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Pre-Trip Guess who's going back?
- Thread starter bee
- Start date
PacNWTigger
Well-Known Member
Yay!
Welcome!
Me too!
How did you find this footage of me???
Welcome!
Yay!
Welcome!
Thank you!
Yay!
Believe it or not, I considered Em before I settled on Elphie.
Welcome!
Welcome!
The full TR will probably start early-mid September.
Bonjour et bienvenue!
I had no idea about this! Thanks for sharing!Yea! Another TR coming from bee!!
Oh, in the interim, I'm sure you'll be celebrating this occasion (May 20) as well!!
World Bee Day | United Nations
The Day aims to raise awareness on the importance of pollinators, the threats they face and their contribution to sustainable development.www.un.org
Excuuuuuse me, I just checked our texts and I told you about this in FEBRUARY.
YES! Love this!
Yay!
Again, where do you people keep finding videos of me? (This would be a funnier joke if I were blonde. I'm not.)
Thank you! I accept!The award for the best teaser post goes to....
Max
You and me both!
So here are the general plans! A lot of this is subject to change (just like ALL of our lives over the past 14 months!).
Dates: Monday, August 16-Wednesday, August 25
Resorts: Contemporary 16-20, and Swan 20-25
Tickets: Regular ol' 5-day tickets (NOT APs for the first time since...2013??
)
Air travel: THREE different airlines (will be explained in a future post), including one first class flight
Cast: Me, my wife M, my brother Jay, probably M's parents and maybe M's brother and his girlfriend
ADRs: None yet, because we're more than 60 days out (WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO??)
Special experiences: Boo Bash (we hope!) and a Swolphin pool Cabana
Dates: Monday, August 16-Wednesday, August 25
Resorts: Contemporary 16-20, and Swan 20-25
Tickets: Regular ol' 5-day tickets (NOT APs for the first time since...2013??
)Air travel: THREE different airlines (will be explained in a future post), including one first class flight
Cast: Me, my wife M, my brother Jay, probably M's parents and maybe M's brother and his girlfriend
ADRs: None yet, because we're more than 60 days out (WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO??)
Special experiences: Boo Bash (we hope!) and a Swolphin pool Cabana
I don't need to tell you all that the world turned upside down last year.
Starting March 12, the studio where I taught (which accounted for about 60% of my income) cancelled all classes and lessons for the foreseeable future. Several of my private students also cancelled their lessons going forward (20%), and my church singing job cancelled all choral services indefinitely (another 10%). You can do the math and see where that left me.
Luckily my wife M was able to continue doing her job at a university in NYC remotely. Her supervisor had the foresight to send a work laptop home with her the week of March 9 so she'd be able to keep working.
With a sudden drop in income we immediately stopped ordering takeout/delivery, which we used to do about once a week. We eliminated all extraneous expenses so we were living within our new means. We had tickets to two Broadway shows in March and April which were obviously cancelled, so we got those refunds and saved that money. We also cancelled our Disney trip for June 2020 so everything could be refunded (thinking the parks might be open by then [HA] but deciding to do the responsible thing financially).
The good news: I have been teaching some online voice/piano lessons continuously since about 2012, so when a lot of other teachers were afraid to make the transition, I immediately opened up my availability. I booked my first new online student around March 15, and over the next two months a steady stream of new students from all over the country (and a few international too!) had signed up. Several of my private students also agreed to go online, and a few students from the studio also resumed lessons remotely. It seemed a lot of people were suddenly bored with nothing to do, and decided to pursue their dreams of taking singing lessons with their new free time. By late April I was making MORE money than pre-pandemic! My church job also started having one singer serve as cantor at each service; I was alternating with another singer so I wasn't there every week, but I at least started earning SOME of that money again.
Here's where things get a little more complicated: M and I had a big dream we wanted to achieve by the end of 2020. It was a dream that required a lot of money upfront. We had been saving and planning specifically for this dream since about 2015, but got really serious in 2017. Stay tuned to see how that went...
Starting March 12, the studio where I taught (which accounted for about 60% of my income) cancelled all classes and lessons for the foreseeable future. Several of my private students also cancelled their lessons going forward (20%), and my church singing job cancelled all choral services indefinitely (another 10%). You can do the math and see where that left me.
Luckily my wife M was able to continue doing her job at a university in NYC remotely. Her supervisor had the foresight to send a work laptop home with her the week of March 9 so she'd be able to keep working.
