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Hello, groovy freedomist! It’s been a long time since my last post and a lot has happened. So I’ll dispense with the flowery introduction and get right to business. Here we go.
Stats on the Sale
We sold Groovy Home on May 10 for our list price of $250K. We brought Groovy Home ten years earlier for $225K. So once you remove realtor fees and closing costs, Mrs. Groovy and I walked away with a munificent profit of $8K. Not exactly the greatest return on a $225K investment, but that’s the way things go in the wacky world of real estate. The important thing to remember is that we lived mortgage free for ten years in a great house in a great neighborhood with great neighbors. What percentage of my fellow Americans can say that? And, as a final bonus, we got to meet and work with a terrific pair of realtors. Hailey and Caroline were two of the nicest people we ever met and they couldn’t have made selling a home any easier. So thank you Hailey and Caroline. You guys made the realtor profession proud.
Stats on the Move
Mrs. Groovy and I were determined to move with as little furniture as possible. Our furniture was nice, but it really didn’t capture the farmhouse motif we’re hoping to replicate in Groovy Ranch. But more importantly, moving furniture sucks. It’s hard on the back and greatly complicates the logistics. So I implored Mrs. Groovy to get acquainted with Craigslist and make our furniture disappear.
Now, I won’t get into the nitty-gritty here, but Mrs. Groovy took to Craigslist with remarkable aplomb. In less than two weeks our house was virtually furniture free and Mrs. Groovy and I were sitting on folding chairs and sleeping on aerobeds.
Now, admittedly, she sold a lot of our furniture for a song. But we didn’t want this furniture anyway. Trucking it up to Wake Forest and cramming it into storage would have made zero sense. Besides, the money we made from Craigslist easily covered the cost of our furniture-deprived move.
Money Made Selling Furniture: $3,915
Cost of Small Box Truck Rental: $238
Cost of Gas for Small Box Truck: $109
Cost of 10 x 10 Storage for Six Months: $450
You Meet A Lot of Interesting People Selling Your Furniture
If I learned anything from selling stuff on Craigslist, I learned that you meet a lot of interesting people. Here are just some of the people that made us shake our heads—in a good way, of course.
Star YouTuber
The YouTuber, War Owl, brought our dining room furniture. He’s a gamer who teaches people how to play the game, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
I only met Mr. War Owl briefly, but I was impressed. Just an incredibly nice young man with a first-rate mind.
His YouTube channel currently has over 1.1 million subscribers. Here’s one of his recent videos. It should resonate with a lot of bloggers in the FI community.
Aaron the Bull
I like to think that I’m in pretty good shape for a 56 year old dude. Why, I can still bang out twenty pull ups and five muscle ups. But pull up strength and muscle up strength aren’t the same as moving furniture strength.
I came to this shocking revelation while helping Aaron move the master bedroom set his wife graciously brought from us. That furniture was damn heavy, and I was worried about my ability to be the lead guy when it came to moving that furniture down the stairs.
When I expressed this concern to Aaron, he said not to worry. He would gladly take the brunt of the moving.
And took the brunt he did. The man was a bull. When we finally got the heaviest piece of furniture to the ground floor, my deflated ego got the best of me and I asked him how old he was. Surely he had to be ten or fifteen years younger. What else could explain this endeavor being a moderate workout for him and a grueling battle for me?
He was 54. In the words of Douglas C. Neidermeyer, I am “worthless and weak.”
Steel Magnolias In the House
Perhaps the most enjoyable furniture sale we made was a big, comfy leather chair to three generations of southern belles. The middle southern belle’s husband was having medical issues and she needed a comfy chair that could handle accidents. So Mrs. G and I took a little off an already ridiculously low price, and, I, with the help of mom and daughter, got the leather chair into grandma’s pick-up truck. I then got three amazing hugs from three tearful ladies.
Meet the Patels
My favorite Craigslisters were three Indian-Americans who were moving from New Jersey to Charlotte for a one-year IT assignment and needed a lot of furniture fast. They told me their names, but I forget what they were. Suffice it to say their names weren’t Allison, Norman, and Rodney. Since I don’t remember their names, I’ll just refer to them as the Patels.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the Patels were very nice people. But if I didn’t know they were from New Jersey, I would have sworn they were from central casting. They went through our house like it was an actual furniture showroom. And the lead Patel, the female of the bunch, was very aggressive. Here is just a sample of her shopping style.
Lead Patel: “How much is that picture?”
Mrs. Groovy: “Fifty dollars.”
Lead Patel: “Oh, that’s too much. How much is that other picture?”
Mrs. Groovy: “Sorry. That one isn’t for sale.”
Lead Patel: “Then you got to move the not-for-sale items to another room. It’s too confusing. How much for the sofa bed?”
Mrs. Groovy: “$150.”
Lead Patel: “Can you go lower? You do know we have to rent a truck to pick up all this stuff, and that costs money.”
Mrs. Groovy: “No, sorry. That’s as low as we can go.”
Lead Patel: [To one of the male Patels.] “I want to see the back of that sofa bed. Move it out.”
Mrs. Groovy: “Whoa, whoa, whoa—wait. You’re going to scratch my wood floors.”
Lead Patel: “Okay. Do you have any rugs? Show me the rugs.”
