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First Bills

January 20th, 2010 -- Categories: Life

Last night I paid our first bills for our new house. We’ve been in this house for one full month, now, and we’ve received our first examples of what a bigger house costs in the way of utilities.

Aggravatingly, none of these “first examples” are actually useful to accurately judge the true monthly costs. They’re either charges for just a partial month (like December 16 to December 31), or they’re a partial month plus projected next month (December 16 to January 30), or they’re some form of these plus various installation or origination charges.

Nothing says, “we love our customers,” like charging customers extra money to set up an account. If most of these utility companies were not virtual monopolies with their services in this area, they wouldn’t charge set up fees. Yeah, this bugs me.

And then there’s going through the numbers and finding something wrong — a rate different than what we were quoted, a charge not mentioned during our setting up, and/or a service added or missing from what we agreed to. Dammit. Yeah, utility companies in general bug me.

And mixed in with this stack of bills are half a dozen mortgage refinancing or insurance offers. We haven’t paid our first installment on our current loan, and here are offers to change our mortgage, already. Plus, our real estate agents (selling and buying) have sent us the forms we need for our taxes.

Taxes! Oh that’s going to be a joy this year. <- I don’t know if this is sarcasm or honesty. I’ve never sold a house and bought a house in the same year. I’ll be satisfied if it all just breaks even and we don’t owe anything extra because of the transactions.

Between monopoly utility companies and government taxes, owning a home is frickin’ expensive. Yeah, I paid these same bills and taxes in our old home, but I had gotten used to it after several years. And then going four months with no direct utility bills spoiled me.

Well, I’m back in the home owner’s saddle, now. And I have to get reaccustomed to the sores and blisters, again.

But they seem to put the horn right in the middle of the seat.

Bullgrit

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Comment from brogrit January 20, 2010, 9:53 pm

i dont understand why….you have an account for a long period of time, call the company to “transfer” service…and they have to set up a whole new account. why cant they just “transfer” the account to the new address? isnt that what transfer means…and why do they have to go through all the “checks” they do when you transfer…you already have service, why is there the need to check for anything?

Comment from Grant Niemeyer January 21, 2010, 1:08 am

Its the Nature of the imcompentent Beast there Bro. One hand doesn’t know what the other is doing and most of the time doesn’t want to know. besides the only thing that can truely Transfer is the landline phone thats if you are in the same Areacode. when i moved from my Trailer on ma and dads farm to the boss’es rental house i changed local area code took me nearly two weeks of sorting out before i had the phone bill right. although i am lucky in that someone pays the utils for me and then i pay them for elec&water.

Comment from brogrit January 21, 2010, 6:32 am

yea….i dont have a land line phone….i think is a waist of money…unless its for a business

Comment from friendgril February 17, 2010, 11:43 am

If your capital gain from the sale of your old house is less than 500,000 for a married couple who have lived in their previous home at least 3-5 years i believe….your fine. Your Obama new house tax credit will be nice…as you will receive 6500.00 back for your non-first time home. Enjoy the good tax return this year and apply it to your principal….hopefully you put more than 20% down on your home…if not…once you reach the 20% of principle paid for a conventional loan you can get rid of PMI…saving you more money. Congrats on the new home.

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