Tuesday, December 28, 2010

The tween time…

daughter and MsTwas the time tween Christmas and New Years…

Our Christmas was a wonderful time as we were able to celebrate it in our house for one last time with our family.  My daughter was home for college and will return back to school tomorrow.  My son, his wife, and the grandson made it to our house as well. So with a houseful weson celebrated Christmas together.

With the usual fanfare of the gift exchange our Christmas was off to a good start and with the upcoming Christmas dinner it could only get better… and it did. Boy was dinner grand…

It has been enjoyable these last few days having the kids in town. My son and his family have returned home and with the daughter leaving xmas settingtomorrow we have decided to knock something off the bucket list before she leaves (so she can experience it as well).

So tonight we are all heading over to some friends house who are going to teach us how to make tamales. Tamales aregson often made around Christmas time by Mexican families to give as Christmas gifts and they often save some for good luck when ringing in the new year’s.

Then with only NINE! more Monday’s left before we retire we had better get busy with finding us a motorhome. We are going to need all the luck we can get so I had better eat an extra dozen tamales.

Guess who wants candy…

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Calm, quiet, peaceful… then crazy and hectic…

xmas3Since I sold our Christmas tree on craigslist (yes I was the Grinch who sold Christmas…) one of our friends bought us our future RV Christmas tree – just perfect! A bit smaller than our other one :) but it will fit better on the dashboard of the RV. Doesn’t it look great with all the presents?

I want to thank all those that congratulated us about our recent toad acquisition… we are so happy to have one big step behind us. However, we are ready to move on to the next one… the motorhome!

xmas2I was going to title this blog the “Calm before the Storm” but I got beat to the punch by Rick and Paulette… But the fact is “Calm before the Storm” is the perfect statement for us right now.  With Christmas looming and New Year’s around the corner now is the time to relax with our family and to celebrate our fortunes of the past year while also celebrating our future ones.

But we have less than 70 days before we want to hit the road… How are we going to do all we have to do in so little time?  YIKES!!!! I am sure we can find a way but YIKES!!! We have been looking for the perfect rig for about one year and yet we still haven’t found it yet. Recently it became obvious that we were going to have to “settle” for something less than perfect. So we have lowered our standards like we did in high school when we thought we could find the perfect date on our first try :)

xmas1Not only have we lowered our standards a bit but we have also had to raise how much we want to spend… So we may settle for a few less options but we hope that by the end of January we have our future home. Man it sucks to be on a budget – anyone have an extra 100K?

So wish us luck and we will wish you all a very Merry Christmas and of course a Happy New Year…

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Introducing the new toad…

crvAs I had mentioned in a previous blog we have been in the market for a toad.  After we test drove one of the Honda CRV’s at a local dealer we pretty much knew this was the car we wanted. We had contacted dealers and inquired on the internet about the Honda CRV and got bids from four car dealers.

4wdWe had asked each of them for their best written “drive out” offer We also told them what we were expecting to pay based upon our research. As I mentioned before the costs from our research stated that the average paid price was about $24,791 (before ttl). Further research suggested that these cars were highly demanded thus I didn’t expect much of a discount like I had experience on other cars I had bought on the internet before.

crv frontSo the four bids from the Honda dealers ranged from 26,265 to 26,430… wow not much difference at all and this really surprised me. Not much of an incentive to drive the 100 miles to Houston to save a couple hundred dollars. However, one Houston dealer had an additional incentive of a $500 gift card to Academy (which could come in handy in our future lives :) ). So I sent emails to each vendor except the lowest priced one. I told them each where they were in this “bidding war” and asked if they wanted to make a better offer since they were still in consideration. Not much changed after this round of emails but after notifying our local dealer that we were going to go to Houston to make our purchase he submitted a new offer about $700 lower… so can you say SOLD!!!!!

We now own a new Honda CRV EX all wheel drive. The dealer brought the price down to 24,000 making the total drive out about 25,700 and we didn’t have to make the trek to Houston. The CRV is hiding out in our garage until we sell our 2007 Toyota Camry.

One more thing off the list…

Thursday, December 16, 2010

DD coming home…

PIC-0029One day early this week - Well tomorrow we will drive over to Austin, Texas to pick up our youngest child (not so young anymore – how did that happen?).  She is coming home for Christmas break of her senior year (and last year of undergraduate studies). This will also be the last Christmas we have in our home. Since we have no offers on the table for it we don’t expect to be out  of our house before then.

After we pick her up we will head over to her brothers house just south of Austin and visit with him and the family.  Been a while since we have seen the grandkids and our daughter is anxious to see them as well.