With a sudden drop in income we immediately stopped ordering takeout/delivery, which we used to do about once a week. We eliminated all extraneous expenses so we were living within our new means. We had tickets to two Broadway shows in March and April which were obviously cancelled, so we got those refunds and saved that money. We also cancelled our Disney trip for June 2020 so everything could be refunded (thinking the parks might be open by then [HA] but deciding to do the responsible thing financially).
The good news: I have been teaching some online voice/piano lessons continuously since about 2012, so when a lot of other teachers were afraid to make the transition, I immediately opened up my availability. I booked my first new online student around March 15, and over the next two months a steady stream of new students from all over the country (and a few international too!) had signed up. Several of my private students also agreed to go online, and a few students from the studio also resumed lessons remotely. It seemed a lot of people were suddenly bored with nothing to do, and decided to pursue their dreams of taking singing lessons with their new free time. By late April I was making MORE money than pre-pandemic! My church job also started having one singer serve as cantor at each service; I was alternating with another singer so I wasn't there every week, but I at least started earning SOME of that money again.
Here's where things get a little more complicated: M and I had a big dream we wanted to achieve by the end of 2020. It was a dream that required a lot of money upfront. We had been saving and planning specifically for this dream since about 2015, but got really serious in 2017. Stay tuned to see how that went...
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WARNING: lots of text! Not a lot of Disney talk!
As you may have guessed, our big dream for 2020 was to buy a house. With the uncertainty of EVERYTHING going on, I was afraid our plans would have to change and we'd be stuck renting another year or two. M, however, never lost faith. We did a ton of Zillow-stalking in March, April, May, and June. By this time I had a pretty stable income despite all the changes to our lives, so in July we started applying for mortgage preapprovals.
We were preapproved by three different banks but some of the amounts were low for our area. If you're self-employed you will understand what a GIANT HEADACHE it can be to prove your income. I also have steadily made more each year since I started filing taxes as self-employed (2013 ish) which is actually great but which on paper means I have a lower average annual income. I have student loans from my Master's degree but M doesn't have any from her Master's, and neither of us have debt from undergrad. We don't have a car (and therefore don't have a car loan), and we pay off our credit cards in full every month and don't carry a balance. We have pretty darn good credit, which took a long time to achieve because we racked up a lot of credit card debt during grad school and had to work very hard to pay it all off. We finally found a mortgage broker that would approve us for a reasonable amount for the areas we were considering, and in mid-July we started seeing houses.
We originally wanted to buy a condo, but because of high HOAs in most buildings around here, we were approved for a very low purchase price for condos compared to the approval for single family homes. We ended up focusing our search on a neighborhood we hadn't even considered before because it's mostly single family homes and that wasn't what we were looking for. We saw maybe ten houses before making an offer. Long story short, the first house didn't work out because of several issues found during the inspection. BUT we ended up finding another that we like even better, and after some bumps in the road, WE ARE FINALLY HOMEOWNERS!!!
I know we got EXTREMELY lucky with the timing of our home search. Most of the country is experiencing a CRAZY seller's market and homes are going for waaaaaaay over asking while the buyers waive inspection contingencies. However, NYC and some of the surrounding areas (not the super suburban areas) were actually the opposite last summer, though I think it's picked up a bit since then. We managed to pay under asking and get some seller credits for repairs. Our city is still very urban and densely populated, as you can probably tell by the two houses attached to either side and tiny yard. But we don't have kids or dogs so we don't need that much space. And honestly we have more space than we ever imagined we would. We have three (!!!) whole bedrooms after living in one bedroom OR LESS apartments our whole adult lives. One is my studio where I can practice and teach and then CLOSE THE DOOR at the end of the evening, AND we have a dedicated guest room, which we never thought we would have.
Obviously our priorities have shifted since becoming homeowners. We got an amazing rate and our monthly payments are actually less than our rent was in our last apartment. But we did have to replace the furnace, replace the water heater, add central AC, have some asbestos tile removed in the basement, and have some outlets added. Our house was built in the 1890s so obviously it needed a little love! So we are still saving as much as possible so we're ready for inevitable repairs and maintenance.
That meant that when we had to choose to either keep our WDW Annual Passes or cancel them and get a refund for the remaining time, we chose...to cancel them and take the money.
And that is the main reason we only have 5 day tickets. More on that later, though...
As you may have guessed, our big dream for 2020 was to buy a house. With the uncertainty of EVERYTHING going on, I was afraid our plans would have to change and we'd be stuck renting another year or two. M, however, never lost faith. We did a ton of Zillow-stalking in March, April, May, and June. By this time I had a pretty stable income despite all the changes to our lives, so in July we started applying for mortgage preapprovals.
