First Bills

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