PIC-0030The day of arrival – Well we drove to the Austin airport and arrived at the same time as our daughter’s flight did, so we provided her with curbside pickup. After loading her bags and heading out she said she was real hungry and so I suggested an eclectic Austintacious eaterie… I had recently read about this place on Nellie’s blog MidLiFe CrUiSeR and she was kind enough to provide me with an address to it… We GPS’ed the address and a bit later we arrived at the extended hands of Maria at Maria's Taco Express…

What a fun and energetic place and a great spot to have lunch with the daughter at as it embodied all that Austin is… “weird” which is the way I still remember it from the old days… I didn’t have the camera so the cell phone had to do to snap off a few photos. In Austin they still have the slogan “Keep Austin weird!” and I hope they do…

the gkidsAfter lunch it was off to take the DD to see her brother and her niece and nephew south of Austin. Always good to see the grandkids. It was an enjoyable visit with our son’s family and after dinner it was time for the two hour drive back home…

Thanks for the good idea Nellie…

Friday, December 10, 2010

Rule number 1…

I read Al's blog titled "just-sharing-few-thoughts-today" and was intrigued by all his thoughts he had put into the post. In it he was describing, in his own words, what he thought were the reasons why he was blogging.  Check it out as it was an interesting read and got me to thinking back about a year ago when I started this blog. 

As I stated in a comment I left on Al's blog I had myself some unwritten rules about how my blog was going to be written, what I wanted it to say, and who I was writing it for. The comment I left was…

“when i started blogging i had made myself a few rules and rule number 1 was that I was writing for me [and my family and friends]and that there was no way i was going to make everyone happy... after that i wasn't sure i needed any other rules...”

This about summed up my philosophy on blogging that day when I posted my first post. As many bloggers before me have said “I really had no idea that people would actually read it… must less follow it…” sd as I read through Al’s post a reality struck me. If I am to continue blogging it has to be not only for me but it needs to be useful to others, and maybe a bit humorous at times…The more I thought about it the more I realized I was doing this all wrong…

… and then I remembered mental rule number one and realized that it was indeed the only rule I needed when writing a blog…

Monday, December 6, 2010

The last this and the last that…

sunset6One on the more pleasant things about retiring and knowing your last working date is that you start realizing that many of things that you use to do (and possibly took for granted) are all coming to an end. I recently worked my last football game as a statistician and I went to my last office Christmas party last night.

sunset2I have worked in my current position since 1994 (well if you don’t count my area’s recent consolidation into a larger department). My work at this large University has been nothing but enjoyable and I have been fortunate enough to work alongside many wonderful people. The department that employed me all this time has always empowered its staff to be responsible and accountable for their specific area… basically you either swim or sink! The management’s philosophy aligns with mine… which is in essence by allowing someone the opportunity to fail they will likely reward you…

sunset1So in 85 days I will have my last working day at my job and there will be many other lasts for us before that day. This will be our last Christmas in our house (unless we sell it soon) and we just had out last Thanksgiving. With all these “lasts” one would think that there would be a lot of sadness along with them but to the contrary I am just enjoying and relishing each and every one of them as we countdown the days to our next journey…

… only 12 more Mondays :)

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Buying a car via the internet…

Stock PhotoBuying a car has become easier since the internet came about since so much information is now easily at our fingertips.   After reading reviews, safety reports, and bloggers who atoll the virtues of this car as the toad of choice for RV’ers we are looking to replace our current vehicles with a 2011 Honda CRV EX.

So how do we now shop for this car?  First the bride and I, being short in stature, needed to test drive one of these so we went off to the local dealer.  Here we looked at the CRV and actually found one exactly as we wanted one.  We test drove the car and we loved it easy handling and it was very drivable for the two of us. After letter the sales agent know of our intentions we gave him the opportunity to give us his best written offer before we hit the web in search of deals (we told him what we were expecting to pay based upon our web research).

So how did we do our web research? The best starting place in my opinion is to go to Truecar’s website where one is able to get a thorough price report on the car that they want.  In our case we are looking at a 2011 Honda CRV EX where according to our zip code the costs are as follows:

  • Dealer Cost $24,015
  • Factory Invoice $24,520
  • Average Paid $24,791
  • Sticker Price $26,025

They go on to point out that in our area the prices one should expect are as follows:

  • Great Price $24,337
  • Good Price $24,925
  • Above Market Price more than $24,926

Other sites such as edmunds.com and kbb.com give further details:

  • kbb suggests a fair purchase price of $25,504
  • Edmunds projected five year cost of ownership ®  suggests our fuel costs to be $8,429 and insurance to be $5,491
  • Edmunds suggested True Market Value®  $24,603 or between truecar’s great and good price
  • Edmunds projected five year cost of ownership for maintence and repairs is $2,783 and $671 respectively (great for budget forecasting)

Further when comparing the true cost to our our second choice model, a 2011 Jeep Wrangler, we learned that it would cost us more than 11,000 dollars more to own it. With $2,000 per year more in our budget I think we will just rent a Wrangler for those occasions when we want to do some hard core 4WD off roading.

So we sent off many an email to many a car dealer and are starting to get some prices in.  The best one so far is slightly above the average price of truecar’s prices, however, this one does have an incentive of a $500.00 gift card thus lowering it to below average in pricing… time will tell who we buy from…