We were preapproved by three different banks but some of the amounts were low for our area. If you're self-employed you will understand what a GIANT HEADACHE it can be to prove your income. I also have steadily made more each year since I started filing taxes as self-employed (2013 ish) which is actually great but which on paper means I have a lower average annual income. I have student loans from my Master's degree but M doesn't have any from her Master's, and neither of us have debt from undergrad. We don't have a car (and therefore don't have a car loan), and we pay off our credit cards in full every month and don't carry a balance. We have pretty darn good credit, which took a long time to achieve because we racked up a lot of credit card debt during grad school and had to work very hard to pay it all off. We finally found a mortgage broker that would approve us for a reasonable amount for the areas we were considering, and in mid-July we started seeing houses.
We originally wanted to buy a condo, but because of high HOAs in most buildings around here, we were approved for a very low purchase price for condos compared to the approval for single family homes. We ended up focusing our search on a neighborhood we hadn't even considered before because it's mostly single family homes and that wasn't what we were looking for. We saw maybe ten houses before making an offer. Long story short, the first house didn't work out because of several issues found during the inspection. BUT we ended up finding another that we like even better, and after some bumps in the road, WE ARE FINALLY HOMEOWNERS!!!
I know we got EXTREMELY lucky with the timing of our home search. Most of the country is experiencing a CRAZY seller's market and homes are going for waaaaaaay over asking while the buyers waive inspection contingencies. However, NYC and some of the surrounding areas (not the super suburban areas) were actually the opposite last summer, though I think it's picked up a bit since then. We managed to pay under asking and get some seller credits for repairs. Our city is still very urban and densely populated, as you can probably tell by the two houses attached to either side and tiny yard.
But we don't have kids or dogs so we don't need that much space. And honestly we have more space than we ever imagined we would. We have three (!!!) whole bedrooms after living in one bedroom OR LESS apartments our whole adult lives. One is my studio where I can practice and teach and then CLOSE THE DOOR at the end of the evening, AND we have a dedicated guest room, which we never thought we would have.Obviously our priorities have shifted since becoming homeowners. We got an amazing rate and our monthly payments are actually less than our rent was in our last apartment. But we did have to replace the furnace, replace the water heater, add central AC, have some asbestos tile removed in the basement, and have some outlets added. Our house was built in the 1890s so obviously it needed a little love! So we are still saving as much as possible so we're ready for inevitable repairs and maintenance.
That meant that when we had to choose to either keep our WDW Annual Passes or cancel them and get a refund for the remaining time, we chose...to cancel them and take the money.
And that is the main reason we only have 5 day tickets. More on that later, though...
KellBelle
Well-Known Member
CONGRATULATIONS!!! Your new home is beautiful! We bought our first house about 2.5 years ago. We are upper 40's, so we were very late the the homeownership party, but we love it! I am sure you and M will love it as well!!!WARNING: lots of text! Not a lot of Disney talk!
As you may have guessed, our big dream for 2020 was to buy a house. With the uncertainty of EVERYTHING going on, I was afraid our plans would have to change and we'd be stuck renting another year or two. M, however, never lost faith. We did a ton of Zillow-stalking in March, April, May, and June. By this time I had a pretty stable income despite all the changes to our lives, so in July we started applying for mortgage preapprovals.
We were preapproved by three different banks but some of the amounts were low for our area. If you're self-employed you will understand what a GIANT HEADACHE it can be to prove your income. I also have steadily made more each year since I started filing taxes as self-employed (2013 ish) which is actually great but which on paper means I have a lower average annual income. I have student loans from my Master's degree but M doesn't have any from her Master's, and neither of us have debt from undergrad. We don't have a car (and therefore don't have a car loan), and we pay off our credit cards in full every month and don't carry a balance. We have pretty darn good credit, which took a long time to achieve because we racked up a lot of credit card debt during grad school and had to work very hard to pay it all off. We finally found a mortgage broker that would approve us for a reasonable amount for the areas we were considering, and in mid-July we started seeing houses.
We originally wanted to buy a condo, but because of high HOAs in most buildings around here, we were approved for a very low purchase price for condos compared to the approval for single family homes. We ended up focusing our search on a neighborhood we hadn't even considered before because it's mostly single family homes and that wasn't what we were looking for. We saw maybe ten houses before making an offer. Long story short, the first house didn't work out because of several issues found during the inspection. BUT we ended up finding another that we like even better, and after some bumps in the road, WE ARE FINALLY HOMEOWNERS!!!
