Derek said, "Melissa, she's throwing up!" I got out of bed and unfortunately had no idea where I was, so it took a moment to get to her. I picked her up and Derek said to put her down. We got her to the bathroom in time to throw up more. I had to leave the room b/c now I felt nauseous. Derek was the dad of the year that night. I went to tell housekeeping and then read my book on our patio b/c our room reeked of puke. Derek and Delaney ended up leaving around 4:30am to go for a walk to get fresh air. I read until about 5:15 and they came in at about 5:30. I heard Laney say soon after they got back that the room smelled and she wanted to leave. They left and came back around 8:00. They hung out at the pool and beach. She was sick a couple of times at the pool. They had nice conversations about the undertow and saw lots of crabs.
Saturday we took it easy b/c we didn't know if she would be "out of the woods" yet. (She got sick at Disney last year during the night. She was fine all day long, for our whole flight back to Aunt Linda and Uncle Mike's house. We gave her goldfish, and she threw up again. So we decided to play it safe.) The Turks went to Patong Beach and said it was much better than Phuket. Delaney napped for about 3 hours at the pool. I had a burger for dinner (I know...I am super adventurous) while Derek tried some sort of Thai chicken. It was very good, but too spicy for my taste. Laney ate bread.
We had the whole day there on Sunday as our flight didn't leave until 10 at night. We hung out at the pool. Delaney spent some time in the Kids Club and got to do a treasure hunt for candy. She was quite excited about that! Derek and Sam played more ping-pong. Derek didn't do so well that day. He lost a game to me and lost at least 3 to Sam. I do think he won at least one off of Sam.
Here are the pictures. I put them on Shutterfly, so that if any of you want to order some you are able to.
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0QcNGLly0asXUw¬ag=1
On Friday, the Turks went on a little adventure to some other islands and we stayed at the resort. We went to the pool until it started raining. We went to the room, and then it stopped raining! We washed Delaney's hair while there so she could get the ever-famous beach braids. She loves them! She sat entirely still for the entire hour it took them to do her hair. She said after that it hurt and she had little tears in her eyes. She never once complained while they were doing it. I was very impressed by her. She still has them in as of Monday evening, and still loves them! She went to the Kids Club later in the afternoon while Derek and I had Thai massages on the beach. They were only 400 baht/hour which is under 15 dollars! They were quite nice. We ate dinner at a deli at the resort, headed to the beach at night for pictures, and went to bed.
Unfortunately, Delaney had other plans Friday night. At about 3 am, Derek said, "Melissa, she's throwing up!" I got out of bed and unfortunately had no idea where I was, so it took a moment to get to her. I picked her up and Derek said to put her down. We got her to the bathroom in time to throw up more. I had to leave the room b/c now I felt nauseous. Derek was the dad of the year that night. I went to tell housekeeping and then read my book on our patio b/c our room reeked of puke. Derek and Delaney ended up leaving around 4:30am to go for a walk to get fresh air. I read until about 5:15 and they came in at about 5:30. I heard Laney say soon after they got back that the room smelled and she wanted to leave. They left and came back around 8:00. They hung out at the pool and beach. She was sick a couple of times at the pool. They had nice conversations about the undertow and saw lots of crabs.
Saturday we took it easy b/c we didn't know if she would be "out of the woods" yet. (She got sick at Disney last year during the night. She was fine all day long, for our whole flight back to Aunt Linda and Uncle Mike's house. We gave her goldfish, and she threw up again. So we decided to play it safe.) The Turks went to Patong Beach and said it was much better than Phuket. Delaney napped for about 3 hours at the pool. I had a burger for dinner (I know...I am super adventurous) while Derek tried some sort of Thai chicken. It was very good, but too spicy for my taste. Laney ate bread.
We had the whole day there on Sunday as our flight didn't leave until 10 at night. We hung out at the pool. Delaney spent some time in the Kids Club and got to do a treasure hunt for candy. She was quite excited about that! Derek and Sam played more ping-pong. Derek didn't do so well that day. He lost a game to me and lost at least 3 to Sam. I do think he won at least one off of Sam.
Here are the pictures. I put them on Shutterfly, so that if any of you want to order some you are able to.
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0QcNGLly0asXUw¬ag=1
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Delaney's new song
Over the last couple of weeks Melissa seems to have the Nelly song "Country Grammer" stuck in her head and proceeds to sing the first couple lines all the time. This has caused the song to get stuck in my head and as a result Delaney has learned the song over the last couple of trips to school. Delaney now proceeds to walk around singing "Down down baby your street in a Range Rover, shimmy shimmy coco puff, shimmy shimmy pow. For those of you with a lot of street "cred" I know those arent the exact words but merely a 33 year olds attempt at translating a rap song.
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