The lead Patel continued like this for a good twenty minutes. When her and her mates finally left our house, we had no idea what we sold them, and we had no idea what prices we agreed to. All we knew was that we needed a drink.
But in the end, it all worked out. The male Patels showed up the next day, and while their footwear wasn’t my choice for moving a heavy sofa bed (flip-flops), they came with cash, a truck, and a great attitude. I actually enjoyed loading up their truck with our stuff. I even got to share a few SQL war stories with them.
Finally, after I said my goodbyes, I returned to Groovy Home and loudly exclaimed to Mrs. G the line that turned out to be the most memorable line from the whole home-selling experience, “We survived the Patels.”
Surviving Mrs. Groovy
And speaking about surviving. I also survived Mrs. Groovy.
Case in point. We go to Lowe’s during the packing stage of the move to get some storage bins. And, of course, there are at least two dozen bin options. So I turn to Mrs. Groovy and say, “Which ones do you like?”
“I don’t care. You pick,” she replies.
Fine. I see two awesome bins, and just as I’m about to load them into our cart, I get a comment from the peanut gallery. “Not those. They smell!”
So, yes, I had to deal with a spouse made fickle by an abrupt sale and a rapidly approaching closing date. And that was okay. I could handle fickleness. It was the lack of progress on the packing front that was killing me. For two weeks, piles of stuff littered almost every room in our house. And Mrs. G was a whirling dervish between the piles, working tirelessly for ten to twelve hours a day. But nothing was getting done. Stuff remained in piles on the floor. What was she doing with all the bins we bought?
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and had to confront Mrs. G. But I had to do it tactfully. If I didn’t broach the matter with guile, my head would surely be bitten off. So I thought long and hard about a proper angle. And at last it hit me. She was metaphorically doing what the Chinese fish mongers were doing in the below scene from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. She was passing fish between the same piles and accomplishing nothing.
Now, did my accusing her of fish passing change anything? Of course not. Mrs. G. laughed and calmly explained why my fish-passing analogy was off base. But here’s a lesson for you married guys out there. Because I came up with a proper angle, I got what was bothering me off my chest, and I didn’t get my head bitten off. I consider that a win. [Mrs. Groovy here. I’m soooo over this moving thing but let me just say that you have no idea what it means to sort, pack, and categorize your belongings so that the right ones go to storage and your parents’ house. You could toss hand soap, dishes, and dirty socks in the same container and think that was smart packing. Not to mention you wanted to load the car up with cleaning items we would need the very last morning in our house, so as not to leave it like a pigsty. Don’t get me started.]
Bloggers Are So Cool
I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but bloggers in the FI community are incredible. Without their advice, cheer-leading, and playful mockery (I’m looking at you, Fritz), there’s no way Mrs. Groovy and I would have maintained our sangfroid during this stressful period. So thank you Fritz, Claudia, Laurie (of Frugal Farmer fame), Brent, Amy, Vicki, and the Budget Epicurean. You guys are the best.
But if there’s anyone I have to give a shout-out to and proclaim the Most Valuable Bloggers, it has to be The Grumbys. Here’s what arrived on our doorstep a few days before the actual move, courtesy of The Grumbys.
Call me nuts, but I can’t think of three better things to include in the cab of a clunky box truck on moving day—a Dwight Schrute bobble-head doll, a hand-written note expressing one of Dwight’s most memorable lines, and the best damn cookies I ever ate. Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Grumby. I can’t wait until you guys bicycle over to Groovy Ranch and Mrs. Groovy and I can return the favor. Hail The Grumbys!
We’re Close to Choosing a Builder
Two of the three builders we’re considering have submitted bids. We should be getting the bid from the remaining builder this week.
The bids we’ve gotten so far are a little higher than we expected, but nothing crazy. If all goes as planned, we’ll soon have our builder, and we’ll soon be breaking ground on Groovy Ranch.
And speaking about breaking ground, our neighbors certainly aren’t wasting any time. Here’s a picture of their sprouting home taken from last week.
Fight-O-Meter
Moving was a pain in the arse, and Mrs. Groovy and I surely exchanged a number of snarky comments during the ordeal, but we really didn’t have any fights—as far as I can remember. Perhaps Mrs. G will remember differently. Anyway, I’m leaving the fight-o-meter unchanged. Here’s the current fight tally in case you forgot.
Final Thoughts
I’m not a sentimental guy. I didn’t shed a tear when I left Long Island. And I certainly didn’t shed a tear when I left Indian Trail. But the people of Charlotte and its neighboring towns were truly wonderful. They made two weird Noo Yawkers feel very welcome. And for that, Mrs. Groovy and I will be eternally grateful.
Oh, and the people of Charlotte have quite an affinity for amazing dogs. Here are the last four-legged buds that we managed to photograph before leaving Indian Trail.
Here are Baylie and Bella. We met them in Lowe’s while picking up some paint for touch-ups. Needless to say, Baylie and Bella attracted a lot of attention from the shoppers in their vincinity.
And here is Spencer. He was by far our favorite dog from Crooked Creek Park. Mrs. Groovy loved the way he used to sit by her foot and lean on her leg. Such a sweet dog. And his owners, Al and Debra, weren’t too shabby either. Incredibly nice people.
Okay, groovy freedomist, that’s all I got. Have a great weekend. Peace.
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