View attachment 558701
I know we got EXTREMELY lucky with the timing of our home search. Most of the country is experiencing a CRAZY seller's market and homes are going for waaaaaaay over asking while the buyers waive inspection contingencies. However, NYC and some of the surrounding areas (not the super suburban areas) were actually the opposite last summer, though I think it's picked up a bit since then. We managed to pay under asking and get some seller credits for repairs. Our city is still very urban and densely populated, as you can probably tell by the two houses attached to either side and tiny yard.
Obviously our priorities have shifted since becoming homeowners. We got an amazing rate and our monthly payments are actually less than our rent was in our last apartment. But we did have to replace the furnace, replace the water heater, add central AC, have some asbestos tile removed in the basement, and have some outlets added. Our house was built in the 1890s so obviously it needed a little love! So we are still saving as much as possible so we're ready for inevitable repairs and maintenance.
That meant that when we had to choose to either keep our WDW Annual Passes or cancel them and get a refund for the remaining time, we chose...to cancel them and take the money.
WARNING: lots of text! Not a lot of Disney talk!
As you may have guessed, our big dream for 2020 was to buy a house. With the uncertainty of EVERYTHING going on, I was afraid our plans would have to change and we'd be stuck renting another year or two. M, however, never lost faith. We did a ton of Zillow-stalking in March, April, May, and June. By this time I had a pretty stable income despite all the changes to our lives, so in July we started applying for mortgage preapprovals.
We were preapproved by three different banks but some of the amounts were low for our area. If you're self-employed you will understand what a GIANT HEADACHE it can be to prove your income. I also have steadily made more each year since I started filing taxes as self-employed (2013 ish) which is actually great but which on paper means I have a lower average annual income. I have student loans from my Master's degree but M doesn't have any from her Master's, and neither of us have debt from undergrad. We don't have a car (and therefore don't have a car loan), and we pay off our credit cards in full every month and don't carry a balance. We have pretty darn good credit, which took a long time to achieve because we racked up a lot of credit card debt during grad school and had to work very hard to pay it all off. We finally found a mortgage broker that would approve us for a reasonable amount for the areas we were considering, and in mid-July we started seeing houses.
We originally wanted to buy a condo, but because of high HOAs in most buildings around here, we were approved for a very low purchase price for condos compared to the approval for single family homes. We ended up focusing our search on a neighborhood we hadn't even considered before because it's mostly single family homes and that wasn't what we were looking for. We saw maybe ten houses before making an offer. Long story short, the first house didn't work out because of several issues found during the inspection. BUT we ended up finding another that we like even better, and after some bumps in the road, WE ARE FINALLY HOMEOWNERS!!!
View attachment 558701
I know we got EXTREMELY lucky with the timing of our home search. Most of the country is experiencing a CRAZY seller's market and homes are going for waaaaaaay over asking while the buyers waive inspection contingencies. However, NYC and some of the surrounding areas (not the super suburban areas) were actually the opposite last summer, though I think it's picked up a bit since then. We managed to pay under asking and get some seller credits for repairs. Our city is still very urban and densely populated, as you can probably tell by the two houses attached to either side and tiny yard.
Obviously our priorities have shifted since becoming homeowners. We got an amazing rate and our monthly payments are actually less than our rent was in our last apartment. But we did have to replace the furnace, replace the water heater, add central AC, have some asbestos tile removed in the basement, and have some outlets added. Our house was built in the 1890s so obviously it needed a little love! So we are still saving as much as possible so we're ready for inevitable repairs and maintenance.
That meant that when we had to choose to either keep our WDW Annual Passes or cancel them and get a refund for the remaining time, we chose...to cancel them and take the money.
Yay! Congrats! Glad you were able to find something before the market went crazy.
PacNWTigger
Well-Known Member
Congratulations on the new home!!! That is super exciting, and I am incredibly happy for you ladies!
I'm also excited for your WDW trip because we will be staying at the Swan in September, so any helpful hints are appreciated.
ajrwdwgirl
Premium Member
KellBelle
Well-Known Member
I'm also excited for your WDW trip because we will be staying at the Swan in September, so any helpful hints are appreciated.
We plan to stay at the Swan the week of Thanksgiving, before we move over to Shades of Green. I am also looking forward to lots of Swan pics and info! This will be our first stay there.